A Coach\'s Perspective: How to Deal with Kids
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You can make a significant mark if you put 40-plus years in the
coaching business. And Pat Collins certainly hasn’t been
cheated during a career that began in 1963.
Collins’ experiences have been many and varied – he has coached in
high school, college and the pros. He was an assistant at Louisiana Tech when
a sophomore named Terry Bradshaw was tearing up the college ranks. Collins won
a Division I-AA championship as head coach at Northeast Louisiana (now University
of Lousiana/Monroe), and he was able to look on with pride as his son, Mike,
coached at LSU as an intern during the Tigers’ run to the 2003 national
title.
But one of Collins’ most important achievements might be his institution
of a feeder system in the Longview (Texas) Independent School District. The feeder
system puts all sports in the school district on the same page in terms of coaching
techniques and expectations on the field, off the field and in the classroom.
The result has been a string of successful sports programs, with football setting
the example, and the reversal of an ugly trend of academically ineligible student-athletes.
Collins graduated high school in the late 1950s, and entered Louisiana Tech thinking
about a different career direction.
“I was going into forestry because I thought it was all hunting and fishing,” Collins
says. “(But) after a year’s time, I thought a chance to coach football
would be more exciting than marking trees.”
Collins got a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana Tech in 1962. He stayed
on for a year, earning a master’s degree in education and working as a
graduate assistant coach.
After his schooling, Collins embarked on a coaching odyssey that took him throughout
the deep south – to Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
After a stint at Northeast Louisiana that yielded a I-AA championship in 1987,
Collins decided to retire. But Collins’ retirement lasted less than a year.
He bounced around a bit in the late 1980’s/early ‘90’s before
returning to his native Louisiana to rejuvenate a stagnant program at West Ouachita
High School. After four successful seasons there, school district officials asked
Collins to perform a similar turnaround at Ouachita High School.
It was during his time at Ouachita that Collins first came into contact with
Longview High School football.
“They (Longview) had great football, good people, and I wanted to play
them,” Collins says. “They beat us, but it was a great game, and
I was in contact with them, trying to make sure they stayed on our schedule.
During a conversation, I was asked to send in a resume.”
After a drawn-out hiring process, Collins was installed as head coach of the
Longview Lobos, and it was obvious from the start that his new job would be a
challenge.
“(In Louisiana) the rules are completely different,” Collins says. “You
are eligible all the way through the fall semester if you pass five classes with
a 1.5 (D-plus) average in the spring.”
Says John King, a longtime assistant under Collins who moved to Longview from
Ouachita: “It was almost unheard of for a kid to be ineligible in Louisiana.”
But Texas was different. In 1985, the state instituted a “no-pass, no-play” policy.
Students who were failing one class at the end of a six-week grading period were
ineligible to compete during the following grading period. Collins had over 100
players on his roster, but over half were academically ineligible the previous
spring.
“When you look down at 119 players you’re smiling,” Collins
says. “But when you see 53 percent of them are failing, you got a problem.
“There were some good athletes, but you couldn’t hang your hat on
anything because you didn’t know who would be eligible. The first six-week
grades came out, and I don’t have any running backs – they’ve
all failed. We took a sophomore wide receiver, turned him into a running back,
and we went to a one-back offense. We had about 30 kids dressing for a 5-A varsity
game.”
Collins’ first Lobos squad started 2-1, but stumbled to a 3-7 record.
“After the season was over, I began to work on a policy to get these youngsters
more focused academically,” Collins said. “We instituted mandatory
tutorials, mandatory study halls. We checked what they were doing on the field
as well as off the field.”
But that was just the beginning. Collins thought that “no-pass, no-play” didn’t
go far enough.
“I reflected back on the time I was coaching at Northeast, and we had a
drug problem there,” Collins says. “We were one of the first programs
to institute a drug-testing policy. I told the players, ‘When you come
back in the fall, you pee in the bottle. If it’s positive, you’re
gonna get an apple and a road map outta here.’
