C101P S01E01 Build Your Support System
Daniel Chamberlain: [00:00:00] Football made simple, become great at your craft by finding ways to make it simple for those around you. This is the Coaching 101 podcast hosted by Findaway Productions with your co host, Daniel Chamberlain and Kenny Simpson.
How's it going, Coach?
Kenny Simpson: What's going on? All right, man. Excited to be here. And episode number two, hopefully we'll get better and better. Can't get worse than the first one. So hopefully we'll keep moving up and going the right direction with this. Yeah.
Daniel Chamberlain: Um, still just absolutely pumped about, uh, about being able to do this once again, just talking ball is so much fun and.
It's almost like being on a whiteboard and just getting to draw with your friends. Right. You're just drawing up X's and O's and pretending like you're good at stuff or something. I don't know. Uh, yeah, man, having a blast.
Kenny Simpson: Yeah. Well, hopefully coach, you get something from it. You know, I think this episode is going to be a pretty good one, you know, [00:01:00] talking about building that support structure.
So I'm excited to kind of see where we go. I know we've got a general idea and I'm sure we'll have some ideas for coaches that are out there, but, you know, guys, if you're listening to this too, feel free to. Uh, comment back at us. I know this, this podcast is going to be on all the different platforms, also on YouTube.
So you feel free to reach out to us and let us know different topics that you may want us to go through. Maybe more in depth. I think this is a, we're going to try to do one podcast year, which probably could be 20. You know, it could probably easily be the whole season of different ways, you know, to build a support structure.
Daniel Chamberlain: So I'm going to ask you before we get into what became the meat and potatoes, what we came here for. Um, I know this summer you did some traveling installs. That's your second year, right? How did that go? I'm gonna be honest with you. I wanted to go to Boston just to see it because I love Boston. But how did those go?
Does that about like Batesville or did it, was it completely different?
Kenny Simpson: Similar, similar. So for those that maybe don't know what Daniel is going through, I travel around and I'm able to do clinics on our offensive system. We run the gun T system. So it's [00:02:00] a shotgun wing T, some RPO, kind of the new wave or so of.
Um, I think the way football is kind of moving, if you're not a wing T guy, you call it 21 personnel. So it can kind of relate to whatever you want to be. But, uh, we do the national clinic, where I met Daniel in person in Arkansas, had about 300 codes at the first one, about 280 this last one, uh, from all over, I think like 30 states or so, it was a lot.
But you have to travel, so I cherry pick places that I or my wife or my kids want to go. And then we go put on a clinic there. So, uh, we, we did one in Atlanta. Uh, we've done one in, uh, Boston now two years in a row. I think that's when you were kind of mentioning about 150 coaches. So 125, 150 coaches at these satellite clinics.
I did one in Charlotte and then I've got one, uh, coming up, uh, actually we just finished up in Sacramento, uh, California. So my wife usually kind of gets first pick. And my daughter gets second pick and [00:03:00] then my son, he's got to go to Troy and the great part of Atlanta. That's been his two big ones where my daughter has got to go to Boston.
Um, my, my wife has been able to go with me to Charlotte and then, uh, she was supposed to go with me to Sacramento, but, uh, had some babysitter issues. My daughter lucked out on that one too. But I've been really, really cool. And then I've got an install coming up in Iowa, uh, this summer where I will actually go work with the team.
That's a lot of fun when you get to actually work with their players and kind of install the real offense and excited about that, I've never been to Iowa, didn't know it was on my list of places to go see, so I'm excited to get to do that. I think
Daniel Chamberlain: I've only been there a few times and, and I, we drove up last year.
My wife is a. She's physical therapist, but she does she works for a place called a place. It's a it's a program. It's ice Institute of clinical excellence and they acknowledge that she had some talent. And now she travels all of the United States and does what you do, but with physical therapy. So she goes in and.
Host these clinics for [00:04:00] I think she does about seven a year or eight a year and once a month just flies to wherever and Installs how to be a PT, but they call it physical therapy 2. 0, but it's a it's a lot of fun So we drove to Iowa because she wasn't just gonna fly and and we had a we had a blast up there Not there's a lot of corn It's pretty flat, which reminds me of where I came from in Oklahoma, because there's not you see for a hundred miles or whatever, right?
Kenny Simpson: No, it's, it's fun to connect. I'm sure that you guys have enjoyed that. And it's really fun to, you know, to me, I wouldn't be doing this if I was unable to take my family with me. And so that's kind of been a big deal. Uh, you know, when you kind of move away from coaching again, I'm right in the thick of it.
I thought I was kind of moving away from coaching into consulting more, uh, but you want to do that with people you, you love and you care for. So getting to take my family with me has been great. I'm sure your wife enjoyed getting to take you sure that, uh, the, the, the scenery of Iowa might not have been what you were hoping for, but probably the.
The time together was worth it. Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Chamberlain: Well, if you need somebody to carry your bags to Iowa coach, [00:05:00] I know the way. So I'll just toss them in the back of the truck and away we'll go. I got it. Sweet. Well, I'm very interested in seeing how those work out, especially those installs, because, you know, obviously we installed your offense.
Um, they really started it last year before I came around at Stillwell. And then this year we. We took it from a weird spread gun tea version back into the true gun tea until we got in the thick of the season. And then what do we do? We go out with, you know, three or four wide and the same concept. So we really proved the hybridization that exists within the system.
Um, and it worked out really well, but
Kenny Simpson: well, if you've been along around long enough, I mean, you understand football's football at all systems kind of derive from a basis. And then they kind of go out there. I'm sure we'd probably do an episode. I'm sure at some point, we will do an episode on, you know, the genesis of where certain things came from, where they've kind of evolved to and where they're evolving to now, you know, that's.
Why I have a gun to 1. 0, 2. 0, 3. 0, 4. 1 just because I want to write more books is because you have to evolve as the defense has evolved to stop [00:06:00] you.
Daniel Chamberlain: Well, coach, why don't you share some other ways a coach can make things simple for his staff and athletes?
Kenny Simpson: This podcast is sponsored, we mentioned, by Findaway Productions.
Findaway Productions hosts three major websites. Offensivecoordinatoracademy. com, which is a place you can go to find Obviously an academy that will take you through in depth of how to build your own offense. They also have multiple products, including a workbook that any offensive coordinator can go through and they have multiple smaller courses or smaller products.
Offensive Coordinator Academy. It's also sponsored by defensive coordinator academy.com, which is the same exact concept before the defensive minded coach. Defensive guys seem to always get screwed. It's hard to coach defense, so we want to create an academy for any defensive coordinator to walk through and be prepared for this season.
There's also products in there like a workbook, a a, a weekly planner, uh, to help you get ready in, in multiple smaller products. Defensive [00:07:00] coordinator academy.com. Finally, uh, FBcoachSimpson. com, which is going to have multiple products in there, including, we mentioned last episode, the free magazine headsets, which is what a lot of people will go to.
Uh, but it's also going to have about 28 different books and then probably about 50 digital products that a coach can go through, uh, and decide if this is something that's going to help them, uh, be better, uh, as a coach.
