New Colonel

Couldn't agree more.

They may stay in that 2-8 range..... they don't have very many kids and aren't very athletic overall and lack in size.. But they have good fundamentals and their conditioning is fantastic. It is hard on the kids when you look across the field and see 30+ kids each week, and when those kids are considerably larger than you as well. But these kids are tough and have a great mindset, which is all one could ask for.

Without question, dividing into 2 teams. Did it recently with a 3-4th grade team. We only won 2 games and I don't regret the decision at all because those kids got tremendous developmental opportunities and playing time. They were fundamentally sound. I'd do it again if presented with the same choice.

So how do you manage playing time with trying to win? Play your best players while most of your team twittles their thumbs during the game on the sidelines? Do you specialize positions at the youth level because you are trying to win?

They shouldn't be worried about winning at all until Varsity on Friday nights. DEVELOP PLAYERS until then. Develop their fundamentals, techniques, conditioning, strength, and most of all, develop in them to love the game. You do that by making it fun. It is a game afterall. Every kid should play in every single game until Friday nights. You never know who will suddenly hit a big growth spurt, or who will become a gym rat, or who will discover they can actually ball! They should also play a variety of positions until probably freshman year. Every high school coach has approached some kid in the hallways before who looks the part of a football player.... and when they ask them to play the story goes something like, "I used to play, hated it because of how I was treated." I also don't recall there being big writeups in the newspaper for winning JV championships. Nobody really cares about that freshmen football championship you won, let alone youth ones. The only ones that care are guys who are in coaching for the wrong reasons.....the "ME" coaches that think winning youth championships is something to brag about. Who cares, honestly. Go ahead and wear your youth football jacket covered in Super Bowl patches like anyone is even remotely impressed. Youth sports, especially football is making me absolutely sick anymore. It's nothing but a money grab. You have youth teams at 7 years old practicing 5x a week, playing multiple games full contact games in a weekend, and teaching the game in the absolute wrong way. It's disgusting, and one of the biggest culprits is the NKYFL. Not only do they seriously put kids in danger by allowing and encouraging youth football tournaments (think about how dumb that is for a minute, playing 3+ games in a weekend), teams are now partnering with local fitness facilities to encourage their players to go (for a fee of course) for "specialized" strength and conditioning. I'm sorry, what?? We are encouraging pre-pubescent kids to do more specialized training for a sport that already monopolizes all of their time from early July through the end of October..... and many organizations keep playing in travel tournaments into December. And before the season "officially" begins, we want kids to go train 4x a week at 20-30 bucks a session, and they'll also have their own "optional conditioning/practices" as soon as school gets out. Meanwhile, most NKYFL teams have 30+ kids and over half of those kids never set foot on the field during a game. "But they won a Super Bowl" playing 13 kids, most of them coaches sons while 2/3rds of the team shows up every day of the week to be screamed at, belittled, or completely ignored for 5-6 months. And don't get me started on how most of the NKYFL coaches treat the kids. This has nothing to do with "kids being soft these days." You should not get in kids faces, chew them out, or say the things I hear said every week by opposing coaches. If a grown man ever spoke to my kid the way I hear these other coaches talk, I'd be in jail. You are supposed to be teaching the game, so teach. Kids mess up, a lot! Heck professional players mess up a lot. Tell them what they did wrong, show them the right way, and get them out there again to do it the right way. At home, do you scream and belittle your child if they use a fork the wrong way, or color outside the lines, or use too much toothpaste, or some other mundane task you are trying to teach? My guess is probably not, but for some reason, in the football world, it's perfectly ok to get in a 9 year old's face, scream at the top of your lungs, or use expletives over a missed block, a lost fumble, or dropped pass? DO BETTER as a man!!! Parents need to wake up and stop the madness in all of youth sports. The travel league crap has to stop. The making sure kids have hundreds of dollars worth of useless accessories should have never happened. The taking advantage of families and using the word scholarship to promote your business to youth players is dishonest at best. We pay to register the kid for the sport. We then pay again for the equipment and/or uniforms. We then pay again to watch the games. We also have fundraising to help pay for more stuff. We allow people to convince us to pay to travel to play in tournaments is what's best for our kids when it actually hurts them. Then we allow local "experts" to come in and convince us that our kids need additional training, which costs even more money. We pay for useless stuff that doesn't matter to the end product, which should be to teach kids the fundamentals of the game. Instead, we have freshman football players who played since they were 7 but can't get in a 3 point stance, don't know how to take a handoff, how to carry a ball, and definitely don't know how to properly block or tackle. The whole system right now is a sham. Unfortunately, most parents are so brainwashed, that they don't care even a little bit. They eat this all up. Youth sports right now is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it's not leading to better athletes. High school coaches spend entirely too much time breaking bad habits and reteaching technique. The ones without any football experience many times wind up ahead of those with years experience. Thus endeth my rant.

