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AFM Magazine


Turnaround: How do you Turn an Ailing Program Around?

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When you inherit an ailing program, one coming off a series of poor recruiting classes, one that’s subsisting on a steady diet of one or two wins a year, what’s a coach to do? Prospective recruits don’t want to play for a loser, especially if your campus lacks glamour. Alumni and community businesses don’t want to show financial support. It’s harder to find talented assistants, and the administration and the student body will be hard to placate.

What often happens is that a new coach walks into this situation and is overwhelmed by myriad of small fires and several conflagrations. It’s obvious what many fledgling coaches would look for in such a situation, an “old hand” who knows what it’s like to have to face angry administrators. Someone who could help the team get better in class and off the field. Someone to help develop pride and camaraderie and win a few games and go about recruiting better players.

We’ve assembled a group of experienced coaches who have played and handled personnel at every level imaginable. Read on, and you’ll see decades of accumulated wisdom that can help you tackle issues your program might be facing.

FIRST THINGS FIRST
Remember, new coaches will make mistakes. If inexperience was never a factor, then those making the decisions wouldn’t hesitate to hire someone with a 0-0 career record. What are some pitfalls to avoid? Says University of Charleston (W.Va) head coach Tony DeMeo: “The biggest mistake is that coaches try to do too much the first year. When I was starting out, I wanted to show everyone I WAS CLEVER.”

Central Florida head coach George O’Leary seconds DeMeo. When asked what his biggest misstep was as a head coach, he says: “It was doing too much … installing too much offense and defense” in the early going.

Says UCLA head coach Karl Dorrell: “I had to learn about coaching by trial-and-error. Each (coaching) situation is different, and may require techniques you might not feel comfortable utilizing.” Dorrell says he got his feet wet in each situation by using what he calls a ‘jump-in’ mentality.

The lesson DeMeo learned is he now tries to make incremental improvements, and he now knows that results matter more than looking good. “You don’t get style points,” DeMeo says.

“We’re not like little kids on balance beams, you just need to execute.”

Most coaching turnarounds don’t happen overnight, and when they do, it’s often something as simple as reducing the playbook or focusing on one or two elements of the game, not fixing everything. Reducing complexity can pay huge dividends.

RECRUITING
How do you get prospective student-athletes interested in your school? How do you mold them? Recruiting was crucial to Western Michigan’s success last season, as head coach Bill Cubit says: “We were going after great players, and some of these players weren’t getting as many looks (by bigger schools). Not that they couldn’t play for a Big Ten school or a SEC school, but everyone has a little bit of a niche, and these guys were getting overlooked. It was our responsibility to find those guys, because they could come in and play right away.”

This plan paid immediate dividends. “We had 34 freshmen play and started 14 at one time or another,” Cubit says. “Those were the kids that were somewhat overlooked, but they had a lot of passion and played with a little chip on their shoulder.”

“The first year we’ve got to get kids who are a fit,” DeMeo says. “Before I came here, the previous coaching staff was basically phone recruiting junior college kids. My philosophy is to control our area first. I do a pebble-in-a-pond high school recruiting. Start in my area and work out to key spots. We recruit kids that play and stay. We’re looking for team players and recruit character not characters. The side benefit was that alumni, community and corporate giving went up dramatically. Everyone took to what we were doing, loved what we were doing and increased their giving to the team and the community." What to look for in a player? DeMeo puts it simply: “Character, class, courage, integrity: Those are the four pillars.”

Cubit also has four criteria for potential recruits, though they aren’t exactly the same as DeMeo’s: “The kid has to have great character. He has to have great passion for football. If a guy does not have great passion, he is not going to make it. He has to be intelligent. Being intelligent is being a guy who can get his college degree and also thrive in this academic environment. The final criteria is talent.”

IN THE CLASSROOM
DeMeo took over a team that had gone 5-16 the previous two seasons and led it to an 8-3 record last season (6-2 in the West Virginia Conference), winning 7 of their last 8 games. The last time the school won more games was in 1950, when the school was called Morris Harvey College and went 10-0 and won the Tangerine Bowl. “This is my fourth turnaround,” DeMeo says. “There are certain commonalities that are important. First, find an administration that wants to turn the program around. We changed the culture on our campus. We created an environment of excellence in the classroom, on the field, and in the community. Last season, we started with 59 returning players and ended up with 42. Of those 59, 12 were academically ineligible. 11 of them made it and played. Over 20 years as a head coach, I have a 94 percent graduation rate.”

So what is DeMeo’s secret to fixing academic problems? Says University of Charleston President Edwin Welch: “Campus visits are a serious affair, (the athletes) know us, and we know them before they are admitted. Coach DeMeo has an assistant coach walk the halls during class times. He checks whether players are engaged in the class. If not, they run at 6:00 a.m. the next day.”

“We have mandatory breakfast checks, and we have a classroom check, and we used the school’s support and tutoring system,” says DeMeo. “Those things really improved our academic performance. The defensive coordinator, Carey Baker, checks with players’ teachers every week via e-mail. That way, we gained respect from the other students and faculty and administration.”

BUILDING MORALE AND CAMERADERIE
Once the players are on campus, it’s time to make them a team. UCLA’s Karl Dorrell doesn’t have a typical school’s recruiting problems: His school is in warm, sunny Southern California, and it plays in a prestigious conference, the Pac-10. But he still came into a program that was troubled: “We needed to change our off-the-field behavior. We had to understand that there are important issues unrelated to football that are equally as important.” UCLA’s coach realized he had to step in to avert a continuation of the problems: “I interviewed all of our players, and it was apparent that there was a lack of trust and respect (among the players)... and players didn't trust the coaches. There were a lot of cliques and divisions.”

