Recruit The Building | FBCP S11E03

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:43] Daniel Chamberlain Welcome back, coaches, this is the football coaching podcast. I was going to do my normal intro of I’m Daniel Chamberlain and I’m here with Joe Daniel, as always, but I feel like it’s monotonous at this point. So, yeah, it’s still us. 

[00:00:56] Joe Daniel Not everybody listens to every show. It’s fine. .

[00:00:58] Daniel Chamberlain Okay. Well, in that case, I am Daniel Chamberlain. I am here with Joe Daniel, as always. .

[00:01:03] Joe Daniel I’m Joe Daniel. I’m also here. So I’m thrown off now. See problem solved. .

[00:01:09] Daniel Chamberlain Done. Oh man. Well, not getting a lot of feedback on our guest visitor form a little bit. So I wanted to touch on that first. So if you’re out there and you have something to add to the conversation, please do go on and fill out our form. I have tagged it on Twitter. I’m sure it will get put out to the Instagram. If it’s not, it’s a Google form. Just put your name in all the good information. We’d love to talk to you, I’m sure. Not the main point of tonight’s podcast, obviously. No. .

[00:01:37] Joe Daniel But also I would also say, if you have somebody that you think would be of benefit and be like, you know, you don’t need to email us and be like, you know, I really think Nick Saban be great on the podcast. But if you have somebody that’s not, we’re interested in if if you have a coach that’s in your area or whatever that you think really does something great. Hopefully somebody that you know that you like to say, Hey, you know, reach out to this guy. We mentioned that too. Absolutely. .

[00:02:06] Daniel Chamberlain Tonight’s episode we are talking, recruiting well, I always say recruiting the hallway. The title will be recruiting the building. .

[00:02:13] Joe Daniel So we’re talking about all these lines recruiting your school, right? .

[00:02:16] Daniel Chamberlain The kids that you walk by every day that don’t show up for practice because you haven’t gotten them there yet. That’s the kids. So we’re going to talk recruiting them. Why it’s important, what you should look to get out of it and some techniques that we have used in the past that were somewhat successful. .

[00:02:32] Joe Daniel It’s the thing that brings this show up is, again, we’re always using the podcast kind of answer the questions that I hear a lot, the questions that I hear the most. And I don’t get the question, how do I recruit the kids in the school? But I get we don’t have enough players. Everybody at this school plays in sport here. This is a basketball school. This is a baseball school. This is a lacrosse school. You know, all of these different things, these reasons kids don’t want to play football any more was one we heard a lot of we’ve heard or parents don’t want them to play football. So these are the things that I hear a lot of and it basically comes down to. We don’t have enough players or we don’t have the right players. And you know, you can only recruit the kids that are in your building. And I’ve been at a 3A school, I’ve been at a 2A school, I’ve been at a 5A school. We’ve had coaches on that are in big schools. We’ve had coaches on that are in very small schools. So we know that you can be successful at these places. And I also know that you can’t be successful by just rolling in and expecting the kids to fall into your lap. So there may have been a time where and there may even be. And I hear from our coaches in, you know, Texas, where football is supposedly everything and it’s the same. It’s we joke about, you know, if I’m in Dallas, totally different, but it’s not. It’s the same. It’s the same issue of you’ve got to get these kids out. Kids don’t just play football because it’s football anymore. Maybe there was a day, you know, my dad played in the nineteen sixties or whatever in high school, and he played football in the fall. And then he played basketball and then he played baseball. And that’s what everyone else did. Or maybe they ran track. But that’s what everyone did. That’s that was what. And that’s fine. And if you came from a small school, I even go to when my first coaching job, which was 20 years ago and it was at a 2A school here at the time to act, and that was it. I mean, there was no volleyball. There was no there was no real. You know, the ball sports options were football or cross-country. That was it as far as boys’ sports and it’s different now. It’s different everywhere. And not only is it different in that, there’s more sports competing. It’s also different that there’s a lot of other things competing. So we’re like why the only way that you can win is to get those kids in your school to play football for you. Yeah. .

[00:05:22] Daniel Chamberlain And man, I love that. This is a great topic. I absolutely love this topic is just because it’s about relationships, right? It’s about building relationships with kids. And we’re going to mention that about 10 times tonight because it really fits into every portion we’re going to talk about. And having seen a one, a school which is I don’t know what it’s going. I’ve looked everywhere else, but very, very small school, and now I’m at a medium size and, you know, I’ve seen larger schools. There’s one right down the road that’s pretty large. I know we’re all done with the same stuff. And so some of our topics not should hit you, no matter what school size you’re coaching at. If you’re the semi-pro guy listening tonight, maybe it’s not your podcast episode. .

[00:05:58] Joe Daniel Well, it absolutely is, because semi-pro, you’ve got to do more recruiting than anybody. I don’t know about semi-pro in your similar to my pro guys in our area. They’re recruiting their butts off, because not only do you need to have enough guys. And I’ve seen enough semi-pro practices. It’s semi-pro, they’ve got jobs they’ve got. So you’ve got to have a boatload of guys because you can’t have a practice if you have 22 guys, because 15 of them got something else going on. I mean, you need a bunch of guys just to have a practice or even a game. You can’t have a game if like it’s semi-pro, like guys miss game and what do you say to them? You know, it’s not a job. It’s not their job. So why are you going to recruit your tail off youth? I don’t know how you. I know that as a league, those youth organizations have to recruit the organization as a whole has to recruit maybe not the individual coach, but you know, if you’re coaching in a youth organization and there’s not enough players you only got, you know, you can’t have enough teams to have a schedule, you got to play every team six times just to have a schedule. You know, there’s only three teams in the league. It’s like, you know, we got a problem. So right from top to bottom and this is an issue for this is an issue, not just from a well, my school needs to win. This is an issue from a it may be , It will come back around. I think that the immediate threat to the sport as a whole has died down a little bit. Maybe it’s because there are other bigger threats came up. OK, but the immediate threat to the sport as a whole seems to have died down, but it will come back. It will absolutely come back and it will come back stronger than ever. Right. So it’s not just in a I need my team to win, it’s that you can’t just sit there and watch the football numbers dwindle and be like, Well, these kids are soft, like, we’re going to talk about all this. But I’ll say that it’s not just about like, I need to win games. There’s a bigger there’s Coach Daniels livelihood at stake here because If football goes away. I might have to go get a real job and God forbid, I do. God forbid you want to do that. I do not want a real job at all. .

[00:08:11] Daniel Chamberlain Absolutely. I understand you want to pay the bills before we get started. .

[00:08:14] Joe Daniel Yes, we do. And speaking of that, I don’t want to get a real job. So we have JDFB Coaching Systems right now. As of this week, we’re putting out the 3-4 defense system and coming up just a few days after this podcast goes out on the Monday following. When this podcast goes out, we’ll be putting out module four of the 3-4 defense systems, which just one more module to go. You get access to all of them right now. You’ll get access to the Blitz Package will be coming up here on the coming Monday, the last Monday in February 28th, and then the March 7th will be Module five. Now I will say one thing not a ton of game film right now. It’s all going to be there, but we got to get the game film thing straight. If you’re already a member of that, you know, we’re looking to to to handle that. So we’re going to be adding plenty of game film, but that was a huge barrier to things. So it’s it’s all out there. 3-4 defense system is coming out all month long and into March will continue to be publishing new material that we’re getting back into the 4-2-5 defense system with some updates. I can’t wait to get some updates out for the pistol power offense system because I think it’s really cool stuff here in 2021 with a team that, quite frankly, you know, we had a long way to go, and I think we did some special things with the pistol power offense to get that offense going again at a small school. 20 twenty whatever kids on the roster turning that into, you know, and coming from a totally different offensive system again. Kids giggled when we were like quarterback, put your hands under the center and kids were like he. So we had some work to do, so we could be updating that as well. You get access to all of it 4-3 defense, 33 stack defense system, 3-4 and the 4-2-5 defense system all there, plus our offense. It’s one dollar to get access. By going to join.JoeDanielFootball.com, you get access to all those coaching system, chalkboard, chalk talks, everything that’s there, defensive drill system, max motivation for peak performance is in there as well. Offensive line coaching formula There’s tons and tons of stuff in JDFB Coaching Systems. Check it out one dollar to get access and see it all go to join.JoeDanielFootball.com done. .

