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AFM Magazine

AFM Magazine


6 Issues That May Be Effecting You

In an exclusive interview with The American Football Coaches Association’s Executive Director, Grant Teaff takes aim at six issues in today\'s high-pressure world of coaching
by: Steve Silverman
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In the early part of the 20th century, there was a loud hue and cry to ban football. The game was violent, dangerous and apparently out of control. President Teddy Roosevelt had decided it was a brutal activity. There had been many deaths in one year.

Football coaches who would soon find themselves out of a job took it upon themselves to clean up the game and make it acceptable. They rewrote the rules, got rid of the flying wedge – a system of blocking that basically maimed and injured opponents – and brought the game on a path that would lead to acceptance by the public. The forward pass came into existence and the rules committee would ultimately morph into the National Collegiate Athletic Association. They later went on to form their own coaches association, which is now called the American Football Coaches Association.

The executive director of that association is Grant Teaff, and he has been in that position since 1994. Teaff served as the Baylor head coach from 1972 to 1992, and his Bears went to eight bowl games under his leadership.

As executive director of the AFCA, Teaff looks out for the good of the game in general and the welfare of coaches in particular. He discussed some of today’s major issues:

Moving Van

One area where coaches are most vulnerable is when it comes to changing jobs. No matter how it is done, if a coach leaves one school for another there are hurt feelings. The school that loses the coach is angry, hurt and usually vengeful. The coach who leaves is supposedly moving on to greener pastures, but he is forever tarred as a manipulator or a liar when he takes the new job.

The examples are numerous – Gary Barnett leaving Northwestern for Colorado; Dennis Franchione leaving TCU for Alabama; Franchione leaving Alabama for Texas A&M; Rick Neuheisel leaving Colorado for Washington; Mike Price leaving Washington State for Alabama; Tyrone Willingham leaving Stanford for Notre Dame and Butch Davis leaving Miami for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns – and there are dozens more.

Teaff sees this as one area where coaches will never get a break. “I think this situation is unfixable,” Teaff said. “There are always going to be hurt feelings. A coach leaves for what he thinks is a better job and he becomes a villain in the eyes of the previous institution he just left. I believe there is something unfair about that, but I don’t think it will ever change.

“For example, if a professor has been at one school for a number of years and then decides to go to another university, do you see articles in the newspapers, debates on talk radio or TV commentators getting worked up? Of course not. These professors move on for the same reason that football coaches do. It’s a better opportunity and it will help their family. Yet in football, the coach becomes the villain.”

The situation is unique to a football coach. An NFL coach moves from city to city, nobody says a word.

“I don’t think this is right, but I also recognize that there’s very little that can be done about it,” Teaff said. “You can’t change the loyalties of the fans and that’s the only way they are going to look at it.”

Ironically, Teaff had several chances to move on to new jobs during his long run at Baylor. He never left the Waco campus. “It would have been hard for me to do,” Teaff said. “Our family was pretty well settled and then there’s the recruiting angle. I never wanted to break any promise I made to our recruits after I told them I would be there for four years.

“I have no regrets about staying. There might have been more money, but I was happy at Baylor.”

Minority Hiring

One of the other aspects of coaching that gets considerable attention is minority hiring. While the hiring of African-American coaches like Sylvester Croom (Mississippi State) and Ty Willingham (Notre Dame) generate tons of media attention and fan involvement, minority hiring appears to be moving at a slow pace.

Teaff is concerned about minority hiring and he realizes that African-American coaches are few and far between among the 117 Division I-A institutions. In addition to Croom and Willingham, the only other African-American head coaches are Karl Dorrell at UCLA, Tony Samuel at New Mexico State and Fitz Hill at San Jose State. There are no African-American head coaches in the Big Ten, Big XII, Big East or ACC among the power conferences that play for national championships.

Those numbers speak volumes, especially when the college game is compared to the NFL. Of the 32 teams in the NFL, five head coaches (Dennis Green of Arizona, Herman Edwards of the N.Y. Jets, Marvin Lewis of Cincinnati, Tony Dungy of Indianapolis and Lovie Smith of Chicago) are of African-American background.

The comparison is startling.

Teaff thinks the situation will get better in the foreseeable future. “I can’t sit here and tell you the situation is good,” Teaff said. “And I can’t say it is going to get better right away. However, I do believe that the situation will change relatively quickly. Whether it’s one, two or three years, I think you’ll see a time when minority coaches are getting their chances and getting their due. I say that because there are more assistant coaches and more coordinators than there have ever been. The pool is getting larger.”