That's what most teams do now because your best athlete has the ball in his hands on every play. It can make up for a lot of shortcomings, but also can really hurt you.

I couldn't disagree with this statement more. High school QBs look at the sidelines for the "check with me" after they start the cadence because they are clueless and poorly coached. We see this in college now too. QBs do NOT diagnose coverages anymore at high school level. They don't understand their own schemes let alone how to read a defense. And this comes from bad coaching. Everything these days is "get your athletes the ball in space and let them run." But they don't know how to do that. Look, offensive coordinators are not very good overall at the high school level. They don't know how to scheme against certain things, how to adjust, or how to create their own wrinkles to a scheme.....let alone teach a QB these things. Most OCs are a product of YouTube videos and clinics where they have assembled a random collection of plays but don't understand why they are used or when. They can't set up and bait a defense. They don't self scout. Heck, many can't even draw a proper route tree. They don't have a true system, because in a system you actually teach QBs all of these things. Biggest complaint of NFL and College coaches of QBs is they don't know football. They don't understand it and have to look at the sidelines for directions at all times. That has now become part of the college game now. The QB in high school for the vast majority of schools is essentially a running back, and again that's the college level too. Are there exceptions, of course there are. However, let's not act like the average high school QB is reading a defense, let alone making his own checks.

My answer is an emphatic NO! Sure it's a good idea and can work great; however, if he gets hurt while playing defense, things just went really south for your team really fast. I don't care what type of offense you run. In 2025, there's zero reason you should have your starting QB play any defense, unless you are down to under 15 players on the roster, and in that case, you may want to think about scrapping the season because of safety issues. Look, you are the head coach. You are charged with player evaluation and player development. If you have your starting QB starting anywhere on defense you messed up & failed as a Head Coach on both of those fronts. You didn't develop the right person to be the QB. If your starting QB is better on defense and helps your team's success on that side of the ball, he should start there. You should have developed a QB, probably 2. That's your job. If nobody on your squad fits your scheme for QB, then change your scheme. Good coaches adapt to their players, not the other way around. Why do you not have anyone that can be a serviceable QB at high school level? The QB position for most teams has been dumbed down so much that anyone that can run a little bit can be a QB. QBs aren't audibling on their own, they aren't making complex decisions, there's no complicated reads in most offenses anymore at the high school level. You, as the head coach are responsible for making sure that you have a serviceable QB and a serviceable backup. Having a starting QB get playing time on defense is simply irresponsible IMO. I'm sure I'm going to have quite a few disagree with me on this one, but with no position being as important to your team than QB, risking it is a losing proposition.

That's what I've always called the kids that grow way too fast and are too awkward and just look goofy doing anything because they haven't grown into their newly giant frame. And they look like baby deer running around, flailing their arms and legs and falling over.

This is an understatement about the talent at TF right now. The 8th Grade QB has an absolute canon, and is accurate. There are some tenacious 8th graders this past year. 7th grade was/is loaded with talent. They have quite a bit of size and speed. They were raw this past year with lots of players new(ish) to football, and quite a few very large players that still have "baby deer syndrome." They should be really fun to watch next year if they all come back to play for their 8th grade year.

Could you elaborate on his background for us that don't know about this young man. Thanks.

Hard to say. Cam is definitely a fantastic QB. Fields is bigger and has the bigger arm. O'Hara is extremely accurate, extremely. He was quite impressive last season. O'Hara also moves better overall and throws well on the move. Fields is more of a pocket QB. He's not completely immobile, but definitely more traditional. I think Fields' mechanics and footwork may be a bit better. It's also difficult to compare the two because Cooper's offense is what I feel Dixie wants to do, but just doesn't know how to go about it. There are so many unsound things with their scheme. It's hard to get completions at times when there's only 1 WR running a route and nobody blocks in front of you. O'Hara will be solid for Western when he gets there, that is a great pickup for the Hilltoppers!!

Fields will definitely go D1. Will be be P4, doubt it because he doesn't fit quite what most P4 teams look for now, which is runnin ability over throwing. He did very, very well in numerous camps last year which is exponentially more important in recruiting than on the field numbers. Hopefully his performance on the field is much better, and hopefully they have some receivers that can catch and some OL to protect.

Correct. The retirement in the public schools are much, much better. In the Catholic schools, honestly, you will be lucky to retire before 75 with how expensive everything is these days unless you inherit money or your spouse is the bread-winner.