[00:10:23] Daniel Chamberlain You don’t have to have a real job for at least one more week. .

[00:10:25] Joe Daniel One more week. All right, so you’re ten years strong .

[00:10:30] Daniel Chamberlain Starting place tonight. If you haven’t noticed, that’s usually the same questions, but this one is why. Why do we recruit the building and right out of the gate? I feel like last week was our very well, there’s options, right? There’s reasons, there’s variables and it’s hard to get a definite answer, but the same thing here. Your Y may be different based on how big your school is. Joe, like you just said small schools, we’re just trying to fill jerseys. Thinking back to some of our what we call Class B schools, which are eight-man, if they get moved up, they have to fill more jerseys and some of them just choose not to. But it doesn’t matter where you’re at, if you’re at that 20 to 30 member team or roster team, you’re probably wanting more. Right? So that’s a big one. Just getting extra bodies. I’ve only been at pretty small schools. We could always use more bodies here at J. This year we had not enough compared to the other three schools around us. Our roster was very thin and it showed. I mean, our kids are absolutely smoked at the end of the game. We were going to be 2×2. No. Excuse me, one platoon, no matter what. But it would have been nice to have a few more bodies to rotate in. .

[00:11:32] Joe Daniel Yeah, it’s just going to it’s going to affect your, your performance. It’s going to affect the end result. If you don’t have that many players, I know that I’ve always said I would rather go with, you know, 15 of the right kids. But what I mean by that is I’m not going to have the kids that are a problem at the same time, and I’m the same way with coaches. I’m fine with having three coaches instead of eight. If I have three coaches that can coach and get along and I enjoy being at practice, I want to enjoy coaching football at the same time. It’s a lot easier to enjoy coaching football with 30 or 40 of the right guys with five coaches, 10 coaches that are the right guys. Then with, you know, your skeleton crew and all you can do is half line, an inside drill, an outside drill. You can never just go and run your offense and run your defense. And we have we’ve done podcasts on coaching at small schools. We’ve done podcasts and drills for, you know, when you don’t have enough guys drills for, when you don’t have 22 guys. Can you make it work? Absolutely. Is it preferable? Almost never. Almost never. OK, there. There is only. I’ve only worked with a handful of kids in my entire coaching career that I look and guys who coached guys who have coached understand this. I didn’t want to get rid of those kids because we want to quote unquote save everybody. We want to help those kids. But at some point, they’re a detriment to the team and to your own livelihood, like your own life, sometimes not the kids. Sometimes it’s the parent, and you have to figure that out, too. But there’s only a handful that it’s been like I would enjoy this job more, and it would be better for the other X number of kids involved if this kid were removed for the program. Now remove from me. Still, check in on him and all this sort of stuff. But if they were so the most, the biggest number of kids we can get, most them are going to be good kids. That’s what we want in order to have success. I mean, and we just need we need enough kids to practice. We need an upgrade. 22 isn’t enough. Kids get hurt. Kids get, you know, we had a playoff game a few years ago and I believe that we were better talent in our, you know, in our best 11. But we were, I think, seven to seven, maybe seven nothing seven 7’s close game going into the half, but we just started dropping. We had 27. They 55 on the silent 52 or some like that there. There’s four hundred and seventy five kids in our school. There were 700 in our school. That’s where the difference came and were their kids in that weren’t on our sidelines? That should have been. Yeah. Is that my fault? Yeah, in part because I was that coach, but that’s where we were all through 11 games and we were fine. The only two teams we lost, two were much bigger. Schools want to just come down from three, one was going up to three, and that was the was one of the major differences in those in those games. Even with a great talented team, .

[00:14:32] Daniel Chamberlain yeah, I think sometimes I missed think about large schools as well. They’re really sometimes trying to fill jerseys as well. Unfortunately, I’m in a place where the large schools around me are the three or four teams that always win the gold ball being of the year, right? So they’re State Champs, so they don’t have to recruit. I mean, they have people coming to them, right? Their parents are trying to get into the district. But I think about the ones on the other side of the state that maybe aren’t so successful. And I’m sure they have a hard time getting kids to come out to get pummeled for 10 games this season and not go to the playoffs like that’s got to be pretty difficult. So yeah, this is for them as well. .

[00:15:07] Joe Daniel And we have Northern Virginia here, and I know coaches in northern Virginia, northern Virginia, Fairfax County, you know, 2500 kids in a school. Not, I don’t know any of the schools really specifically in their situation. There’s no coaches who have come into those places. Some of them turn it around. Some of them haven’t. Twenty five hundred kids in a school, if you’ve only got 35 kids on your varsity roster, that’s four for somebody like maybe you or I. Coaching at a smaller school, 35 is a perfectly fine number two, good number, maybe even a great number. If you only have thirty five kids out of 2500, there’s a good chance you. Don’t have the right 35 to win games, because guess what, everybody else you’re playing has twenty five hundred kids in there and, you know, maybe they have the right. Thirty five more likely they’ve got 60 or 70 box. Yeah. .

[00:15:51] Daniel Chamberlain Trying to find jersey numbers. Right? .

[00:15:52] Joe Daniel Right. They’re the ones who are like, we only travel 50, you know, to an away game type of thing. I’ve coached at a 5A that was, I think, seventeen hundred or something like that. And we’ve been down to throw something on the rocks down to thirty on the roster at the end of a season. And let me tell you, that was not a good football team. It was 30 and not technically. But when you only have 30 out of 1700, you probably don’t have the right 30, by the way. I’m pretty sure that at that time that school, I, if I remember by dates are right. That was we had like baseball teams with. They were playing for state championships and were playing for region championships, and that had kids who played professional baseball and that weren’t playing football. So we didn’t have the right 30 35 kids. Yeah. .

[00:16:37] Daniel Chamberlain The next reason is really just networking. So we’re talking not to grow your roster here. We’re talking why to recruit the hallways? Why are you talking to kids in the hallways? Why are you putting yourself out there and it’s just networking through them just to ensure that you’re not missing the one kid that you don’t see? All right, I only walk. I mean, my high school is every big, but I walk like two hallways. I’m not walking the rest of school unless I just have to go over to talk to a teacher or something. And I want to ensure that they see me as a good, a light in the darkness as you will, right? That is their monotonous life of high school. And so that if they do have a friend, it’s like, Man, I wish that I could play ball. They know where to send them. So networking making people understand that you’re approachable. Come talk to me if you want to play ball. Even if I don’t see you, I expect, you know, some kids would send someone to me. .

[00:17:21] Joe Daniel Yeah, and it’s we’re getting more into it when we talk about how the most effective recruiter that you have is not a coach. It’s always the kids and the kids are going to talk about their experiences in the programs we talk about. We talk about how to recruit kids later on. There’s a lot of it that’s about how you treat your kids. But it’s a lot easier if those kids if if you have kids in class and you’re just a total jerk and they they just hate you or you just have, you’re completely standoffish with the kids and everything. It’s going to be really hard to then turn around and get them to play football for you. By the same token, if in any way you know they don’t respect you, it’s going to be hard. So you want to be seen in the building, whether you’re a head coach, assistant coach, whoever it is, you want to be seen and be known because you want and you want to be somewhat seen as approachable, but without being, you know, a pushover or something like that, you really want those kids to know that, you know, know who you are and you want to. I mean, look, every football coach is walking around every football coach. It’s in the building. And it’s one of the things that I didn’t love being a head coach. Partly because I’m not. I wasn’t sure that I could sustain that long term. You know, I had the kids that were left over from the previous regime. I wasn’t in the building to talk to all those kids, so I didn’t know the teachers that well. I didn’t because I wasn’t. I wasn’t there. They’re never, not, never. They didn’t see me as like their coworker, right? So I’m just some guy that coached football, too, whereas when I was a teacher, it was a very different relationship. .