Daniel Chamberlain: Coaches do like free things. That's something we I bet we're all kind of hoarders in our own way with free products about football coaching.
Kenny Simpson: Yes, that's free is always good. It's always worth trying. And, and I want to throw this out there. I've thrown it out in multiple ways on social media, but throw it on this podcast too. If you're ever looking for something in either any of those websites and money is an issue, reach out and money will not be an issue.
I've been very blessed in the coaching world and we're very willing to donate products or materials to help coaches get better.
Daniel Chamberlain: That's awesome. Well, we appreciate you for giving back to the community. Like I said, we, [00:08:00] we bought your gun to you system and loved it. Um, last year I went to your national, uh, I almost said convention, your national clinic in Batesville, the big town of Batesville, and, by myself, because I was just interested in, and then this year we went as a staff, and man, I say a staff, me and the head coach went.
All of his offensive people just stayed home, they had other better things to do, but him and I went over there and But it was great. Both, both were wonderful. And, uh, we appreciate you guys putting those on
Kenny Simpson: rolling up there in that, uh, that sweet van. Y'all rolled up in the, uh, if you rob anywhere, y'all, we're going to be going to jail immediately because it
Daniel Chamberlain: is a walking billboard or a driving billboard, man.
That thing is, is good. Um, you have to tell coach, coach Gould, keep up the gun show. You know, we want more gun show, but you know, one. One class is good enough, I guess.
Kenny Simpson: I'm sure we'll have him on this podcast, but he's got to go sleeveless to get on here. And that's the rule. That's the
Daniel Chamberlain: rule. That's the rule.
Sun's out, guns out. And it's summertime, buddy. All right, man, let's get kicked off here. We're talking about building support system. Uh, and we're going to [00:09:00] start number one with the school. Cause obviously as a coach, um, if your school isn't supporting you, your success probably isn't gonna either happen at all or be very long, right?
You're going to quickly flame out at a school that just won't support you. Um, so let's talk about some school buy in. What are we doing coach to, uh, to increase that school buy in to what we're doing as coaches?
Kenny Simpson: Sure. Well, unfortunately, depending on where you are, you may be going into a situation where you might not be able to all of these things, but just give you a few things that might help you.
Um, you know, my background is I went into a school that didn't have a whole lot of experience with football. Definitely have a lot of experience with success in football. So you get it. We had Games where people weren't even coming to the game, you know, so you got to figure out ways to create kind of an atmosphere around your program, which is there's lots of different ways to do that.
We're going to give you just a couple of them. But if you haven't already done so, social media is something you need to dominate, whether that's creating a Twitter account, [00:10:00] creating a Facebook account, creating a place where you're You can get the word out about what you're doing and promote your athletes that's going to go into players as well.
But different ways where you can put positive news out about your program publicly, you need to create something in that world. Um, and again, if you're not good at that. It might be some somebody else. You do that. Then you look at doing different ways to involve your community. And that can be different events.
You know, most teams will do a meet the blank fill in the name of your team event early in the year, which is we do one giant like a giant pep rally. So essentially you'll bring in, we, we introduce our volleyball program. We introduce our kindergarten flag football players. They all walk through the helmet.
You know, there's probably, it feels like a gazillion people there. But basically, if there's an athlete playing something, or a cheerleader playing something, or a band member playing something, they're there that night. And it's a, everybody's, everybody is undefeated at the [00:11:00] beginning of the season. So play on all that.
Get the excitement up. We usually will do some kind of fundraiser. It's free to get in. It might be either donating water to our programs or donating canned goods or do something kind of cool to make it something that helps all the programs. Uh, but it's pretty simple. I mean, it's pretty straightforward.
They go in there, we'll have little games and stuff they can do. Uh, what we had, here's the part where the community helps. We invite all of those who have given money to our program, uh, whatever that is, to come set up a table and promote their business, whether that's a restaurant, whether that's a bank, whether that's a You know, car shop, whatever it is.
So you'll see the big old trucks coming out there to show off what they've got. So essentially, you're bringing the community into your school. Now, we don't charge them anything for this because they're already people that are already giving to our program. So it's kind of a way of us rewarding them. Uh, you're creating a good relationship.
They're kind of telling them thank you. So it's been a big one for us. Um, that kind of community event has been good. We've [00:12:00] also done things like a mother son date night. So where we will every for us, we do 7th and 12th graders. They will take their mom on a date. Usually we'll find a local, maybe a local church or a local venue that's willing to host it for free.
It's pretty easy to get food donated for something like that or somebody to sponsor it. So it's no money out of your budget. And then we bring these moms in here. The boys dress up. We'll do like a photo area for them. The boys will serve their mom. They'll walk her to her table. We'll do like different table games that are fun, like a, almost like a newlywed game, but you're doing it with your mom's asking different questions about like, when did your mom graduate?
Where did your mom, what was her favorite TV show? And so they're playing at their table and getting a good time. And then we do unique to us. We do like a hug your mom. We teach them how you're. Supposed to actually hug your mom, you know, get cheek to cheek, hold the sweet, no bro hugs. You know, you got to get in there and, and, uh, and it has really been good because the moms are who are going to support you.
In the past, I've [00:13:00] done, uh, football 101 with moms as well. We'll walk around the field and we talk about the field and the safety of their kids. So we've done father, son retreats as well. We don't do that every year, but we've done that multiple years where. We'll take the fathers and the sons up to some campsite or some area and go through, again, a lot of different bonding type experiences.
These are usually free to do or very low cost. Um, and these are easy ways to get the community on your side, to get the parents on your side. It's not a guarantee, but at least it's showing them that you care about their kids more than You know, more than just as a player. So that's a lot of our community events.
And then we do themes in our games. So like every single home game for us is a theme. Of course, you have your normal ones like homecoming, senior night, that's normal. We do a military appreciation, um, pretty much every year. We try to do a breast cancer awareness every year. And then our school, [00:14:00] unfortunately, has had to deal with childhood cancer.
So we do one for that one as well. There's been other themes you can pick like community support night where we invite the same businesses can come in for a Friday night game and so different ways to bring people in and so a lot of times you might even have like a certain dress code you want your students to wear so rewarding them so they pack the stands and so lots of different ways you can make you want to make the home game kind of a theme whether they're out there Uh, throwing cornhole before the game or they're out there, uh, tailgating, whatever you can do to bring people into your atmosphere as a coach, whether you like it or not.
And I promise you on a Friday night at like, 5 PM. I don't really want to go out and play cornhole like, I want to play a game, you know, and so, but. I'm going to go make an appearance, you know, I'm going to go make sure those people know that we're glad they're there, you know, I'm going to go, we're going to wear the T shirt on the sideline [00:15:00] of whatever that theme is.
And so we're going to make sure it's kind of brought together what real quick interesting story here, Daniel, like this, so we did a military appreciation night one night. And so. Players get to wear camouflage jerseys. It's really cool coaches. They made us camouflage jerseys with our names on the back of it.