“I thought, ‘if we could do that with drugs, why not with academics?’ If
the students couldn’t play or practice, maybe we could convince them how
important academics are.”
King became the Lobos’ head coach this off-season. He was Longview’s
offensive coordinator in 2000 and witnessed all the problems Collins faced: “We
were in every ball game – even after all that mess, but (Collins) said
it wasn’t going to happen again. He said ‘you’ve got to nip
it in the bud.’ (With the status quo) the kids who weren’t going
to be playing weren’t going to get reps in practice. The ineligible kids
on the scout team were going to get reps instead.”
So Collins suggested a “no-pass, no-practice, no-play” policy for
the entire Longview school district. He shaped the school community’s opinion
by talking up the plan to faculty, administrators, parents and guardians – “cultivating” them
as Collins likes to say.
“Once they saw what I was trying to do, they came on board,” Collins
said.
But there were some skeptics.
“I thought he was crazy,” King says. “Our best player wasn’t
going to be eligible. I felt like it hurt us, and several of the other coaches
felt the same way initially – 75 percent of the kids on our team are ‘at-risk’ because
of poverty, living in single-parent homes or learning disabilities.”
But Collins wasn’t playing around.
“I saw the need for it here,” he said. “The main thing is it
got the players’ attention, it got the parents’ attention. The best
damn player we got isn’t going to be out there unless he’s eligible.
And my coaches know I’m serious about it.”
Once the coaching staff saw this policy wasn’t going to change, they signed
on.
“Three coaches teach math, two teach science and the rest teach history,” King
says. “And we went to work to make sure these kids took care of business.”
“It really has proven out to be a huge, huge deal for us,” Collins
says. “You’re always going to have some kids fail. But we’ve
instituted this policy all the way down to middle school. If a kid in middle
school is failing, he won’t practice or play.”
In 2000, 53 percent of the Longview football team was academically ineligible.
Today, only 12 percent of Longview football players are ineligible. And of the
560 kids playing sports in the district, only 16 percent are academically ineligible.
Collins sees the football team as a model for the rest of the school’s
sports programs.
“We serve as guinea pigs,” Collins says. “I (run) all the sports
programs, but I felt as head coach of the football team, I had to show coaches
and students in other programs how important academics are.
“All these kids can graduate with honors. They can play at the next level
if they want to, or go get a job. My job is to coach the kids, but also to make
sure they take care of business off the field.”
But there’s more to the feeder system than making sure every student is
passing. Collins says he was too taxed in his dual position as head football
coach and the district’s de facto athletic director. He endorsed King as
his replacement and retired from coaching this off-season. But Collins remains
in charge of the district’s sports programs as its director of extracurricular
activities.
Collins hires and fires coaches for every sport and helps ensure the feeder program
works smoothly.
“The primary responsibility of the coaches at the middle school is to do
what (the high school) coaches tell them to do,” Collins says. “We
want them to have the same cadence and snap count that we do so they do the same
things we do.
“We set up their schedules for them. We talk about the different fundamentals
we want coached or taught, and they can come here and use our facilities. We
let them use their ability and their imagination, but they use our philosophy
on offense and defense, and our philosophy in other sports, such as volleyball
and track. From an academic standpoint, I certainly require the middle-school
coaches to follow our ‘no-pass, no-play, no-practice’ rule. In that
way, you have no complaints from the parents – they understand from the
get-go how important academics are to us.”
When looking for a coach, Collins has simple criteria: “What do you want – a
glad-hander or someone innovative who’s truly interested in the kids?”
Collins also says his student-athletes must know what is expected of them.
“You are going to be on time, when time is involved, you’re going
to follow the rules and regulations,” Collins says. “You’re
going to say ‘yes sir,’ ‘no sir.’ We’re going to
take those kids and mold them for the future. They might be talking about college
ball or a job, but we have to get them ready.”
That’s not all.