[00:19:01] Daniel Chamberlain I’m just about to laugh because I know exactly who I am and we all do with that right. It’s the it’s almost us versus them when it comes to coaches and teachers. The smallest school I’ve watched last year was my small school like Class A, and I literally had teachers scoffing at me when I tell them, good morning and it just infuriated me, like, what? What did I do to you? And that’s part of my what are my how to recruit the buildings? I just talk to teachers. If you have a relationship with a teacher, they generally are going to push kids your way or at least not be negative, right? At least you’re not not talking bad about you. .

[00:19:33] Joe Daniel Well, you know, I I taught history for six years at the school that I spent most of it. .

[00:19:39] Daniel Chamberlain Football coach teaching history, who’d have thought it? .

[00:19:41] Joe Daniel But I knew all the history teachers, the history teachers knew me. They knew that, OK, I’m a football coach, but I’m trying to do things. I’m, you know, I’m coming up with new lessons. You know, I’m not just collecting a paycheck so that I can go coach football. I’m not. I’m not there to coach football. I’m there. I have a job. I’m a history teacher. And then I go coach football. When I came back from coaching in a junior college, there were no history jobs available anywhere. What there were available were math jobs, and so I went and I passed a practice two test, which, by the way, was extremely hard. Virginia has a very high standard, and at least at that time, only about 50 percent of math majors were passing. So I’m not stupid, but I passed it and I got a math teaching job back at the same school. They knew me, but they knew that I was in history and what they knew more than anything about me. This was a big school. Not like I didn’t know every teacher in the building really well. What does not teachers knew, and I think it was math and science with those math and science teachers knew that were in my new department or my new. Faculty area was usable pocket, and he took some tests. He doesn’t even have a math degree. I got treated very differently in that room than I did in when I was in history. Even though, you know, because I wasn’t coming up with new lessons because I was just trying to keep my head above water, I hadn’t done geometry in, you know, 20 years, right? I’m trying to teach geometry. I thought they were pretty good job. All things considered. You know, before that, they were just put it in whoever showed up. But it was a very different feel, very different because that was that was when I was treated like I always felt like I was treated by the administration as like a football coach. I wasn’t treated that way by the people in the history department. I was treated that way about people, not sport. This is a very weird thing. And as a football coach, only I definitely felt treated that way. So I’ll go ahead and add English. We talked about it. You need to get to know those teachers. And that’s why I as a head coach, I didn’t. I didn’t feel comfortable being a head coach, not being in the building. Now, I think that if I was there for a few years, I would have gotten to know those teachers because I was communicating with them. I did have them on email. I did go to a couple of faculty meetings as much as I could. I did want them to know. One of the things that teachers will like you more for is if you try to help out with their classroom management. Listen, I was a math teacher. I’m a nerd. A lot of those folks struggle with classroom management. They need your help, especially because, look, we’re coaching the biggest, strongest dude in the building. Sometimes they’re intimidated by your guys and you can go in and help them. So, yeah, this is like a side. Of course, we need to move on, but get to know the teachers that will do a massive amount for you because also they’re the ones that need to help you keep those kids eligible, keep them on the field. You don’t need them to call mom and say he didn’t do homework. You need them to call you and you say, I’ll fix it. Like they can call mom, too. But you like to have a shot at fixing it for before it gets to that. .

[00:22:34] Daniel Chamberlain The last real talking point on the Y, and this is one that’s pretty near and dear to my heart. I’ve told the story on here that we basically adopted a football player and brought him in to live with us because he needed us. But when you recruiting the hallway, you should also, I know you said you want to get rid of as many detriments, not as many as possible, the ones that are truly detriments. But you’re like, you don’t. .

[00:22:51] Joe Daniel I say that does last. That’s absolute last. My point with that was there aren’t many get as many kids as you can. Most of the kids are great. Right? That’s last absolute last. I mean, we had we dealt with a kid recently that was just like, you know, tried absolutely everything and honestly never really separated him, had no choice to separate him from the team for the season, but never really separated from the kid, right? It’s never something that we want to do. .

[00:23:21] Daniel Chamberlain So, yeah, so it’s kind of it’s you’re looking to add that right? Where can I help a kid that just needs me? Because as coaches, we would generally exude a little more confidence. We’re generally I really see myself as more father figure than than some people that might be walking the hall. I mean, all the teachers are females, right? They don’t have that father figure thing going on, .

[00:23:43] Joe Daniel but you do have a lot of teachers who just want that check and they clock out at three o’clock or whenever the bell rings and they get in the car. Yep. .

[00:23:51] Daniel Chamberlain But we also we instill a lot of discipline because that’s our job, right? Because everything’s discipline in football, whether it’s your first three steps on the offensive line or running the right route or picking up a block or whatever it is. We’re we’re pretty revolving around discipline, so some kids just need that and they need you and they want that. So that’s the last why is just ensuring that there’s not anybody out there that’s getting passed over? There’s a lot of us at school thing. .

[00:24:17] Joe Daniel There’s a lot of kids who don’t on paper look like somebody that you want. But the problems that they’re having are the fact that there is no structure in their life whatsoever. And they not only need, but I believe that many of them want the structure that football provide. Most kids don’t want to be, you know, quote unquote a bad kid, right? They want to do the right things. Whatever situations have been going on in their life, they’ve gotten to a point where that’s not happening. They want and they need and they want the structure that football provides. And so, yeah, you can find those guys and you can help them and you can make especially, you know, with young kids, you can make a massive, massive change in their life. I mean, we I remember a kid that we had who he went to great football player and we weren’t a great football team. And I think I’ve told the story before that this kid came out his senior year. So I said young kids. But this kid came out of senior year and he smoked cigarettes. OK? And this kid would come to our head coach. I’m pretty sure I’ve told this before. This kid would come to our head coach. I wonder. I coach the coach. I need to quit smoking. He’s like, OK. And this was not. This kid had a lot of problems coming into his senior year, and he’s trying to grow up. But it’s like, OK. And he’s like, You know, I think I should be punished if I smoke cigarettes and go head coach is like, All right, what do you think you have to do? And he just, I think I should have to run ten hills any time that I smoke a cigarette. OK, this kid would come in on a Monday and be like coach, I smoked a cigarette, OK, I’ll go, I’ll go, do my hills, OK? .

[00:25:44] Daniel Chamberlain It’s a self solving problem .

[00:25:46] Joe Daniel And we would sit in the old, but he didn’t. He just needed a little somebody to give him. He solved the problem. But somebody had to hold him kind of accountable. I mean, he was really doing himself. But like, there was just like just enough structure provided by the football program that this kid ended up having a successful, you know, not athletically, nothing special, but a successful senior year graduating and quitting smoking as far as I know, at least for the time. .

[00:26:13] Daniel Chamberlain Kudos to him, because there’s a lot of kids who aren’t snitching on themselves. Sure. .

[00:26:17] Joe Daniel It was funny. .

