elitefts™ Sunday Edition
I have been a collegiate strength coach for 15 years now, and I have had my share of ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies. We have won games we should have lost, and we have lost games we should have won. I have been lucky enough to have had some first-round picks, and I have been unlucky enough to have had some guys who could not spell "NFL." It has been a diverse ride that has gotten me to this point, but it's been more like a roller coaster than a Sunday drive. So, I have taken the time to compile a list of the many perks of being a strength coach...but buyer beware: things are not always what they seem. Or are they?
1. Best Seat in the House on Game Day
It is unreal - getting to watch your players in action right in front of you! You get the opportunity to watch your athletes perform and compete at the highest level they can. Well, that's unless you spend half your time:
- Pulling homicidal defensive line coaches off the field
- Getting yelled at by the referees to keep your head coach off the white line
- Screaming for non-existent equipment
- Getting redshirt non-players out of the way so that you can find substitutes to stand near their coaches even though they are never put in the game
- Calling up special teams
- Pulling that defensive line coach off the field again
- Untangling players from the chain crew
- Listening to the trainers telling me a player is out getting his ankle taped for no reason because I don’t coach a position
- Getting a water bath every five seconds for three hours because players can’t seem to hit their mouths with water bottles and just spray it all over themselves and everyone around them
- Pulling that psychotic defensive line coach back once again
And we have only been playing for five minutes…
Bowling Green High School, Missouri
2. Getting to Train at a Top Notch Facility
We've just put in a brand new, almost half a million dollar weight room. It has everything needed to help our athletes improve their physical prowess. Better yet, my staff and I get to train for free, and we are able to focus on not only our players but also our own training sessions. Well, that is unless the old ass coach (the one that is on every staff in the country) comes in and starts doing exercises with five-pound dumbbells that were never meant to be done right in the middle of your last heavy set of DB incline. Or one of the six younger coaches comes in and asks you to take him through a workout even though he knows how to do it himself because you have shown him a thousand times.
Or one of your staff members is getting ready to PR a deadlift and a 19th string walk-on comes in at and asks for an exercise to make him faster. Or you are getting ready to PR a log clean and press with Rage Against the Machine playing in the background, and right when the phrase "F#@% you Motherfu&*%$" comes on the 67-year old biggest booster walks into the weight room to see how things are going….
3. Getting Free Gear
Definitely a plus! You put in thousands of hours and you never have to buy your own apparel. Of course, that is unless you like to wear clothes one or two sizes too big with other coaches' names on the tags, wondering why there are never any in your size or your staff's sizes. Or wondering why everything is on order and you have to make a double secret pagan ritual pacts with the student equipment managers just to get a long sleeve t-shirt for practice. Or why your staff member has to go to Wal-Mart to buy his khakis on game day because the equipment guy forgot he was traveling even though he has been on staff for over a year. Or why you grow and shrink with every piece of apparel you get - sometimes XL, sometimes XXL. Or why there is no size list for the entire team, and you have to go through every locker to figure out what size each player is so you can order summer workout shirts. Or why you have to steal your eight-year old son's school backpack for travel because bags were never ordered for the entire staff, just for the devil worshiping student managers.
Bowling Green High School, Missouri
4. Free Travel
This is one of the best things going, especially if you are good enough to go to a bowl game. It could be in any part of the country, but hopefully it's in a warm climate during December or January. Well, that is unless you have five kids and the school only gives you one room, so there are seven of you squashed into a 10-by-10 cell, and your kids are sleeping on tables and chairs. Or your bowl is in a place that is freezing, and you can’t go outside. Or it is in a warm climate, and that same old coach who is on every staff in the country gets hammered. Then, while you are trying to get him back to the hotel he collapses into a huge display of cans, and your wife has to pull him out of the store while you have to diffuse the store owner for 20 minutes. Or, once you get back, one of the “babysitters” watching your children is wondering why two of them are puking...after she let them eat candy for two hours straight. Or you have to fly in a plane at the tail end of a hurricane and just as it is going to land, the pilot pulls back into the terrible wind because some idiot is in the bathroom and you can’t land the plane with someone in the bathroom, so you have to go back try it again. Or when you are trying to relax at a team dinner the night before a game, the operations guy goes into the kitchen and starts breaking dishes and yelling at the cook because they've run out of food, and that same psychotic defensive line coach wants in on the action so your team is almost thrown out of the hotel they are sharing with a BDSM convention. Or you get to share a room with an assistant that sleep screams (yes, sleep screams), and you are so terrified that you pay for your own room so you don’t get killed at night.
Good luck this season! (And yes, everything in this article really happened.)