That's kind of cool. You know, and so we wore that as old coach. I'm a staff older coach. My staff is great. Now they're going to know which idiot messed up and yell at us by name on the sideline when we screw up our calls. Kind of interesting story there, but we do a lot of different. Theme nights for our kids and minutes.
You want to win a game, but ultimately this is about the experience you're giving these kids. And so it's not going to take away from your kids if they're wearing a camouflage jersey when in the game, it's not, you know, I think I'm knock on wood. Like I've got a normal high winning percentage on homecoming as opposed to our normal games, not because we're scheduling like [00:16:00] cupcakes, but just because we enjoy homecoming week.
Man, I'm out there with them eating the pies and doing all the crazy stuff because it doesn't take away from the game as long as they're focused. During practice, which is what you want. Now these kids, I don't know if you know this or not as a coach, but they don't go home at 5 30 and sit there and watch film till they go to bed.
Like they go have a life and so homecoming is not going to screw that up. So sometimes we kind of take that way too serious. Then the last one I've got on kind of this one was like, you know, we'll do a lot of things where we'll go and give stuff out to people. Like we'll go find, you know, our, our, uh, chain crew and they're going to have matching t shirts and hats and we're going to go find the group of mom that feeds our kids and we're going to give them shirts and we're going to go to our cafeteria workers and we're going to give them shirts and we're going to find all these little five dollar easy ways to have people rocking our gear, uh, but also getting them on our side.
You know, and that's easy, easy wins, uh, to go to a business that [00:17:00] maybe gave you, you know, a thousand dollars and give them three hats. It's not a big deal. But to them, it is a big deal. So it's just kind of a couple of little ways that I think as a coach, you really got to work to build that support system where people want to buy into what you're doing.
Daniel Chamberlain: I'll tell you what I came from. I worked in the oil field for, I don't know, four or five, six years. I don't, I can't do the math, but, um, A hat, excuse me, just a baseball cap carries a ridiculously high value in the oil field. I mean, you can get thousands of dollars of work for free if you'll give someone a hat.
So knowing that that's exactly where my head went when you were talking about like t shirts, t shirts. And I was like. Well, I bet you could just give away hats. And of course you mentioned it there at the end, but man, you can talk about, you give someone a South side, Southerner hat or, or wherever your team is.
Um, man, you can get a lot of stuff for that one little hat and they probably will never wear it. That's the biggest thing is most people just collect them or, or it sits on a desk until it gets dusty, but. [00:18:00] Well,
Kenny Simpson: one thing on the hats too, Daniel, kind of a side note here is, I don't know about you, but like, I get super awkward trying to guess a t shirt size of a lady.
Like, you know you're going to make a man one way or the other, so hats might be a better bet there.
Daniel Chamberlain: Yep. Yes. Otherwise you're taking like six of every shirt, right? Like, pick your size. Um, I will say that what Here in Northeast Oklahoma, we have lots of native tribes, of course, in Oklahoma. Um, so when I was at Wyandotte, Wyandotte is a tribe, they have a tribal headquarters, and Quapaw is right down the road, which is another native tribe.
And so, that year, and I was only there one year, and I think each year they pick a different team. But that year when the teams played each other, We had like Native Heritage Night or Native American Night or whatever the exact name was. And they have custom jerseys made. So the Wyandotte tribe had custom jerseys ordered that looked like war jerseys.
Like it would almost like the war bonnet and which most Plains Indians did not wear war bonnets. But, [00:19:00] um, you know, they're decorated, they look cooler and they're black and got some red in them, you know, Wyandotte's black and white. So it was just really neat to watch these two schools that happened to be in different tribal nations.
Play a football game and they're wearing they're out there like don't in their colors. Like it was really neat So if you're in an area that has anything like that, right? I know Oklahoma is not the only place with tribes But you can tie it in with whatever your heritage is there and have you know Find someone that will order those jerseys because they're pretty cheap.
They were like the I can't remember what the pro look or whatever You know 25 Jersey or 40 Jersey, whatever. It wasn't like They weren't Nike, but you needed them one game a year. Right. And then they just used them until they didn't work anymore. And they just ordered the, the, uh, you know, something to replace them.
So that was pretty neat. I really liked that idea. We really tried to tie back into the native heritage at still. Well, this year, um, year one was a little awkward. We had to, you know, a lot of fine line and we didn't want to make Cherokee nation upset or [00:20:00] got to work with whoever's in your area, but I think they've got, you know, a big step in that direction and looking to tie it back into the community because.
I mean, 85 percent of the school was, you know, native of one tribe or another, most of them being Cherokee. So how about getting kids to come out? Um, you know, we had a drum group come out and play the last home game and people loved it. We definitely could have done better. Uh, I was the main guy in charge of that and we just didn't get it set up perfect.
So it was kind of hard to hear, but people loved it, man. Just tying back into whatever the culture is in your area, I think can really tie, you know, get people, the community bought in.
Kenny Simpson: One doing youth. I know we do youth football night is one of the nights. I don't know if I mentioned that, but so we're going to let them in for free.
So, as a coach, you're now making connection with those youth parents, your administration is happy because the kid comes in free. Well, guess who's still going to pay because their parents are going to bring them. So you are going to have a bigger gate. So your admins happy. The youth kids are having, we let them run out the tunnel before they, man, it's a [00:21:00] stampede of kids.
Right out the tunnel before we go out to play the game and they have a good time. And you're starting to, we're going to get into players here in a minute, I think later in this podcast, but you're starting to connect. Your current players with your future players, and that's really where you start to kind of grow your leadership.
That's something that you can also kind of your support system is don't ignore the youth, and we could probably do a whole, a whole podcast, a whole session on youth football, but just a real quick plug there. That's your lifeblood. So whatever your thoughts are of youth football, understand that those guys are going to be your future players.
Daniel Chamberlain: Hey, we had a youth football camp and there wasn't a coach on the field. It was my, you know, sophomores, juniors, seniors that had been at least one year in our system. And they were out there teaching the linebackers, what are linebacker reads? What are, what should your steps look like? You know, what does cover three to a DB?
Because you know, they talk all the time about. Until you can teach something, you probably don't really know it. [00:22:00] Like at the point you can teach it, you've learned it well enough or whatever, you know? So when they have to go out there and teach a bunch of, you know, five, six, seven, eight, 10 year olds, how to take a linebacker read, like we're reading a guard, what's he doing?
Um, sometimes it kind of, it. Shakes the cobwebs out for them and they go, Oh, Oh yeah, that's the third one. I always forget about, I forget what's a pass set do. Right? Like, so it's, it is, uh, it's pretty neat. And you talk about building leadership, just building football IQ, man. You talk about increasing that football IQ in your community.
That's a really good way to do it. Um, so we'll move on to the admin and teachers. Uh, teachers is, is a biggest one to me because. Yes, players see us every day during the season, generally for longer than they're going to see any single teacher. But cumulatively, they are in that building way longer than they're out on the football field, right?
And unless they happen to be in your class, they're seeing usually Six other teachers [00:23:00] throughout the day. And so teachers relationships is something that is, I take very seriously because I can't control their grades. I can't control their attitude, but what I can do is try to get ahead of the curve and control what the repercussions might be.