[00:26:17] Daniel Chamberlain Integrity is not deep in the current pool of students playing football pushed through in the wild. Let’s talk about the what? What are we looking to add? What? What is the reason behind our recruiting the building or recruiting hallways? And I think realistically, it’s the outliers. It’s the why aren’t they already there, right? You’re looking for the kid that didn’t already show up during the summer and say, hey, or even when school starts and whatever it is, August or whatever. I can’t remember all the dates, but the one that didn’t show up for the football team because we’ve had those right. They didn’t come all summer. They didn’t know they moved in whatever. But why aren’t they there in August to show up for the first game, the first practice or whatever? That’s who you’re looking for. That’s your what? That’s what you’re doing this for. And because for multiple reasons, the biggest one I see is the last coach, right? He wasn’t good. I didn’t like the last coach. .

[00:27:07] Joe Daniel And it’s not always the last coach. It’s any coach anywhere along the way. Any, anywhere along the way. They had a bad football experience. .

[00:27:15] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, and that can start. I mean, I had terrible. We had, I think seventh grade was our first year at school. We didn’t have youth peewee and that stuff, which is really weird, but we didn’t have it. So I started like seventh grade. I was a twig. Every day at practice was a bad experience for me. Yeah, and I can see that. I can see how, especially nowadays. I mean, it feels to me, it’s my observation that kids are a little softer now. I don’t know what it is that, you know, moving from the greatest generation into this explosion of population. There’s just more kids who don’t care to get hit, who don’t care to be a tackling dummy. And instead of sticking it out, you know, they just quit. And I completely understand that. But what they don’t know is now they’re freshmen or sophomores. They filled out. They’ve grown up and now they could go out there and hold their own. .

[00:28:00] Joe Daniel The bad experience with the coach is that often it’s not that they were. If they felt like they were a tackling dummy, that is probably the coach. That was a bad of a coach because, you know, you get to the youth coach who has eight year olds and plays ball in the ring for an hour. And some kids are developed like a 10 year old and some kids are develop like a six year old. Right? And they just slam together and all the kids, they get embarrassed. And the fact of the matter is it’s not that they are. I truly believe kids aren’t any softer or anything like that. Is some of that? Sure, Is there some society stops? Sure. As a parent, sure. But by and large, the male population is still really dumb. We’re still completely willing to do stupid stuff like throw a helmet on and crash into each other at any point in time where we haven’t stopped being stupid. And like, erm, my dad again, my dad’s from that. You know, my dad was born in 1945, so but you know, my dad was from that era of tough guys and everything and like junction boys type players and thinking that not thinking like when I watch it, I’m like, That’s a stupid coach. Not that Bear Bryant was stupid, but that was a stupid thing to do, too. Whereas my dad looks, you know, would watch that movie and be like, That was cool. So I, my dad, would look at kids when I was in high school who were riding skateboards and stuff and be like, Oh, those kids are punks. They’re, you know, they can’t play football. They’re not tough enough. In many times, kids fall on a skateboard. Yeah, you tell me that kids afraid of football? He’s not afraid of football. That kid might hate the coaches, but he’s not afraid of, you know, he’s had a bad experience with athletics. Or maybe he’s just not into it. That’s perfectly fine. But it’s not because he’s afraid of contact. It’s been brought on him in a different way. So when I look at this, there’s usually kids that just had a bad experience somewhere along the way. Some of them are great athletes, and a lot of them are in other sports now, not necessarily just the varsity sports, right? Not necessarily. We talked about maybe just playing baseball. People go, well, he’s playing baseball because it’s easier. No, it’s not as hard as crap and baseballs all the time. Like they’re playing baseball all year round. And football coaches are your football coaches all the time. He does that because it’s easier. I don’t. I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that at all. Right? You know, like kids playing lacrosse across isn’t easier. Soccer sucks. They run around all the time. Be miserable. The full ride. Yeah, they never stop running. Put me a football. He’ll make me run for six seconds and then stand around. Right? I mean, like, I don’t think these other sports are necessarily easier. Football is a special game. Yeah, it’s a special game. Special game is the one that I like. Is it tough? Yeah, it’s tough. But it’s not the idea that it’s only for certain people like that’s going to that’s going to leave you with 13 kids on the roster, right? If you’re going to roll with that idea, this isn’t for everybody. It needs to be for everybody. .

[00:31:00] Daniel Chamberlain Some of our best kids this past year were that skateboard punk that got much balance it takes throughout Africa skateboard communication and like, you know, and then all of a sudden, that’s our quarterback of our as the oldest junior high team or eighth-grade team but has probably got to be a starter next year, right? He’s exactly what you were explaining. He doesn’t. .

[00:31:21] Joe Daniel We had a kid come out this year and I’m fitting in for a home. Let me tell you, we talked about recruiting to build. Our head coach got the job in May. He called every single male in the city of Colonial Heights. OK. It’s a it’s a city. Everybody lives on top of each other because it’s a weird little place. He called every single male from eighth grade. I don’t know if we got all the eighth grade and then we got all the ninth through 12th graders and then we were trying to get the middle school. I think we got the eighth grade when I got the sixth and seventh called every single one up. He called most of them. And then when he finally realized, I can’t do this, you know, delegating is not a specialty. He gave numbers to the assistants. We called now, you know, when you call on the phone call calling from an Iowa number, you don’t get a lot of success. Like, I needed to get a burner phone with an 84 number so I could actually get people to answer the phone. But you know, we called every single kid, so we had kids showing up and we didn’t even have helmets because the previous coach captain at 55, you only have five helmets. So and that’s fine. You know, we needed more. This one kid came out and I’m like fitting in for a helmet and he’s, you know, just skinny, real, skinny. He’s got the little baggy pants and everything. He’s your long, long hair. I’m like putting a helmet on him. I can tell he’s never put one of these on before putting a helmet on him. His hair just goes straight down the stairs, so it looks like cousin it sitting in a football helmet. And I’m like, This kid, I don’t know what this kid’s doing here. I mean, I thought he was broken in half. He was like a very good safety and slot receiver for JB. And he’s going to be a really good football player. He was a young kid. He’s going to be a really good football player. Like, would you walk down the hall? Would you be like, That’s the one we need right there? That kid started on our job and will be a varsity player. Like, you need those kids? .

[00:33:06] Daniel Chamberlain Absolutely. And that’s like having a little to be able to, I guess, foresight, maybe just knowing what your development can do for someone. That’s what I have to look at is like you said, it’s not walking down a hallway. That’s not the kid. .

[00:33:18] Joe Daniel It’s not the, I guess, in high school. If the eye test doesn’t matter in high school, right? .

[00:33:22] Daniel Chamberlain What can I possibly do with that kid? And that kind of goes back to those that need me more than I need them. What can I turn him into? What can I do for his life? Yeah. So I mean, yeah, there’s plenty of those skinny, real kids skinny as a rail that are walking around high school hallways. But like you said, they might be a starter in your JV or the future, whatever you don’t know. .

[00:33:42] Joe Daniel And if you don’t have a coach on your staff, like get to know the PE teachers because they’re the ones who see the kid who’s like busting out athleticism and the all bad game you’re like. Or, you know, they roll the basketballs out like this one kid can play or whatever, but also don’t just based on you’re not recruiting. I think one of the things to understand is when we talk about what are you looking at when we, you know, one of the things we have on here and I think probably where we can move on to the next one is young kids like do not only recruit, do not be so short-sighted that you are recruiting kids that are going to help you right now. You get everything. If we’re talking high school football program, right? You get every single eighth-grader. You can get a ninth-grader, you can get because you have no idea what they will be. You absolutely need to go grab those kids, get them in, find out what they can do, do something with it. Every single one of them, because you don’t know what they’re going to be. And I don’t, you know, I don’t know if you had the same experience. I can tell you this. I played on. I didn’t play eighth grade because I had a bad experience the coach. But I was in the seventh-grade team, sixth-grade, seventh-grade teams when I was on the ninth-grade team. And I can tell you the kids that were the best players on the seventh-grade team weren’t even on the ninth-grade team. They weren’t even on it. They were gone. They were. Maybe they were in trouble. A lot of them, just they had just grown faster. All but most of the kids that were the best players in eighth grade in seventh-grade eighth grade were irrelevant. By the time that I was the senior and I didn’t, I was there the whole time my middle school split into two high schools, so I knew kids that were on both teams. I know new kids on my team. And then I knew kids that were on our rival high school. All. My senior year. I mean, the kids that were the studs were just like, They’re right. They were on the team. Everybody in the world, right? The kids that mattered on that team were, you know, around in eighth grade. But they weren’t the starters, get them all. .