The AFCA is trying to make the road to head coaching opportunities much smoother than it has been through its minority issues committee. This committee is designed to educate minority coaching candidates in the job-hunting process. The committee, in conjunction with the Black Coaches Association and the NCAA, invites the top 20 candidates every year to take place at a four-day seminar. The seminar includes classes in networking, a mentoring program and how to interview for head-coaching positions.

“It’s very educational and very intense,” said Teaff. “The seminar is limited to the top 20 candidates. We can’t just take anyone who is interested just because they are a minority. They have to be experienced coaches who have shown promise and done well.”

Support Staff

Teaff remains very concerned about the plight of assistant coaches. Many times, an assistant coach will do an outstanding job but if the program falters and the head coach is fired, the assistant is also given the gate. Some times a head coach is allowed to keep his job following a poor season, but he is given an edict to get rid of a certain number of assistants. It is often hard for them to find new jobs.

“Many times, they are among the hardest working and most dedicated people within the athletic department,” Teaff said. “It can be very unfair, but I don’t know how that can be changed as well.”

Also, the huge salaries of upper-echelon head coaches make headlines, but those salaries don’t necessarily filter down to assistants. “In the old days, if a head coach was making $100,000 per year, the rule of thumb was that the coordinators would make half of that,” Teaff explained. “That formula doesn’t necessarily follow any more. If a head coach is making $2.5 million, you are not going to pay the assistant $1.25 million. That is just not going to happen.”

As a result, the gulf between head coach and assistant gets wider and wider.

The AFCA is trying to help assistant coaches in a number of ways. The organization has been at the forefront of trying to get assistant coaches contracts with their employers. When Teaff stepped into his position with the AFCA in 1994, contracts for assistants were virtually non-existent. That figure is now approaching 70 percent.

For those schools that can’t or won’t give contracts to assistants, the AFCA has asked that they consider the employment year from June of the current year through June of the following year. “When most schools make a move with their coaching staffs, it typically happens in November or December,” Teaff explained. “With the employment year going through the next June, it takes the edge off that individual and gives them a little bit of a break.

“It works out well for the school also. If that coach is able to find a job in the ensuing months, his previous school does not have to continue to pay him once his new employment situation starts.”

Do the Right Thing

Among the accomplishments during his tenure with the AFCA is the creation of the ethics committee, which helps keep member coaches in line. “It serves as the policing arm,” Teaff said. “If a coach has a problem, he has to appear before the committee. He could be dropped from membership, could not serve as an officer of the association, may not coach in an all-star game. If he berates officials publicly, he knows the next January he will be meeting with the ethics committee. It’s taken very seriously. The people who serve have to be squeaky clean in every way. There is always pressure to win; that’s not going to change. But we have to have a standard of ethics we must adhere to.”

Recruiting Season

Recruiting has changed quite a bit over the years in college football. During the recruiting season, no more than seven assistants can be out on the road at any one time. The reason for assuring that at least two members of the coaching staff remain “at home” is for the sake of the existing student-athletes left on campus. Those athletes need to be able to talk to and get advice from their coaches at any time – including times when many members of the staff are out on the road.

The letter-of-intent process has also changed. “You used to have the letter of intent to the conference and the letter of intent to the school,” Teaff said. “That’s no longer an issue and coaches don’t have to worry about a school in the conference taking someone away who had signed the conference letter of intent.”

Teaff also thinks rules that limit the number of practices and off-season workouts have made for a healthier environment for players and coaches. As a result of those specific guidelines, players suffer fewer off-season injuries and are also able to commit more of their time to the classroom.

Membership Matters

The AFCA has quadrupled its size over the last 10 years. It has had an outreach program to high school coaches and that has seen its membership ranks grow to 12,500. High school, college and professional coaches are all eligible for membership and the organization’s annual convention in January gives members the chance to network, establish contacts and improve their coaching skills.

While coaches like Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops and Louisiana State’s Nick Saban make headlines with their multi-million dollar contracts, there are still dozens of coaches at the lower echelons of college football – Division II and Division III – who are getting paid minimal amounts. Yet, Teaff never hears complaints or jealousy from those working just as hard in similar positions at the lower levels of coaching.

“That’s the kind of fraternity that there is in this business,” Teaff explained. “More often than not, one coach is going to be happy for the success of another even if there’s almost no chance he can ever come close to that salary. That’s just the way coaches are.”






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