For most coaches in my generation, we have always held the belief that the 7 day work week was a necessity to build a championship program. However my experience this past year, along with observations from around the country, have shown me there is a better way.
I have coached at all levels of public school football, 2 years at the junior high and the other 13 years at the high school level. I have been a part of state championship programs and have been fortunate to have never experienced any season where we finished with a losing record.
Over my 15 years of coaching I have always worked a traditional 7 day work week once August rolled around. As many of you, I have spent countless hours watching vcr tapes, studying on various software programs, and most recently using the HUDL program to take care of most of the needs for our football team. I have drawn, God knows, how many scout team cards and prepared hundreds of scouting reports. Between the months of July and November, December if it was a really good year, I have spent more time in the field house than in my own home and with my own children. Like you, I too have missed my kid’s games, meet the teacher nights, recitals, and church services. And I have always thought that we spent all that time at the field house because that’s how it has always been done and if you didn’t do that it somehow meant you were not truly committed to being a championship caliber coach.
What this past season has taught me is that you can be just as successful with a 6 day work week, while maintaining a better balance between your home and work life. The key to making this work for us was setting expectations as a staff, communicating, maximizing the technology available to us and working more efficiently. In the end we finished with a winning record, a playoff appearance, and successful turnaround from a team that won 2 games the previous year. To put it frankly, I believe we performed just as well, if not better, than if we had worked a 7 day work week.
Recently, at this year’s 2016 AFCA convention I had the opportunity to listen to Coach Ken Niumatatolo from Navy talk about his experience with the 6 day work week at the college level. It was refreshing to hear a coach that has had tremendous success at the college level speak of the 6 day work week and how it made significant changes to his staff and his own life. Coach Niumatatolo spoke of the extra energy he and his coaching staff displayed on the new week after being off on Sundays. He also spoke of the how important he believed it was for him to go to Sunday service, and to also provide that opportunity for his staff. He made reference to great fortune 500 companies that use similar concepts of balancing work and home life, specifically he referenced the company Chick Fil A. We all know how successful that company is and how year in and year out they seem to be in the top tier of restaurant chains in the country, while never opening on Sundays. Coach Niumatatolo strongly encouraged those in attendance at the AFCA convention to have and open mind about this concept and to truly give it an opportunity to work in their programs.
Urban Meyer is also a believer of creating a better balance between home and work. In his interview on HBO’s Real Sports, he speaks of how he became addicted to winning and not only did it affect his home life but it also affected his health. It affected his life in such a profound way that he retired even though he still wanted to continue coaching at Florida. Coach Meyer had driven himself so hard he was at the point of self-medicating with alcohol and prescription medication in order to just try and get some rest during his most demanding times of the year. He also talks about how much time he spent away from his own children and how once he decided to return to coaching at Ohio, his family had him sign a contract that outlined the guidelines he would follow once back on the sideline. Guidelines that asked him to commit to a better home/work balance. Those guidelines included things like spending quality time with his wife, daughters, and attending his daughter’s volleyball games. The result of his comeback and new home/work balance has been to put together some of the greatest teams that Ohio state has ever seen. In his own words, when responding to the question on whether he believes that his program can win another national championship while still honoring the guidelines set forth by his family. Coach Meyer’s response was, “We can absolutely win another National Championship.”
Thanks to our head coach, Manny Martinez, we were able to put together a plan as we approached our week to week duties while still being able to enjoy Sundays with our families. Now, let me be perfectly clear, when I say we worked 6 days, we did have duties for Sundays, but those duties were expected to be completed on your time between the time we left the fieldhouse on Saturday and our athletic period on Monday. Like most of you, we exchange film early in the week. Usually we exchange film on Tuesday and then again the Friday night game early Saturday morning. As a staff we break up the duties for breaking down film and the games we exchange Tuesday need to be completed by Friday. This gives us only one game to break down on Saturday. By noon on Saturday we will have all games broken down and we will have graded, reviewed, and compiled all the production from our previous night’s game. We will usually have a little break around noon on Saturday and then begin to game plan and review all the data for our next week’s opponents. We will make all the necessary cut ups on HUDL and also begin working on our online scouting reports that we will share with the team. At no later than 4:00pm on Saturday, on occasion earlier, we will have a staff meeting and at that meeting the OC and the DC will lay out the preliminary plan for our next week’s opponent as well as provide points of emphasis for the upcoming weeks practice plans. Our head coach, Coach Martinez will also outline his expectations and points of emphasis for the week. Our scouting reports are shared out on Sundays and all our scout team cards, practice plans, and continuing game planning are completed on our own time on Sunday from home. When we have questions we text or call each other and we all make sure we have everything ready to go for athletics and practice on Monday. Just like many of you, we tweek, adjust, and polish our game plan all the way up to game time and continue to make adjustments throughout the game. I can’t explain to you how relaxing it is to be able to spend quality time with my family on Sundays and to have the freedom to attend church services of our time choice as opposed to meeting a certain time table is great as well. Overall being able to work on Sundays from home has reenergized me as a coach as I think it has done the same for our families as well.
Listen guys, I love coaching football and I truly believe we work in the greatest profession on this earth and there is nothing else I would rather do. I dare say that when we each started coaching it was because we wanted to make a positive difference in the lives of young men. The desire was not state championships that will end up in glass case or a picture on the wall. We coach because we want to help young men and hopefully make a difference in the communities where we work. However, the last couple of years have taught me that there is nothing more important in life than being able to spend time with our own family and loved ones. The work we have will always be there and we can continue to pour our time and energies into our jobs or begin to tip the scales to live a more balanced life mind, body, and soul. We need to, for the most part, be able to shut down work once we leave the field house. As Urban Meyer stated in his interview, “When I shut it down (work) I shut it down completely.” This allows you to spend true quality time with your families and loved ones. There are things we cannot control and we can drive ourselves to the brink by trying to “do it all.” But if we don’t strike a balance between our personal and professional lives, we put at risk our health and that which is truly most important, our families and loved ones. I truly believe that the 6 day work week is good first step to begin tipping the scales and in turn create a better home/work balance for ourselves and those we care for.