And I'm not saying like, Oh, teacher, you're going to have to give my kid a good grade. But I want to recognize you. I understand you're going to be teaching my kids, or I say my kids, my players, our players, um, let's set a precedent for when something starts to slip and go South versus I find my players name on the ineligibility list on Monday and we're playing the crosstown rival on Friday.
Right. So opening that line of communication, building that relationship where they are willing to go. I mean, we had kids this year that were, you know, they were at their maximum absences and we're halfway through the season. We're like, where. Number one, we don't know they're missing, had we not had those relationships started because they weren't in place as well as we wanted, but those teachers came to us, right, and the [00:24:00] administration came to us and opened that door to like, okay, let's resolve this issue before it derails your season and it derails these kids sitting in seats because those go hand in hand so often.
Kenny Simpson: Yeah, well, I'm going to say something that probably teachers may agree with you, coaches probably will not, but like being a teacher, imagine it's harder than being a coach because those kids signed up to come play football, like they want to be with you, which is a huge responsibility because you have a, you have a bigger sway over them than any teacher ever will.
So that's the good part about being a coach. The bad part of being a teacher is, I mean. Did you enjoy English class like when you were in school, Daniel? Because I sure didn't. Like, I hated it and I didn't really enjoy pretty much anything except for sports when I was in school. So those teachers have a difficult job, you know, and so you have to, as a coach, you have to kind of acknowledge that.
You have to also acknowledge that there's going to be times that kids are not going to enjoy their class and they're not really probably going to try super hard. [00:25:00] That's not going to happen. But what can we do as a coach to maybe, uh, create some, you mentioned, open lines of communication where a teacher feels, hey, coach, can I come to you as opposed to coming to the principal, you know, or whoever it is.
And you want that same You kind of want that same relationship with the principal, too, where, again, I don't know what school you're in, sometimes they don't, they're not, they don't work that way, but fortunately for us, we've created an atmosphere where principal, teacher, coach are all together, um, and we want to make sure that it's always focused around what's best for the kid.
You know, and I think that's where a lot of teachers and coaches and unfortunately, administrators at times can even lose their way where we start to want to punish somebody. Well, the goal of discipline is to change the behavior, you know, so what are some ways we can help the teacher change that behavior?
And so there's some that can be meetings meetings. You go in there with a student and meet with the [00:26:00] teacher where you're together. Because a lot of times, I don't know about your school, Daniel, but we don't have great, a lot of our kids don't come from like two parents or some from even one parent. So a lot of times we are the parent.
And so the teachers a lot of times don't know that. Like they don't know the full story of the kid you're working with. You know, more details than they do. And so there's ways you can share that with them. It's not excuses that we're not giving kids excuses, but we are going to give a reason potentially behind why they may be acting the way that they're acting.
So for helping it. A teacher forming a relationship with a student is one thing you can do. You forming a relationship with a teacher is another thing you can do. And then always having open lines of communication. As far as directly with teachers are things that I would recommend you do. You know, when you talk about, um, your team, just in general things you can do, you want to make sure that your, your, your team is going to be disciplined.
And discipline [00:27:00] can look many ways for different people. Like to me, a discipline team is going to be able to do things that are required of them, even when they don't want to do it. That's kind of the definition of discipline to me is they're going to do things they don't really want to do because they know that's what is needed to be done.
And so that can look like and should probably look like taking care of our facilities. You know, nothing's going to bother an administrator more. I'm kind of transitioning to administrators here, but administrator more. than when you go ask them for stuff or money and you're not taking care of what you currently have.
And so we stress that with our kids a lot of guys, I'm going to go out and raise a lot of money for you guys that the best stuff we can possibly have, but I can't do that if I'm walking donors through here or administrators through here, and this place looks terrible. And so helping the kids can understand that these facilities need to look and be taken care of.
That's going to get the administrator on your side, [00:28:00] that's going to get the booster on your side, that's also going to get the janitor on your side, which I know it shouldn't. Like I don't people don't really think of that, but you need to because those are, those are all three very valuable people in different roles.
They serve. So being disciplined and taking care of your team, I'm sorry, taking care of facilities are something that's going to have to happen. The last thing I've kind of mentioned on this one, and I know you had a couple of things you want to talk about too, whereas as a coach, you've got to go to events.
Like, I'm not talking about go to basketball games, those are fun. Like, go to the choir concert. Does that, does that sound like fun? Nope. It doesn't, and my kids are in it, and it still doesn't sound like fun. But I went to, we do this Kind of a big choir deal around Christmas. So my first year we went and enjoyed it as good as we could enjoy it possibly, but it created relationships there now with choir teacher and with that set of parents and with our administrator, Oh, coach Simpson came to the choir deal or [00:29:00] whatever it was, or we're going to go to teacher meeting and we're not going to sit on the back and draw a football place.
We're going to actively participate in the staff meeting coach.
Daniel Chamberlain: You're telling them our secrets here. Okay. I'm sorry. The notepad is not taking notes about how that kid did inquire. Okay. Correct. So we're going
Kenny Simpson: to be an active participant when they do those teacher developments. I promise you the teachers hate it as bad as you do.
I probably, maybe that one teacher asked all the questions, likes it more, but everybody else hates it as bad as you do. So be active in it. Be around. Be somebody who's going to engage with other teachers, because there's going to come a time when that relationship is going to play a big role then, or you already mentioned it, maybe it's an eligibility deal, maybe it's a, they can give you a heads up on something that's going on in their classroom.
Um, you know, there's just going to be a time where that relationship is going to matter to you, and you want to make sure you're doing everything you can to open those lines of communication.
Daniel Chamberlain: I love it. [00:30:00] Uh, so for teacher relationships, I just want to talk about some examples of how we built that and you discussed the meetings and the in the building stuff.
Something we did as a team this year is we had honorary captain night for our teachers. And so what in the future will be the kids get to vote and bring, you know, whatever teachers Maybe it's the ones that treated them best because they're kids, right? And so it's punishment or reward. That's the two things they kind of usually understand, but teacher that the kids vote on and we wouldn't repeat in a season.
But that's who gets to be the honorary captain for a home game. And so we do two per home game because there's ten games, usually half of them are away and we We're not going to clutter the sidelines or force a teacher to travel to an away game. They don't, they normally wouldn't go to. But so we just walked two teachers out in a away jersey at our home games.
They get to pick whatever number they want. So sometimes the kids like, Oh, you know, I, I nominated you. I really want you to wear my jersey. Um. You talked earlier about [00:31:00] picking out t shirts for women and trying to judge that size. This is where I definitely brought every number from like 1, 20, 50, 8, right?
I don't know. You're just going to put on whatever one fits. But we get those teachers out. We have a thing that the PA announcer says. And we recognize those teachers as who the kids want to acknowledge is the teacher that's helping them the most. The ones giving them the support, whether it be throughout the year or that.
That week period, whatever it happened to be, um, this year, the coaches had to pick most of them because we kind of started at halfway through and then just getting the kids to buy into anything was, was pretty difficult this year. I won't lie. It was, uh, They were the least participative group of kids I've ever been in front of.