Not all of your info is correct. Archdiocese of Cincy does not have a set pay scale. It is up to each individual school. The document you have is essentially a guideline for the Archdiocese, at least that's what they used to say. Now, until the very recent expansion of school vouchers, NKY grade school tuition was considerably higher than in Cincy. Now, the high schools in NKY were much cheaper than Cincy. I know my wife taught in the Archdiocese for 9 years, her first year teaching was for a grand total of 21,000. Her last year with a Masters degree was 29 grand. She was paid less than what the payscale said, and the Archdiocese HR said it was a guideline, not a minimum. I know it was also 8 years ago, so maybe it's different now. And my experience with the Archdiocese in particular treats their employees horribly. They won't allow kids and spouses on the insurance, unless you pay the entire rate out of pocket. My wife had 3 kids, was told she had to use sick time for each kid, which fine. Later, she found out they gave paid maternity leave without having to use sick time, but HR & Benefits kept that policy buried on purpose, the email responses even said, "We don't advertise this policy." There were so many other red flags and shadiness that she couldn't take it anymore and now teaches public school and is much, much happier.

Catholic schools pay diddly squat. Most would make more doing literally anything else. And yes they have to fundraise for things, public schools do too. There are some Catholic schools that are indeed ripe with cash, but most are just getting by, like most public schools.

The Bomber Defense is legendary. So many teams try to implement the 3-3-5 like X, but nobody can run it the way X does. The link below is the DVD where Specht outlines the basic premise of how they run the stack. It's old, but awesome. And if you've seen X play, you know that the info in the DVD is the extremely watered down version of what they do. And as a bonus, Cov Cath is on the cover. I still have this DVD somewhere in my basement along with a bunch of other DVDs/VHSs and books. I'm a big geek over any playbook I can get my hands on. https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Specht-3-3-5-Bomber-Defense/dp/B001GXJJLQ

Very cool. I only remember seeing a team utilize this strategy one time, and it was Cincinnati St. X in a playoff game. They lined up for what was around a 70 yard FG attempt. Everyone in the stands was losing their mind, and I just laughed as they purposely kicked the ball out of bounds at about the 12 yard line, kind of like coffin corner. Everyone, including the opposing coach was livid when the ball was spotted there.

It's even worse if it doesn't hit the endzone. If the attempted FG is downed by kicking team or rolls out of bounds at the 1 yardline, it's the other team's ball at their own 1. It really surprises me that more high school coaches don't treat FGs as a "punt."

Love the fumble rule. I don't like the equipment rules, as the equipment rules aren't enforced by most crews as they stand now, despite being "points of emphasis" last season. Now, they want officials to go after the types of mouthpieces (the stupid pacifier looking ones, which I can't understand why anyone would want and why any sane adult would actually purchase for their child) when there are kids playing with their mouthpieces out completely (It's always kickers, WRs, and DBs).

This is a great thread and topic. Awesome points. When I got out of college and started coaching varsity football right away at 22. My goal was to be a head coach, and ideally at my alma mater. As the years and seasons went on and I gained more experience, more responsibilities coaching and teaching at different schools, I saw some coaching colleagues of mine get that opportunity to coach at their alma maters. I saw the good, the bad, the ugly, and some things that are beyond reprehensible. Unfortunately, the good was very few and far between. So my dreams changed and I decided that I never wanted to be a head coach after that and stuck with being a coordinator for years, until I couldn't stand missing my own kids' activities as they were playing soccer as 3 years old while I was at films. So, it takes a very special person to take the head coaching job in their home town. It takes even a better guy to stick with that job. It's not for the faint of heart, especially in small communities. But as they say, winning fixes almost everything, so if you are going tp take on this job, you better win a lot more than you lose. And I'd really, really not recommend taking your hometown/alma mater gig if it involves a major rebuild and major change of culture. I'm talking about the type of rebuild that'll take 4-5 years to maybe get to .500. I saw that first hand with an excellent coach, well year 2 he went 0-10 and he never coached again after that which was a shame. He was an excellent coach in a hopeless situation with zero support and even fewer athletes. But, if you win, it's going to be the most rewarding thing for you, truly living the dream.

This is great. Line coaching and specific training is really hard to come by. This should really help anyone wanting to up their game. I also feel line coaching is subpar in most high schools (Not Ryle as Ryle always seems to have linemen that do well technique wise).

In other words, why are the Dixie players always slower, weaker and sucking wind more than their rivals? They definitely aren't smaller overall. Do the kids not go to offseason lifting and conditioning with fidelity? If not, why do they play? If they are there and killing it clangin and bangin in the weight room, why don't the results show on the field? Again, I don't expect them to become a dynasty or anything like that. Just have some respectable teams on the field that can compete and not get their teeth mashed in every week.

I never said they were cranking out 6-7 wins on the regular or beating the teams up the road every couple of years. I said, it's not too much to ask. Seriously, they are essentially the same kids from the same area. It's very obvious that how Cov Cath and Beechwood do things fundamentally as a program are far superior to Dixie. There have been some close games against those teams over that time, but Dixie has been outcoached time and time again, and that's multiple Dixie coaches against multiple Cov Cath coaches and multiple Beechwood coaches.

I hear you on that and that's a great point. And if it was great WR play that made Browning, then Chase should have easily been a top 10 receiver. And if it is that WR play making the QB play solid with Browning, then did the Bengals way overpay for Burrow? Just playing Devil's Advocate here.