[00:35:41] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, it’s an excellent point, because you can’t, our freshman team this year, we’re going to have a freshman team. We won’t have enough people to even fill it, which is why we should’ve been doing a better job of this. But all they did was talk about how good their seventh-grade year was their eighth-grade year and less than half of them made it to the freshmen team. So what you’re saying, like by the time their senior help next year, they might be missing half those kids. And it was the comment, you know, it was drugs. It was alcohol. It was moved off. I mean, there’s reasons to get a kid out of your program, right? So you need to start thinking about reasons to get in going back. Not too far, but you know, the bad experience resolving whatever their bad experience was, if it was a coach, if it was the scheme, if it was the position they had to play, if it was five o’clock workouts, whatever that issue was, you know, we can resolve that trying to keep those kids around longer because, you know, you never know, you never know what that kid is going to grow up to be. So moving on to the how probably what everybody is trying to listen for anyway. They all, if you’re listening, I bet you know those topics. What? Why would I do it? Got it. But the house, the house where you may be struggling on the house where I struggle, right? I still I have a technique. It hasn’t been super fruitful because I’ve not had enough time. I’m sure, Joe, you’ve got a million ways that you’ve gotten kids out of the hallway and onto the on the practice field and I’m really interested in hearing all of them. But the first the first one I will tackle is just being sociable to kids. I make it my goal to say good morning to as many kids as possible and actually do this everywhere in life. And I don’t know why, but I just talk to people, man, just say hi. And I see with kids like I have my best friend. I just threw up air quotes because you’re not, you can’t see me. But as a female basketball player at our high school, she’s not even into my classes. I just told her good morning for like four morning straight. And then she was like, Oh, no one, no one talks like that. What are you? You know, people kind of look at you weird. And now, like, we have our secret gang sign or whatever we have to do every time we pass each other. So knowing that she’s not going to do anything for me and as a football coach, maybe track if she runs, I don’t know. But doing that with the other kids, the kids who aren’t football players yet, I try to always incorporate them. Of course, you’re going to have a relationship with your ballplayers, or you should. I can’t say you will, but you should have some type of relationship with them. But creating that within all of the kids that you can see because some of them, you know, we talked about earlier. You don’t know what their life is, and sometimes they dread coming to school. So if you can make it happy for just one or two times a day when I walk by and say, hi. That’s super big time. It creates that trust. That feeling of like, Hey, that that guy cares and you should care. It should just make a feeling, OK, you should actually care and try to help these kids. But also, I think it’s important that why you’re doing that, you keep that professionalism up, right? That yeah. Yes, we can be friendly. I’m not going to your best friend. We can be professional and I can tell you, good morning and we can have a great time. And that way, they know that if they did come play sport for you, whatever it is, maybe you’re a multi-sport coach and they join one of your other teams, but they know what they’re going to get out of the deal. This person is going to care, going to treat me right. This person is going to demand respect and professionalism, and it all just goes hand-in-hand. But I think that’s an excellent culture builder as well, and you can do it single handedly. .

[00:38:46] Joe Daniel And I, you know, one of the things is to be, you know, I have myself and I have my professional self, my professional self, just in the way that I kind of developed as a teacher and as a coach isn’t necessarily like rosy and outgoing, and it’s because the the need and the desire to have that professionalism. Now, once I get to know a kid, that’s that’s a, you know, we have a different deal. But be yourself in the way that you interact with the kids. Be smart. But if you’re selfish, be your professional self. I think because you may be just friendly with everyone. Kids don’t get that, especially if you’re a younger coach. Kids don’t get that. You know where the boundaries are. They don’t just go. This guy, this guy is a teacher. He knows where the boundaries are. Are you? You have to. You know they will. They will take advantage of you, or you will get yourself into trouble. But yeah, so you had to be had to have that level of professionalism. Be your professional self and make sure that your professional self, as is the right thing and you don’t necessarily have to be the next thing that we have unless is going to their events. So you ought to be super outgoing, necessarily like Daniel. You say hello to everybody. Good morning. And by the way, that’s easy, but it’s not easy, but it’s like you. I’m not the most outgoing person, but I can do that, but it’s not going to. They’re about just being seen at places. Oh, that’s coach such and such. He was talking to me about playing football. Now he’s at my wrestling match. Like, OK, like that. Then they’ll notice that they’ll recognize that and be like, Oh, hey, like, here’s here’s the guy that wants me to play football and he cares enough to cheer me on a wrestling match. And then the next day say, Hey, man, it was a great match. I’m watching you last night, you know? It’s not hard for anybody, I don’t think. But those are the kinds of things that you can do. .

[00:40:41] Daniel Chamberlain And that doesn’t have to be in every event like I know. No, no. But you know what, if I was driving 45 minutes one direction to go to work every day. I can’t stay for every basketball game. I just can’t do it right. It’s not feasible. I have a wife. I have a family. Do they need me? Unfortunately, I didn’t really stay for that many games last year. Anyway, I ref in one, by the way, never ref before. They said, Oh, well, you’re a zebra tonight. Here’s your whistle. Hey, how do you do them hand signals..

[00:41:07] Joe Daniel I thought you had to have some sort of certification. .

[00:41:10] Daniel Chamberlain Google Oh, one high school game. It was like a JV game or something. .

[00:41:13] Joe Daniel OK, it’s an exhibition. .

[00:41:14] Daniel Chamberlain OK? Absolutely. OK. Tons of fun. Absolutely. You know what? We talked about it for the next week in class about how terrible my referee skills are. Yeah, so appreciate girls wearing the, nope it’s clean run it. But anyway, you don’t have to go to every event, but just showing up as much as you can do what’s feasible between you and your family and what you have to do? Your commute matters. All those things. Just do what you can just be like. You said, be visible, right? People should know you’re there. You don’t have to be rooting them on every minute of the day and being the loudest person in the gym. But being there, .