Like, it, it couldn't even get them to take pictures for graphics because, nah, that's not the cool thing to do. Like, we're just supposed to exist and breathe oxygen. Okay, gotcha. But, you know, in the future, that's how it'll be. They want to vote for those and let the kids pick. And, um, and then we just acknowledge that.
And man, the teachers loved it. They, they really did kind of [00:32:00] eat it up. They get to wear the jersey on Friday all day to school. So just like the players are doing. And it sounds corny. But kids love corny number one and, uh, uh, teachers love to enjoy the corniness with the kids who are just, you know, just, they love it.
So, uh, it was kind of a win win for everybody. And it, it, it did build those relationships between the coaching staff. I mean, you take a picture with the head coach, you got your jersey on, that's a big deal. Um, social media, we blew it up on social media too. So just spreading the word to everyone, we could say it too, that these teachers did an amazing job with our student athletes.
And they shouldn't be recognized. So we got some good buyback from there.
Kenny Simpson: One thing that we did this year, I don't know if we will, we won't go to it every year, or we're going to adjust it every year. So you kind of take an adjust as you want to, but we were getting new jerseys. We were kind of in a cycle year.
We're going to get new jerseys. So I took all the seniors. And let them go pick one of their old jerseys. And then we had them pick the teacher that impacted them the most their entire career. And so [00:33:00] they actually gave them. So this was, they could go to the kindergarten teacher. We had some give their kindergarten teacher their jersey.
Some gave a junior high teacher a jersey. Some give a middle school teacher a jersey. Some chose high school teachers. So then we, I took the principal course. He was all on board with it. So we got a bus, went around, got them out of class. You know, pull them right out of class. I gave him just a general line.
They had to say, we basically miss so and so or Mr. So and so coach asked us to pick a teacher that impacted us the most and give them our Jersey to remember us by. I chose you. And so it was really, really neat. Obviously you're not going to get new jerseys every year. So we may have to do more of a t shirt.
I'm kind of thinking in the future. But it allows, you know, some of these kids have been there since kindergarten. And so they went to their kindergarten teacher, uh, and gave it to him. So it was kind of exactly like Daniel was saying, but maybe, uh, uh, we did it during the off season, so after the season was over, uh, but it was a neat deal.
And so then we will definitely do again. Our teacher really, really enjoyed it. I know we
Daniel Chamberlain: threw [00:34:00] away probably because they outdated probably like 40 helmets this year. So that's. There's no reason you can't give away a non reconditionable helmet, right? And just say, here you go and put their number sticker on the back.
Like there's so many cool ideas there. That's it's beautiful. I like it a lot. And then, uh, we're going to go on to the next part now, coach, and that is coaching buy in. So what are you doing to ensure that the staff, maybe you're not a head coach and maybe you're the DC, or maybe you're an assistant coach that has an idea, whatever it is, what are you doing to increase that staff buy in?
Sure.
Kenny Simpson: And we're just going to touch on this because we could be here for six hours if I kept going through this. I know we're going to do a whole episode, I think, on coaching organization that's coming up this season. But I'm going to give you kind of three basic things that may help you with coaching buy in.
Number one is be organized with your coaches. Like, coaches need to know When you expect him up there and when they're going to be able to go home, you know, and that sounds simple, but it's often not coaches kind of feel weird about, like, they don't want to be the first one to leave the field out. [00:35:00] So, you know, are we having a meeting right now?
Are we just kind of hanging out? And so. We try to be very careful with, Hey, we're going to meet from here to here. And then if you want to hang out, I'm not going to kick you out of the field house, but this is the time we're done meeting and I'm very upfront with it. Guys, if you need to go, we're done.
You go ahead and hang around, hang around. You know, we did the same thing with our summer calendar. They need to know when they're expected to be up, when they can leave. Okay, that doesn't mean to make them lazy. It doesn't mean anything about it, but they need to go tell their wife or whoever they're going home to, uh, that this is the time I'm expected to be up there.
That will obviously adjust. It could be perfect. I mean, you can't, because things happen, but you, you can be pretty good when you can be pretty on top of, we're going to have a Tuesday meeting every Tuesday. We're not going to meet after practice Wednesday, whatever it's going to look like. If possible, try to move your meetings into the morning.
Uh, that will, uh, be inconvenient for the coach, but good for their family because they can go home earlier. Uh, weekends be very detailed with when they have to come up. I used to have all my coaches meet [00:36:00] on Sunday. We'd all meet on Sunday from this time to this time. Well, now we've got to the even more, more detailed where I'm going to meet with this specific coach at this time, Sunday, this time, Sunday, this time, Sunday, this time, Sunday, and the full staff doesn't come together till six.
So if they get their job done. On Saturday and Sunday at home, or if they want to come up and work, that's fine, however they want to do it, but they're not required to be up there from 2 p. m. to 9 p. m. on Sunday when they're the D line coach and they did their work on Saturday. And so, be as clear as you can with those guys on being, uh, being organized because that's something that would drive a coach nuts.
Uh, second thing is learn how to use them. I think we're going to do a whole session on this. I don't want to go too far into it, but basically learn how to learn how to use your coaches for the talents that they have. Learn how to, um, figure out what they're good at. We have a kind of a one on one rule. I don't know if my coaches know [00:37:00] exactly what I'm doing here, but I think they kind of figure it out.
It's a one on one rule, so like, uh, if I give you like a sucky job, like a bad job, like laundry, that job's terrible, well then you're gonna get a good job on the back end that kind of pairs with that. So like, if you do laundry, you might be able to get to pick out, you know, some of our uniform stuff. You know, so that's kind of a A good job with it.
If you are the technology guy, that job's horrible. Like, if you've got to do the technology, well, you get to decide what platform we use. You also get to decide what camera we use, what TV we're going to go with. So, kind of more, you have some authority, not just go be the sideline guy. You know, so there's some authority kind of given with that.
Um, you know, we've got guys that do things like graphics. Like, You know, or they'll help us do, I'm blessed to have a wife that does a lot of that. But we have a coach who can, they're going to run social media. Well, that's not a bad job. The bad job that comes with that is they also do like our weekly email announcements.
That's not very fun. So you kind of put [00:38:00] those together. So now you're kind of matching bad job with good job and you're trying to match with the talent of the coach. Right. And then we also sit down, we ask them kind of what their goal is. Um, so like if you get a guy who wants to be a head coach, so you may have like, you may have two or three of those guys in your staff that, that they want to be a head coach in the future.
And that's awesome. Well, those guys are about to get more responsibilities. That's just part of it because they, because that's what they want. Not because I'm dumping more responsibilities on them, but if you really want to be a head coach, help me organize this parent meeting. If you really want to be a head coach.
Help me do these POs. You really want to be a head coach. I'm not going to just dump them on you. Like we're going to go through the process together, but then I'm going to give you the ability to do some of that stuff. You know, I come sit in this parent meeting, uh, where I'm meeting with this parent, I get to have a witness.