Dorrell’s solution? Spending a lot of time and using an elbow-grease approach to cure his team’s ills. "We started by discussing issues that separated us,” he says. “We divided the team into four classes with three coaches handling each class. I was responsible for the seniors. The coaches spent a great deal of time with the players, on and off the field. We scheduled informal social activities or just hung around them. This did two things: It established stronger relationships between players and coaches, and it opened communication lines.

In O’Leary’s case: “The biggest problem we had to overcome was a loser mentality by many involved with the football program.” Coming off an 0-11 season, it was easy to see why many associated with UCF had low standards. O’Leary said he improved the team by getting the administration to spend more on facilities, video technology and all areas of the football program. O’Leary also had his team spend much more time working on strength and conditioning than in past years. But O’Leary has a simple way of describing what it takes to build a team: “We stressed player responsibility and accountability on and off the field and had an emphasis on a player-coach trust relationship. The players then bought into the program and leaders were developed.”

It was somewhat different for Cubit: “When I first arrived, the trust factor was minimal to nonexistent. We divided the team into eight groups and had them do different weight-room activities and winter-conditioning activities. On weekends, we had them hang out with each other. On a Saturday night, they were asked to spend three hours learning different cultures – like a kid from Florida and a kid from Chicago grouped together. Kids from different ethnic backgrounds were put together and reported back to the team on what they learned about each other.”

OFF THE FIELD
Another secret to the success of Charleston’s DeMeo is not forgetting about his returning players during recruiting season. “We have one coach stay off the recruiting road. Strength coach Ken Farrar stays on campus keeping the veteran players in good condition to maximize their ability. Not many schools do that.”

Cubit has his players do 5 hours of community service. “They always did things in teams, and the guys started to relate with each other, doing things on campus and be visible in the dorm community. We wanted them to take responsibility for themselves on and off campus. Before, some guys were getting in trouble on campus, in the dorms and in the community.”

He also feels discipline was crucial: “I don’t feel that we made many mistakes last season. But we lost a lot of kids. I wish we wouldn’t have, but they weren’t adhering to the rules. Basically, it was three strikes, and you’re out. I just feel bad, but we were a far better team than if we would have let things go early. We did not let anything slip in the very beginning.

“There were players who wanted discipline. They craved discipline, and that was what we gave to them. I think their attitude was outstanding. I think there was a problem with the perception of who the leaders were on the football team. Sometimes the leaders were the guys who didn’t set a great example and they eliminated themselves. So, we had to develop a core group or a leadership counsel. We talked a lot about leadership and met over the spring, we met in the summer, we met in preseason and always talked about what we want to do, and where we want to get to, and that they had to police themselves. They started taking ownership. We had a great corps of seniors who wanted to have success.”

Coachingwise, Cubit mainly went with his own hires rather than retaining many individuals from Western Michigan’s previous staff: “We kept one guy, Brian Rock, who was very loyal to the program and has been here for 14 years. We wanted to attract coaches who were highly enthusiastic, showed a lot of energy and had the expertise to go along with the energy as well as caring for student-athletes. That was more important to me than (game-planning).”

ON THE FIELD
OK, so we’ve got the administration happy because the players are doing well in class, and are acting as role models off the field. … We have an idea of the recruits we should be looking for, and how we should mold them into a team. … Are there any specific ways to take a fledgling unit and get them to win?

Says DeMeo: “(Last season,) the emphasis was on great defense. We recruited that way, and we put on defense (returning offensive players) who could help us out. The result was we were the No. 1 rush defense in the conference, and we were ranked nationally in a number of categories.”

DeMeo had more limited goals with the ball. “We wanted to control the ball on offense,” he says. “We used a balanced offense and controlled the ball with the passing game as well as the run. We run the triple option from the shotgun: High-percentage passes and very-efficient runs. We led the conference in turnovers forced and were No. 1 in time of possession. We got in great shape. We always tell our players, we believe the fourth quarter is ours. And 50 percent of our two-deep were true freshmen.”

Cubit’s Broncos took a different approach because he’s an offensive whiz: “We made better use of our star players, trying to get our best players the ball as much as possible. We had a 1,000-yard rusher, a 1,000-yard receiver, and we incorporated the tight end. Defensively, our personnel were very limited, so we went to a defense that we really knew and just incorporated that defense and tried to fit our personnel into those schemes.”

CONCLUSIONS
“Coaches really are more effective when they are the example rather than just setting rules,” DeMeo says. Like Cubit, he demands that. He makes his players get involved in the community and he has won awards for his service. The key, DeMeo says, is making sure his student-athletes don’t slack off in any area. “You can’t compartmentalize. You can’t have excellence in the field and not in the classroom.”

Says Dorrell: “As prepared as you think you might be, there will always be times of unexpected crisis. Tackle them one at a time and move forward.”

Cubit knows all about unexpected situations: “(When I came to WMU), I thought there would be more talent at certain levels. At quarterback, we only had two that were fifth-year seniors and we did not have another quarterback in the system until we went out and recruited two. I didn’t expect the talent level to be up to par, but I also didn’t expect it to be as far down. Twenty five guys were thrown off the team (the previous season) because of academic issues. At some positions, we had to play freshmen. We had nobody else! I don’t think anything (good that happened) happened by accident. It was all a result of the design. We disciplined the guys; we demanded a lot of success; we expect success and if we don’t get it, then we keep on striving for it.”

And if trouble rears its head, O’Leary says: “You must have enough confidence in your philosophy so player distractions don’t become a team problem. Do what you need to do to eliminate malcontents.”





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