[00:41:46] Joe Daniel you shouldn’t have to take all this on yourself, either. By the way, you have a coaching staff knowing that football coaches are there. And by the way, getting your players to do the same if they’re not playing, go support the basketball team, go support the wrestling team, go support whoever. That’s cool, too, because now those guys don’t see it as well. Those are football guys and I’m on the wrestling team. So you want your again, your best recruiters. We talked about how to how to recruit the building. Your best recruiters are always going to be your athletes. And that now that goes back to you because if they hate your guts, that’s what they’re telling the other guys like, Yeah, I play football. I’m pretty good at it. I mean, I hate to coach, but like, nobody’s coming out for you, right? But what you need is especially you guys that are coming into places where this is why we do the 90 minute practice plan. You don’t talk about a recruiting tool. Here’s a recruiting tool for you. 90 minute practice plan Why you quit football three hour practices Dude, I hate it. 5 days a week. Football was miserable, right? Yeah. Were you able to come on Saturday and lift weights or whatever? Football was miserable. I hated it. Took up too much time. Hey, man, you know we got this new coach. We only practiced for 90 minutes, sometimes less than that. We’re off the field, dude. I’m on the way home at 4:45 most days. That’s a recruiting tool for you because now that kid might come back. That’s when we talk about recruiting tools, recruiting tools of your kids and how you treat your own the players you have now. If you’re if you’re this is don’t blame. This is hard truth. It’s not society. It’s not. Kids are scared. You’re not a football. You’re not a basketball school. A lacrosse school, a volleyball school. Whatever baseball school, if you are constantly seeing year after year. I’m not talking about one year, just like we talked about with Coach Shackleford. It’s not just one year where everybody had girls and you’re a small school or just people weren’t, you know, the power didn’t go out that year. And so there weren’t that many babies born. You know, these these things come along when you’re a small school, you just have a small class. What I’m talking about if year after year after year participation in your program is dropping, you are the problem or your coaching staff or the way you’re doing things is the problem. It’s not that they’re scared of concussions, it’s not that they’re soft. It’s not that you’re or whatever school. This is the hard truth. Kids hate playing football for you the same. And you’re like, Well, I don’t know. These kids come back every year. They like it. Yeah, but they tell their friends and I really like football, so I don’t mind practicing three hours. The kid goes, I do. You need the kids who kind of like football too, not just the one. Just like you need the coaches on your staff, guys. You need the coaches on your staff who are babysitters. You need somebody to ride the bus sometimes. Sometimes you need the guy that can go out there and blow the whistle while you handle a discipline issue. You don’t want you’re not going to go far, especially with small numbers. You’re not going to go far with a staff. That is nothing but football junkies who go to clinics all the time. And like, if you can get that, that’s great. Most of us can’t. So you need a couple guys, you couple of guys who don’t know that much football. You need some players who just like it. It’s fun. It’s something to do when I’m not in basketball season like. And it’s better than getting in trouble. It’s better than sitting, playing video games. They have lots of options. So you can’t it can’t just suck. And if you’re constantly seeing that and you’re telling yourself society video games, kids are so off the radar now that you do, you enjoy the way you’re doing things, period, and your kids are telling them you don’t want to be a part of this. .

[00:45:30] Daniel Chamberlain You’re recruiting against those things. You’re recruiting against Call of Duty. And yeah, and that’s a hard that’s that’s hard, right? I mean.

[00:45:38] Joe Daniel The first thing that you do is a hundred fifty up downs on day one, guess what you’re losing to Call of Duty? Yeah, absolutely. Well, we can’t win games if they don’t get tougher. You can’t win games with 15 kids. That’s the problem. Can you run a practice? .

[00:45:50] Daniel Chamberlain I know we’re pushing time here because we didn’t start timer tonight. .

[00:45:53] Joe Daniel We did. We just we just went off. .

[00:45:55] Daniel Chamberlain OK, there you go. So we’re going to look at these next three because they’re very important. I don’t think we have to be as in depth with them, but keeping up with personal and social lives. I know it sounds weird. You don’t need to know Bobby’s girlfriend’s middle name. You don’t. But if they have issues at home and this something, I mean, a lot of this stuff kind of comes to the military side as well, but you can see the performance in someone drop. And maybe that’s something that happened to a kid and it literally took him away from sports. You need to know, God forbid, maybe their family members passed away. Maybe it was their fault. Or maybe it was the person that they enjoyed watching football with. Now they’re just away from the sport. Maybe they are, you know, they just had a bad breakup and then had a bad coaching experience, right? There’s there’s a ton of stuff you need to ensure that their personal lives are in order to an extent you can’t get too involved. We talked about the level of professionalism, but it is something to keep an eye on and that includes their grades at school, their academic lives. If you are showing a student that you care about their grades, that that’s another way to to show my care. That’s just another way to build that relationship. And it’s very professional, but that’s the easiest one to stay professional in because that’s that’s all there. Is there, right? Your job doesn’t mean putting them good grades in the computer because it’s there in your class. Know, ensure that they’re upholding the standards. You’re upholding the standard. Get them to perform to that level in your class and they generally will kind of drag the rest along. But being able to check up on people as they’re going through this crazy life, I mean, we we’ve talked a million times about how they’re trying to learn so much stuff at once. And you know, when we talk about football, we’re trying to teach them football and biology and chemistry and whatever else. Well, that’s how life is too, right? So maybe they’ve dropped somewhere along the way and maybe they dropped sports to keep up with that stuff. So just show me here. .

[00:47:34] Joe Daniel Yeah, there’s things to look out for. Like, you know, I started it nose guard by senior year of high school and I am 165 lbs I was not supposed to be a nose guard was a linebacker. I’m supposed to be basically a backup linebacker, most likely. And so what ended up happening this is this is sad but important. These are the kinds of things that happen. They both just happen to be seniors and friends of mine, too. Defensive tackles much bigger than me. Star experience no experience. Starters One of their brothers committed suicide. The other one had blown his knee out twice. And then there were some other things going on with home where he felt like he needed to be more involved there, but them had multiple issues and reasons that they left football. And if I remember right, one of them felt like the coaching staff really stuck with them. And one of them felt like not so much. I don’t know exactly what the coaching staff did. I know this. If you if you are in that situation, everybody knows about it, right? Everybody knows about it and the way that you treat that person. Now these were both rising seniors when it happened. So they were not coming back. But the way that other students, other players see them being treated is going to influence what they decide to do. It’s also going to influence them. Had younger siblings, both of them had younger sisters, but their sisters are going to influence their class, right, because they’re going to end up being friends with people who could be on the football team. So how you interact with people knowing what’s going on in their social lives, it doesn’t matter if they’re football players, it’s going to have ripple effects for you. Yeah. .

[00:49:10] Daniel Chamberlain And that kind of ties into skipping around a little bit in our little notes here. We have notes. I’m sure we’ve told you before, but working with kids, right? Whatever the scenario is to get the kid on the team that you need or want or whatever the situation is, they don’t work. So if it’s a personal matter like that, they might just need time away. You can’t say, Oh, you missed two weeks of you’re off the team right now. It doesn’t make sense that that doesn’t work now. And it’s definitely not going to help next year because, oh man, if I if my dad scheduled a once in a lifetime hunting trip and he took me out of class to go on it and now coach wants to kick me off the team, how the hell is that my fault? .

[00:49:46] Joe Daniel So yeah, it again, like the situation. Obviously, these are drastic of a situation like that were app and you just take as much time as you need. You don’t, you know, this is something that happened in July, if I remember, right? And we’ve been in Georgia, we started football like July 25th, because why not? It’s only 110 degrees with like a hundred percent humidity, like, let’s go, let’s just get out there and go to work. But we started like July. And again, I don’t know what the coaches, you know, everything that went on, but that’s obviously a situation where you go, take do what you need to do, take you have a spot on this team. If this is a special situation, if that spot, if you take that spot in August, if you take that spot in September, if you’re not ready to take that spot until October. I’m going to be in touch with you. You’re a part of this team, and when you’re ready to be here, you’re okay, do that. I give the example of the kicker, our kicker a few years ago, not going to be a football player like he’s not the kid where you’re like, he needs to be playing another position. No, he was a kicker. If I put to played soccer, like you couldn’t even kick deep. We also had all types of caps he could kick exploits. Great went to every time until out of question, but you know, he could kick an extra point and he could kick onside, and that was perfect. When the punter either he played soccer, he was on the academic bowl team or whatever it was Scholastic Bowl. And I’m like, OK, I need you here on. I need you here Thursday, because that’s the day that we do all our specialty. And so with with the way that we did the 90 minute practice plan Monday, we had special teams on Thursday and Tuesday. Wednesday, we put the one team out there. We do all that stuff. But on Monday and Thursday, we did kickoffs and even there Monday and only for an hour. I needed him that he doesn’t watch film. I remember Thursday for an hour because it’s only in our practice and in their Friday night make deals, don’t you don’t have to. Everybody doesn’t need that. We made a deal with one of the best football players that I’ve ever coached. The deal was he was supposed to be a big time draft pick in that I’m not big, I suppose, to be a big time draft pick baseball player. He was still the regional player of the year and I think the draft pick thing fell through. Maybe, maybe because of football, because you did get a scholarship. The deal was his mom was worried that he would get hurt in football and it would jeopardize his ability to go play pro baseball. OK. What if he’s just a receiver? All right. What if he’s just a receiver now? This kid was a safety in college Division one Division one safety. OK? And eventually we were like, What if he plays? We were like, OK, he won’t play middle linebacker. Remember that this is a long time ago, and this is when everybody’s playing three yards and a cloud of dust football. We were like, What if he plays free safety and he lines up 12 yards deep? All right. And we kind of negotiated played like two weeks at receiver and then like, what if you play safety when it played free safety? Well, guess what? When you’re the best athlete on the field, a free safeties, a linebacker lined up ten yards, right? And he hits that kid to the line of scrimmage. OK. So but that’s a negotiation. It’s OK to make deals. You’re going to miss kids who are have a major hand in raising their siblings. Coach, I can’t play football because my mom needs me to watch my little sister. OK, sit down with kids, down with mom. Sometimes you’ll find out mom can be flexible, too. But, you know, single mom needs help. We get it. What can we workout? What can we do? What days can we have? What if he just comes in on Saturday and works like you can’t come to practice? What do you mean on Friday night and be there on Saturday morning? Is that worth it? Like, if this is a kid, that’s worth it? And he may just need that structure. What can you do with these kids? Make deals to get these kids on your team? Yep. .