So guess who the witnesses rotate those guys through. So you kind of have to know those where I've [00:39:00] got two or three guys on my staff that are on the back end of their career and they just like being a system. And that's fine. Like, that's fine. They're a head coach in another sport. They just want to help in football.
They're still going to have jobs, they do, but it's not going to be as much because they're not going to be as invested. It doesn't mean those guys aren't as important. It simply means that's not a role you want to give those guys. So I think being up front with your coaches and figuring out kind of what they want to do, where they want to go.
That dictates some responsibility, and then the other one is their ability. I mentioned this early on, you want a diverse coaching staff, this is episode one, I think. You want a diverse coaching staff. You want a coaching staff that has skills across the board, and then you want to make sure you use those skills.
We do the same thing with players. Like, I'll ask a coach, hey, will you go check on so and so, because I know he's got a good relationship with that kid. And allow him to maybe get in front of a potential issue. Um, that gives, it creates buy [00:40:00] in. Allows the coach to know he has a big role in what we're doing.
But then, with asking coaches to do things, you also have to have kind of a, kind of a goal of how much freedom you're going to give them. You know, and again, I don't want to, this could be a whole episode, but basically what I'm talking about short here is you hire an offensive coordinator or a defensive coordinator.
They have to be able to think for themselves and do what they believe is right, but you have to give them some non negotiables, like we are going to do X, Y, and Z. That might be, we're going to be an up tempo offense, trying to score a bunch of points, or it could be the opposite of that. Okay. Whatever that is, you know, we're always going to go for fourth downs or we're never going to go forth.
Then you have to kind of give them some guidelines of where to live, but then you've got to give them some creative freedom to kind of do what they're going to do.
Daniel Chamberlain: Uh, I'm going to just caveat there for a moment and it's feedback. So once you've set that, we call them in the military left and right limits, and it comes from being at a range and don't shoot past those, or you could [00:41:00] possibly kill someone, but, um, Once you've set those left and right limits and they're staying within it, if they're still not performing where you want them, give them feedback.
Um, I talked to last episode about my second job didn't go so hot. And that was the biggest thing I took away was. About once every three to four weeks, I'm asking for feedback. And what I got was, I love what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing until I'm sitting in the office with the superintendent and the athletic director.
And they're letting me go from all of my coaching duties because three days before that I had gotten a, I love what you're doing. Just keep doing what you're doing. So you have to give honest feedback, even if you're going to hurt their feelings a little bit, give them their left or right limits, understand that they understand those and then.
Give them that, you know, here's what I like what you're doing. I don't like this, you know. You know what that coach didn't like? We were giving up 40 points a game, and I was the new DC. He probably didn't like that. Right. I tried to run split field quarters. We didn't have time in the spring, I didn't get spring ball.
So we didn't have time at camps to really install it. Well, he didn't [00:42:00] understand it. So it was bad. And there, but there was no conversation that until after I was fired and other people began to just talk. So you have to have that honest conversation, give that honest feedback, make sure that they're staying between their boundaries.
That one's easy to write. Hey, you. I said we're not going forward on fourth down and you've done it three times and in two games. That's an easy one to go. I don't like that. But what is, are they running too much? Are they playing too much cover three and not enough bullets? Like once you've given them that and you talk about their creative freedom, now talk to them, let them know how they're doing.
I think that'll help them. What you talk about, you know, shine and grow. That's it right there. Love what you're doing. You get all the credit. Here's what I don't like. Let's fix it.
Kenny Simpson: Here's what I love. It could be small things and they can be small things like I let a guy order our helmet decals. Well, I gave him some basic ideas of they don't be too crazy.
Here's the colors we want. And then I'm not going to like, come back on him later and go, this sucks. Like I gave him the freedom to do that. Right. Let him do it. You know, and [00:43:00] so you give some feedback next year, can we not have 15 colors in our house? You know, whatever it's going to be, but. I told you, don't use sarcasm.
There it is. You had the Navy
Daniel Chamberlain: mid shipment a couple of years, like that last year, two years ago.
Kenny Simpson: Yeah, man. And we would keep it except that we went, Oh, in 10 years. So that's never coming back. It was my favorite helmet by far. And we ruined it. Cause ah, there
Daniel Chamberlain: you go. Well, let's move into player buy in coach.
We've talked to admin and teachers and the coaching. So down the rabbit hole, we go into the player buy ins. What are we doing to ensure? Yeah.
Kenny Simpson: Again, this is, this could be a whole episode, so we're just going to kind of touch on it tonight. I'm sure we'll get back to this throughout multiple of these episodes.
But first thing you've got to do is you've got to make sure they understand that you're going to set your scheme to match what they are able to do and hide what they're not able to do, which requires honest conversation, which shouldn't be hard. I don't know why it's hard for coaches to walk into a room, look at kids and say, here's where I think we're good.[00:44:00]
Here's where we're not good. You know, I think we were worried that if we tell them that they're going to lose all their confidence, like, Oh, Cope said that I'm only weigh 170 pounds and I play guard. He probably knew that before you told him that, you know, or hey, you're a 5'1 corner. Like, he probably was aware of that deficiency before you said it.
What you have to convince him of is how you're going to use scheme to hide his deficiency and to highlight his strength. There's lots of ways. Of course, I would pitch the gun to you. That's what I run. But a lot of things we do is we create angles for linemen. We ask them to block half of a guy. So that allows smaller linemen to be successful.
We allow guys to get into space. Maybe you have big linemen that are slow. We're going to shrink your splits to help you guys out. You know, maybe you have a DB that can't cover anyone in man so you're going to stay in zone. Those conversations need to happen so that the kids understand that you are adjusting to help them.
[00:45:00] Like, I'm coming in, here's what I see, here's where I see you, here's what your role is going to be, and here's how our scheme is going to maximize that role so that you can be successful individually. But more importantly, we can be successful as a team. And so you've got to be able to one, honestly set your scheme to match your talent, and then two, you get to be able to explain it to your players.
So they understand that, you know, what you're doing, because you want your players to buy in, you better know what you're doing. I hate to say that, but like they're going to see through somebody getting up there talking scheme that doesn't know what they're talking about. So do your homework and make sure you're ready for that.
Second thing is we want to create leadership. I'm not a big, I'm not, I'm not against, so don't be careful here. Like I'm not against having leadership programs, but I feel like as coaches, all we do is do different programs. Like we figure out a program for this program for that, a program for this growing leaders is a lot more.
[00:46:00] About natural teaching times, okay, so you can't just is nothing wrong with doing a book study with your kids. It's probably a good thing to do. Go do it. But if you just do a book study, that's not going to all of a sudden give you great leaders or just going through this program. And now I'm going to have 4 leaders or we're going to, we're going to get together.
And vote on captains and that's not how that doesn't the life doesn't work that way. So how are you actually going to grow leaders? Well, a couple of ways we do it is 1. we already kind of mentioned the youth kids. You know, I will bring a lot of my, I call them alphas. So these are the guys that walk in the room and they're the, they're in charge, like they're in charge of the room, whether you like them or not, like, you don't get to, you don't get to cherry pick these guys, we all want that guy who's a 4.