“There is going to be punishment involved,” Collins says. “You
might want to be out there (practicing) with your buddies, but it doesn’t
work like that. You’ll have to go to study hall or tutorial, or you won’t
be out there. I could turn my back on it. That guy running dummy plays in practice
is there because he’s eligible. And you have to look at the culture where
the kid is from. Half of my football team has a single parent or they’re
staying with somebody – an aunt or an uncle. They’re at risk. If
I’m not there to kick them in the ass, who is?”
Longview’s new head coach has learned a lot in his nine years with Collins.
“There’s not a wasted minute when you hit the practice field, not
a wasted day in the off-season,” King says. “Coach Collins gets the
most out of the coaches, the most of the kids, and he is probably the best I’ve
seen at handling a difficult situation – he always finds a way to make
things work. He’s fair, if you’re doing your job, he’ll let
you do your job. But if you’re not, you’re going to hear about it.
“Kids are kids – they are going to try and get away with whatever
you let them get away with. But if they know what’s going on from day one-what
you want out of them, they’ll do what it takes to play. If it happens down
there (middle school), it’s an easier transition for everybody. You start
to learn whom you can count on and who you can’t.
“Times changed, and ‘Coach’ did what he knew how to do. You’re
here to get your degree – you can be the best athlete in the state of Texas,
but if you don’t get those grades, you can’t play at the next level.
That’s what we stress No. 1.”
Collins sums up his philosophy succinctly: “When you have assistants working
under you, they get the benefits of all you learned. I tell them to take the
good and throw away the bad.”
Building a Feeder Program
Pat Collins’ suggestions for helping head coaches institute a successful
feeder program within a school system.
•
Develop support groups. “Whom do you answer to? To be successful, you
have to have a good relationship with them (school administrators), the faculty,
the
booster club, the community, and the students. You need to find different ways
to get them involved.”
•
“Put the right coaching staff together. Make sure the chemistry is good,
the coaches are innovative and interested in the well-being of the kids. You
need to ask, ‘Can I trust my coaches?’ If God gave me one gift,
it was the ability to pick the right people.”
•
“Have hard and fast rules for your players. But you better be ready to
help them from the standpoint of character and academics as well as speed,
agility and strength.”
• “Set out your goals. Make sure everyone knows where you’re
coming from during season and in the off-season.”
• “Work hard. I work at it seven days a week. Don’t put things
off until tomorrow because you might have too many things to overcome.”
• “Your goal is to win it all. National championships if you’re in
college, state championships in high school-but you’re going to do
it the right way.”
Anatomy of a Career
Pat Collins coached football in some capacity from 1963-2003.
Here are the stops
on his 40-plus year career.
•
1963 Louisiana Tech, graduate assistant (Collins’ replacement at Tech
was future Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson).
• 1964-1966 Airline H.S. (Bossier City, La.), head coach
• 1967-78 Louisiana Tech, defensive coordinator/assistant football coach,
assistant athletics director.
• 1979-88 Northeast Louisiana, head coach.
• 1989-90 Arkansas State, defensive coordinator.
• 1991-92 Miami (Professional Spring Football League),
assistant under former 49ers coach Pete McCulley.
• 1992-93 East Mississippi Community College, assistant coach.
• 1993-96 West Ouachita (La.) H.S., head coach.
• 1997-2000 Ouachita (La.) H.S., head coach
• 2000-2003 Longview (Texas) H.S., head coach, director of extracurricular
activities.
• 2004-present Longview Independent School District,
director of extracurricular activities.
Learning a Coaching Philosophy and Necessary Skills Over the Years
• “I’ve been a part of 269 wins, 133 defeats and four ties
as an assistant or head coach. But no ties as a head coach, because I either
won it or lost it. I don’t play for ties.”
•
“You learn so much if you pay attention. And when you get an opportunity
to be a head coach, you take all the good you’ve learned and throw away
the bad.”
•
“I learned toughness from Roy Wilson at Fair Park High School in Shreveport
(La.).” Fair Park is Collins’ alma mater.
•
“Joe Aillet (Louisiana Tech) was very articulate, very intelligent, low
key. He had dignity and class.”
•
“Motivation and discipline, the way you handle kids (Northwestern State
Head Coach, John Ropp).”