[00:53:30] Daniel Chamberlain Last point. And then we’ll close this thing out because I know we’re pushing time and we swore that we wouldn’t. That’s going to happen forever, I think? But the biggest point is just not with them. OK. Just ask them. You have to go to these students. You have to ask them what they want to play football. I don’t know why that question so hard. I don’t know why this tactic kind of evades people. Sometimes maybe the you as an adult are afraid of rejection from a kid or something. Get past it, man. Your coach, your your job is to make the team better. Go ask them, OK. And kind of everything we’ve said up until now really builds into this question because as you have listed here, Joe, an adult that kids respect when they ask that kid to do something. Generally, they’re at least willing to give it a try. .

[00:54:08] Joe Daniel They’ll give. They’ll give it thought. No doubt thought .

[00:54:11] Daniel Chamberlain They may try a week and leave, but they’re going to come out and try and .

[00:54:14] Joe Daniel And look let’s take. Let’s take that out first. Remember how we filled out our team this year, OK? This was a team that did not have a job for three of the previous four seasons because of participation. We wanted to JV team and a middle school team. We didn’t get hired. Staff wasn’t hired until May. Head coach knew nobody because they weren’t in the building, got out, got the school to give them a list of every single male. Look, I called every single male I call people that didn’t say I didn’t call every single male, but in my little list of people to call. There were a couple didn’t speak English. Parents like this was not an easy process, right? But again, kids showed up that were not. They didn’t think they were football players, but somebody called them and asked them, Do you want to be a football player? And this is a this is a team that had won three games in the previous three seasons. So they’re not like trying to be part of something, right? OK, do you want to play football? Somebody they don’t know, somebody they’ve never met and the kids came out, so multiply that by. You already know kids already have a relationship with kids. Hopefully a good one, not start working on making it a good one or go to another school or just start over if you’ve been really just a horrible person. But if one of the funny things about I learned this. At a big school, I learned this at a big school bus lane. Right. Kids can get on the bus. They could go this way to baseball. They can go this way to the baseball tryouts or whatever. Not tryouts. Off-Season, off-season, you know, whatever baseball does in the offseason, .

[00:55:53] Daniel Chamberlain Sit around and do nothing. I’ve seen them .

[00:55:55] Joe Daniel They have a batting cage and stuff. I’m just kidding, baseball. They can go this way and they can go to the weight room for football. The last person that talks to them is the one that they’ll do. OK, I’m not talking about a kid who’s supposed to be a basketball practice in-season, right? But the baseball coach wants him the football I’m not talking about. I’m not saying, compete all this sort of stuff with these. Well, let’s just let’s take baseball in, let’s say, bus or we had three things at the school and you were just there. So you know, you don’t general area of where I’m talking about they could go to the bus, they could go to the trailer park, which is not good, OK? Because if they’re going to talk about the ones that live in the trailer park, I’m talking about the ones that are going to the trailer park for some afternoon fun. The trailer park was not a place that you wanted any kid to going over to go to the bus loop and get on the bus, go home. They go to the trailer park and things were going to go well or they could go across the street and it could be a football which they had. The last person to talk to them was the one that was getting them. So if you’re standing out, if you have a coach standing out of the bus loop, it goes, Hey dude, you get on the bus. You going home why don’t you come over here, why don’t you go the weight room? Guess what? The number of kids who were like, OK, I walked across the street and went to the weight room was incredible. Absolutely incredible, kids. The last person to talk to them was the one that they’ll go with. Like, you can actually get kids to do that for you. But if you don’t ask them, most kids have very low self-confidence, and so they do not see themselves as a football player who’s a football player in their mind. The football player is think of who your best, biggest, best stud football player is. They look at the team and they go, I’m not that guy. I don’t need to be playing football. But if you convince them that you want them and that they are needed and that they that you want them to be a part of that and they could be good at it, a lot of them give it a shot..

[00:57:38] Daniel Chamberlain I like what you said about zero confidence because just like I just mentioned a minute ago, maybe using adult or scared of rejection from a kid. Think how that kid feels? He doesn’t play. Football hasn’t played football, but he somehow has to figure out where to show up, when to be there, who he’s supposed to talk to. I’ve walked into job interviews not knowing who to talk to, and you get that little like, What do I go now? That’s a kid who has no confidence. No one’s invited him, and he’s supposed to just show up and can be. But no, go talk to him. That’s what I’ve been at. Tell them where to be and then and then watch who shows up, right? .

[00:58:08] Joe Daniel I’ve been at, the two of the schools that I’ve been at had fieldhouses that were away from the school. One of them which required you actually getting on a bus to go to the other one was across the street. Both of those schools let me tell you, most kids have never been to those places, right? They’ve never gone to the fieldhouse. They’ve never gone to the weight room. They’ve never, they’ve never done that. So don’t have the first day that the first day that you invite them or like your first day of the all season, don’t have everybody show up at the fieldhouse, have a meeting where they kind of commit one of the things you learn in business is like little commitments. So like when you when you listen to this podcast, what I ask you to do, a lot of times they ask you to go, you know, Hey, sign up for this with your email address. These are little business tricks. Just try this trial out. Try these things out. OK? Do the same things with your kids. I don’t need you to go all the way over to the fieldhouse and max your squat. Today, we’re going to have a meeting in the cafeteria where everybody knows where it is, and I’m just going to have you fill out a little form and tell me about yourself. That kid at that point has made a by showing up in the cafeteria. That’s a little commitment. Yep. They fill out a little form for you. That’s a little commitment. Now that kid in in in a lot of those kids minds, they’re on the football team. And so now, like, if he doesn’t show up at the weight room and then when you ask him to show up, if you’re in a situation like that where they don’t know where the weight room is, have one of your other players, meet them and go walk with them or, you know, help make sure that they get there. Have your players kind of get in there and again show up in the cafeteria and meet with this kid and they’re going to show that’s a little commitment to skip the cafeteria. And then they’re not bailing out on that walk. You’ve got him now .

[00:59:54] Daniel Chamberlain Using a sponsor system. That’s weirdly something we use in the guard big time for our new soldiers, right? You have to have a sponsor someone to show you where everything is because you don’t know. So if your seniors, a second task for them is, I’m going to be a sponsor. New students, new freshmen, new to get whatever I’m showing where everything is. I’m going to show him around, show him the ropes, if you will. And then that way they’re comfortable. They know where to go. Confusion will keep a lot of them away from me. .