0, 29, you know, who's going to be the perfect, great worker, we want that guy to be our alpha. Well, I got news for you. That's not always the alpha. It might be the 2. 1 over there who has issues with [00:47:00] drugs and doesn't show up to school, but he controls half your locker room. And you know who it is right now when I'm talking about it.
Like you can think about your locker room, you know who those guys are. There's probably about four or five of them that really run the show. You have to get them on your side. Okay, you have to get them to buy into what you're doing and get them on your side. So we do a lot of things where we take them and allow them to lead in kind of smaller guided ways.
They don't know it's a program. Like, we're not telling we're taking you through this leadership program or whatever because they're probably going to be like, that's stupid. I don't want to do that. But we're going to give them opportunities. In small ways, like, Hey, Hey, come here, Johnny. Hey, look, I got an issue with so and so over there.
I know he's having some problems. Is there a way you can help me out by doing yada, yada, yada. Okay. Johnny might be the worst leader on the planet. He may be terrible, but you've now convinced him that he's an asset for you. And that [00:48:00] now you trust him and you give him a small task to do. It could be really small.
Hey, I need some help getting the guys out of the locker room quick. Can you help me with that a little bit? And now you're. Now they can do something small. And then you just step them up, step them up, step them up, step them up, and then you build them up. Those are guys you gotta be real careful with a lot of positive reinforcement, a lot of showing them what to do, because whether you like it or not, they control the locker room more than you do.
So you have to control them. And so as a coach, I know that sounds weird and manipulative, I don't mean it that way, but you have to figure out a way. To control the main guys that control the locker room, you can't control all 900 of them that you might be in charge of, but if you can control the main ones, you can kind of dictate the atmosphere for the rest of them.
And so I hope that made a little bit of sense. The last thing I'll leave on is just what's called servant leadership. I think that that's, you're a coach, like you're not a dictator or president or a boss. You know, these [00:49:00] kids are here out of their own free will. You are there to serve them and help them get where they want to go.
Think about, I don't know where I heard this from, but I'm going to keep stealing it. So a coach back in the day was a vehicle that would take some, somebody of importance from where they were to where they wanted to get. That's what a coach is. Well, that's what you are. You're taking somebody of importance from where they are to where they want to go.
That's your entire job, your entire existence. So when you think of it that way, it becomes a lot easier to understand you are there to serve them. They're not there to serve you. And then when that changes and they recognize that that's what you believe in, it's going to be easier to win people over.
Daniel Chamberlain: I like it.
Um. I want to add and this is the military side and that's what I'm going to bring to this podcast and all the times is where I tie this in. So I, something I guess I didn't do in my intro last episode is, is that I'm a instructor for. Oklahoma's officer candidate school, which is where [00:50:00] we take soldiers that are fresh off the street up to I went through the program as a 12 year veteran.
So all different walks of life come to OCS to become officers. So that's what we're developing there. This has absolutely nothing to do with OCS. This is more to do with the army in general, but we teach leadership. We have a manual. Okay, if you want to look it up, look up US Army FM 6. 0. Um, I think it's 6.
0, not 6 0. But anyway, 6. 0, and that is how the United States Army teaches leadership. From developing to, you know, maintaining a high standard, whatever. But what, um, especially on the NCO side, we're based on be no do. Okay. Um, those three words. So you have to be about it. You got to be the part and this deals with your value, showing empathy, um, service, like you talked about servant leadership, like people need to know that you're there to do the job just by how you appear, um, your [00:51:00] discipline, your humility, right?
You can't be the coach that's throwing an absolute fit on the sidelines. you know, requiring respect of your players. Um, the way you look, unfortunately, we know that in coaching, sometimes we let our weight get away from us or our appearance, right? But we're also pushing kids in a weight room to be. you know, a little Greek gods and we're going to condition them because that's how a lot of coaches still do it.
Right. That every single day after practice until maybe Thursday, we lighten up, we're going to run this ungodly amount of running because you need to be able to get through Friday night, but coach can't run. You know, on a pick six from the red zone, he can't run the distance of the field to stay with his player because he's just out of that.
So that comes to that B part, right? So we call it character and presence. So be those. No is intellect and you talked about it earlier. You cannot get respect or be a leader on the football field if you don't know what you're doing. You can, you can, you can have a lot pretty darn close. But [00:52:00] when it comes down to I have a problem to solve on the football field.
What are you providing? Like, what do you bring to the table? And if you don't know what you're doing as a coach, I don't care if you're the running back's coach, you better know how to take a handoff. What are my steps on a zone? What am I reading? Um, you know what I mean? Like, you've gotta know the plays.
Cause you can't tell Johnny, I can't believe you screwed up when I called, uh, what is it, Y2Xbanana or whatever and you didn't know it and then as a coach you don't know. So that's kind of the no part. We talk about the mental agility, the judgment. Um, innovation, interpersonal tact is a huge one there. You have to know how to speak to other people.
So that's no. Um, and then we talk about do, and that is the leading, that is physically being in the front of people and leading how to speak in public. Um, can you get on a podcast and just have a conversation? Can you, can you talk to your peers and not talk down to, or be talked down to stand up for those who can't do those things?
Um, Developing, you know, you've just went through a ton of ways there that are great [00:53:00] for development and I'm gonna learn that. I'm still learning that in the football realm, like how to develop leadership because my view is completely different in the military. We just make 'em extremely excited and yell at 'em and cause them high anxiety and then make 'em do simple little tasks.
And then we go back and we talk about it. What did you screw up? Why did you screw it up? We don't always have that chance in football. So, um, and then achieves at, at some point. It doesn't matter how good of a person you are, your success will come into being part of that formula. Um, Kenny, you know, I, you've been ridiculously successful and I am ecstatic to have you in my coaching circle.
Um, but I'm sure on an 0 10 year, you probably lost a little bit, right? Like, maybe a coach didn't want to come coach for you anymore, or the admin was like, What we're spending money on this for, for what we just went, Oh, in 10, right? The community may not buy into that or your players may not either. And it doesn't matter if it's Oh, in 10, five and five, whatever the, if you don't meet the standard of [00:54:00] that place, um, you don't achieve and get those results, you know, you may find a fault.
So if you, if you put that be no do in a big circle and you match all those. You know, that's how you get that player buy in and it kind of goes up the line. You could really talk about that with admin buy in, with teacher buy in, you have to be about it and you have to know what you're talking about and you got to go out and physically do it.
You can't be a guy who said, you know, we get bad raps as coaches because a lot of coaches when they teach a course, they just have a worksheet on the desk every day. They never get up and teach, right? And that administration comes in and that's a way to kill buy in right there. Oh, you're just a, you're a worksheet teacher.
You know, whatever it is, history or social studies, whatever. So, anyway, Be No Do works in every aspect of your life. And it's something I'm really focused on. Um, but I think it helps in all three of these situations. All right, man. So, we're going to get to the last part here. And this will be our weekly special.
And so it's going to be our section on what not to do as a coach. I want you, uh, kicks off with today's lesson there.
Kenny Simpson: [00:55:00] Yeah. So today's lesson on what not to do is on reacting to parents, um, which is very, very difficult as a coach, because if you haven't figured it out yet, social media is a platform for idiots and everybody that has an opinion.
Can just throw it out there. And what will disappoint you more than anything else is when you start to see all those likes come through somebody roasting you and I got a whole bunch of people that seem to, you know, like what's going on there and what's difficult as a coach is how do you treat the kid when he walks in?
On Monday. So maybe this, I'm just making up issues. I've never had a parent get mad at me or call me out on social media, at least yesterday. So what happens a lot of times is the kid walks in and naturally there's an anger and that's natural. That's, that's life. I mean, you can't, you can't control.
Emotion. So you can't control how you feel inside. You just have to control how you react to that child. [00:56:00] Okay. Or that parent. Most of the time, the child is tremendously embarrassed that that happened, like a lot of times the child is more embarrassed about it than probably you are. Um, and so it's difficult as a coach, but you have to step over that.
Um, and then how do you, how do you, how do you deal with that? Do you bring it up in front of the kid? It's out there. And when they put it on social media, I think you almost have to, uh, you bring them into your office, maybe have a witness in there and just tell them, Hey, This happened. I'm past it and over it.
I just want to make sure that you're okay and kind of work with the kid and make sure everything's okay on that end because you may have some other issues you have to deal with there. You may have to meet with the parent. And so there's times that that has to happen. So a couple of things you want to do on guidelines with parents is always have what I call a 24 hour rule.
If it's a game for me, it's usually a 72 hour rule almost. So they get mad after a game. They want to meet and then come meet on Monday and we'll set up a meeting to do that. They get [00:57:00] upset because somebody got hurt at practice, that's fine, I'm willing to meet with you, here's what's going to happen. And then you have guidelines in those meetings of, we'll talk about your kid, we'll talk about his health, all that kind of stuff.
We will not talk about other kids, playing time, any of that kind of stuff. And I promise you, 99 percent of your parent meetings, Go in with the guise of it's something else, but the reality is it's about playing time. It always is, and so we kind of get ready for that, but you as a coach cannot react to it because I can tell you right now, there's been multiple times that I've wanted to.
Fortunately, I think I've done a pretty good job of avoiding that. You can't react to the parent. And you can't react to the child anywhere different. Uh, as a coach, you're going to have that temptation often. Um, I've seen coaches before look in the stands when somebody's yelling at them, don't do that.
Don't do that. Like, don't, don't acknowledge idiocracy. Like, that's hard to do, but don't acknowledge it. [00:58:00] Had an old coach tell me this, I'm gonna leave you this with Daniel, and you might have some things you want to chime in to, but he said, when you wrestle with the pig, you both get muddy, and only the pig enjoys it.
So, understand a lot of times when you're dealing with a parent that's being an idiot, don't join them. In that area, rise above it and ignore it and move forward.
Daniel Chamberlain: Yeah, there's, there's no good to come. Um, my, my head coach was at a softball game for his child just recently. And the crowd was heckling the ump.
And, uh, at some point the ump broke that third or fourth wall or whatever you call it in movie, you know, when the actor and interacted. And then it was on like that there, he did not have a good night after that. So. It's bad enough as is, but once you break that barrier, once you interact, now they know they're in your head and they got your attention.
So,
Kenny Simpson: and not to take the parent side, cause I am a parent now, but just so you know, most of the time, most of the time, not all the time, [00:59:00] most of the time parents, believe it or not, are trying to help their child. That's what's happening. They just have no idea how to do it correctly. You know, they're trying, they're trying in the best way they know how, which is wrong, to help their child.
And the best thing you can do is ignore it.
Daniel Chamberlain: Yeah, I mean, the only experience they have is, uh, Sundays or Saturdays at home, right? When they're just yelling at the TV of how bad the ref is. They don't, they don't understand. Like, that's just, that's how they know how to do things, so. Alright, man. Well, um, once again, Kenny, why don't you tell us, uh, exactly how coaches can find products to make coaching simpler and make what they're trying to do simpler for athletes.
Yeah,
Kenny Simpson: coaching 101 podcast is sponsored by find a way production. So find a way productions has three large websites under its domain offensive coordinator academy dot com. If you want to coach offense, want to have the opportunity to go through an academy that can make you a better play caller. I'd go over to that website.
You can [01:00:00] also look at multiple products that are smaller. Offensivecoordinatoracademy. com. Defensivecoordinatoracademy. com is for any defensive coordinators regardless of the defense that you run. It features an academy. It also features a workbook and several other smaller products. All things defense.
If you're a defensive coach, defensivecoordinatoracademy. com. Finally, FBCoachSimpson. com is going to feature multiple, uh, different coaching materials, including 28 books, over 50 digital products, and the free magazine headsets, which is up to about 18 or 19 issues at this point. All things and headsets are free.
Uh, available for download over at FBCoachSimpson. com. Perfect.
Daniel Chamberlain: Social media. Where can we find you, sir? Uh,
Kenny Simpson: FBCoachSimpson is my Twitter handle. You can also look us up under, um, GunTeaSystem, uh, on Twitter as well. And then [01:01:00] multiple Facebook groups, um, Office of Coordinator Academy, Defense of Coordinator Academy.
Head coach Academy as well as the shotgun wing T. All of those Facebook groups are available. You can join in great communities, a lot of support over their, uh, free exchanging ideas, or you can email me FB coach Simpson at gmail. com.
Daniel Chamberlain: I am at coach chamber. Okay. On Twitter. That's. Probably the extent of where you'll find me on social media.
You can email me at any time at chamberlainfootballconsultingatgmail. com. Uh, if you want to become a guest or come on and talk some football on the podcast, feel free to reach out there. Um, if you want to get in touch with Kenny with headsets and you don't want to email the man himself. Uh, feel free to go through me, any, anything dealing with the podcast, I'll be happy to answer questions or just football in general.
If you want to invite me to your local zoom call and just talk, I'm, I like that too. I co I coach and talk football. The podcast is going to be at coaching one Oh one podcast on Twitter. [01:02:00] Uh, I've been in the background working that over right now because Twitter's made it way more difficult than it used to be.
So thank you, Elon, I guess, um, down with the bots so you can reach out there. You should be able to find the latest episodes and whatever our thoughts are for the week. We'll be talking about some stuffs. A lot of Coach Simpson stuff will be shared there. Maybe some leadership guidance. We'll see what that turns into.
It's an evolving monster because it's on day one. So. We have no idea what might end up there. Any last second thoughts before we get out of here? Coach.
Kenny Simpson: Appreciate you guys checking it out again. Feel free to reach out to Daniel or myself. We both have a heart for helping coaches and we can help you.
Please reach out.
Daniel Chamberlain: Perfect. I want to thank you for being a listener of the coaching one on one podcast. Tune back in next week. Uh, as we will discuss whatever it is, this is the part where we're going to have to work on. Look, we already found an error. I didn't write it in. Generally, I'll talk about whatever we're talking about next week, but we're making that schedule now.
So, uh, we'll leave you with this. It's hard to beat someone who never gives up no [01:03:00] matter the situation, find a way.