[01:00:15] Joe Daniel It will be really will like the lack of, I mean, you think about the first time that you went to college and you’re like trying to find some, you know, whatever your first class is and you’re like, I don’t even know where this building is, you. You were an 18 19 year old adult who had been successful enough to get into college. You’d already been through all of this. This kid’s 14. He has zero confidence, I mean, he’s like, I don’t know where the field house is. He’s not going, No. He’ll go home, but if you now you hook him up with that senior and he feels like I got somebody. Look, we don’t do, you know, right or wrong? There’s times when I wish that my seniors would just go in and wedgie the entire freshman class and settle them down. But we don’t do that anymore. Your seniors need to be like ambassadors for your young guys. And that’s probably the right thing. Although there are times you’d like to put them in their place. .

[01:01:07] Daniel Chamberlain But leadership isn’t all it looks, but it has many different forms, right? .

[01:01:11] Joe Daniel It does. But you know, your seniors can be ambassadors for those young kids and so that these young kids have somebody that they shouldn’t be. I don’t think it’s the best thing for your program this day and age for them to be scared of. And even when I was growing up and yeah, did they read wedgie the entire freshman team? Yes. Did I not get wedged? Yes. Why? I don’t know. One kid likes me and he was big and they were just like, Leave him alone. I’m like, Okay, thank you. Thank you. But like, you know, we don’t do that now, right? But even in that time, there were still certain guys that I knew I could go to that were older. There was always an ambassador for me. .

[01:01:54] Daniel Chamberlain So last a little plug. I want to make here, and then I’ll let you do all your paying the bills. But as a coach, a great way to recruit is just knowing what the heck you’re talking about if you know what you’re doing on the field. Kids talk right. And if they I have since leaving my last school, I’ve had those kids call me and be like, Coach so-and-so don’t know what the heck he’s talking about. I don’t even know if I’m going to play anymore because of this. It’s like a real issue. So if you don’t know, yeah, if you don’t know what you’re doing, educate yourself, but always try to know what you’re talking about. Know what you’re doing. Do some self study and you can do that at JoeDanielFootball.com. .

[01:02:30] Joe Daniel You can. And before I pitch it, I will add one thing to that. You need to learn to say, I don’t know, because if you there’s one thing to be, there’s the fake it till you make it. And that’s good kind of thing where you just pretend that you’re confident as a coach, that’s good. But if you pretend to the point of like arrogance, like I have the answer for everything in the kids. No, you don’t. Being able to just say, I don’t know, I’ll check with coach at the next break and then I want water break. I’ll go over and check with the coordinator or whatever. That’s perfectly fine. That’s perfectly fine. No, when you’re in the wrong. No, when you don’t know. No, when you’ve told a kid the wrong thing. Apologize. The kids never yell at a kid and then don’t talk to them if you yell at a kid, if you were a kid, if you rip a kid and you know you were right, go talk to him and make sure they understand. If you rip a kid and you know you were wrong, go to him and talk to him and make sure they understand because that will go a long, long way. They will go a long, long way in your relationship. Those are things that you don’t. You don’t have to know everything to be, to be a good football coach and to be liked. But you have to be honest with the kids. So it’s just a I think it’s a really important thing is that we for those relationships as you go and you talk to kids, .

[01:03:42] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, because you’re expecting them to have ownership of their actions, you definitely have to do it yourself. And the spreads menace spreads like wildfire, good or bad, whatever way, whatever side you’re on. Kids talk, kids know, and that will that can be a huge recruiting tool for you. .

[01:03:55] Joe Daniel Yeah, and they don’t. They know you’re going to make mistakes. They’re cool with that. .

[01:04:01] Daniel Chamberlain They’re OK with that. You’re not even watching the Dallas Cowboys. And I’m pretty sure that we still think that guys are making mistakes. So no one’s perfect. Is the coach, right? .

[01:04:10] Joe Daniel I mean, Falcons fan, we know what mistakes look like. Not only that, I live 90 miles from a team that just picked a new name. That was a mistake. So sorry about your commanders. There were so many better options. There were so many better. I know some people like it, and I’m, you know, I just think it’s whatever anyway. JDFB Coaching Systems access to five complete coaching systems 3-4 defense, which is being fully overhauled for 2022 and is going to be the blitz module 4 will be out. We’ve done now the base run fits based alignments. The coverage package, cover 3, cover 1, simplified split field quarters. Talk about what you need to run, what you need to do, trips, checks, all that kind of stuff. We talked about position specifics and then gotten into now the Blitz package coming out soon as well. And then we get in the game planning, practice, planning. It’s a full coaching system. Everything that you need is there. And also we have the full treatment for the 4-2-5 system, 33 stack system, 4-3 defense system and the pistol power offense, which is extremely in depth. You can pull parts from them. You can use them to help kind of solidify what you’re doing, or you can run a wholesale, you can create multiple front, you can do whatever you need to do within JDFB. You also get access to chalkboard forum and the chalk talks where you could talk to me on every week during the season and about every other week during the off season, we meet for those live Zoom calls as well. You should so you can access all for one dollar by going to join.joedanielfootball.com. And if this is your first time listening to The Football Coaching Podcast., make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. We are wherever you get podcasts, we’re on Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. We are on Amazon Music. So wherever you want to get your podcast from and of course at JoeDanielFootball.com, you can find the podcast there as well. If you’ve been listening for a while, please go and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts as well. I think most of them take reviews now, so go and review. It’s a huge help for getting the word out to other coaches. Twitter handles .

[01:06:12] Daniel Chamberlain @CoachChamboOK .

[01:06:14] Joe Daniel @footballinfo .

[01:06:15] Daniel Chamberlain And then the podcast is at @theFBCP, I don’t know. Yeah. And I was like, That’s not right. .

[01:06:22] Joe Daniel Football Coaching Podcast. .

[01:06:24] Daniel Chamberlain It’s the letters that kill me. It’s because football’s one word, so it goes deeper. .

[01:06:27] Joe Daniel I understand it’s one word, but you know, F.B. is a perfectly acceptable abbreviation for football. .

[01:06:33] Daniel Chamberlain No, you’re absolutely. One last statement. Tom Brady has odds to win MVP next year. I want you to know that I think it’s like plus 4500 or something. I’ll take it. I’m putting $100 on it. I think just .

[01:06:45] Joe Daniel your future bet. Why not on Tom Brady coming back? .

[01:06:48] Daniel Chamberlain Maybe we were not wrong. Maybe he’s actually not going to retire. .

[01:06:51] Joe Daniel The Football Coaching Podcast Redemption Tour. Tom Brady The Football Coaching Podcast. Redemption Tour 2023. I guess it’ll be. .

[01:06:58] Daniel Chamberlain Come on. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about why. How we can get you back. .

[01:07:02] Joe Daniel Yeah, somebody needs to recruit Tom Brady’s building, right? Yes. Come on back. I know you got a bad experience with something I don’t know. Come out. .

[01:07:12] Daniel Chamberlain There’s one I mentioned last time the guest form. If you’re wanting to come on and talk. Guys, we have people lined up. We’re wanting to try some new stuff. I want to get some panels together and let multiple people come and share their experiences across whatever the topic is that day. We would love for some you guys be able to talk in that right. We appreciate you listening. And if you are listening, we’d love to be able to let you get on and just speak your piece. And it’s a great way to just talk football with the guys, really with the microphone from. No big deal. So if you see the form, fill out the form, my coach said earlier. If it’s maybe it’s just somebody you know who would do excellent in this environment, we’re not ever asking you to do an interview. We’re not going to ask you to talk nonstop for an hour. We just want to be part of the conversation, so feel free to put it on there. When we get to a topic that you’ve listed, you would be able to speak intelligently about for a little while. You know, we’ll give you shoot your email or text or a call or something and try to get you on. .

[01:08:04] Joe Daniel All right, that’s going to be for this of The Football Coaching Podcast. Thanks for listening. And remember coach simple, play fast, win.