Ways to Communicate with Parents as a Football Coach | FBCP S11E05

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:43] Daniel Chamberlain All right, welcome back, coaches, this is The Football Coaching Podcast., I am Daniel Chamberlain here with Joe Daniel, as always.

[00:00:49] Joe Daniel I love this topic because I have no. I have one year of head coaching experience and I’ve spent my previous 17 18 years, whatever of coaching, desperately avoiding this topic and being like, I don’t get paid enough. So that’s why we had to bring somebody else in

[00:01:05] Daniel Chamberlain Someone else to fix it

[00:01:07] Rick Stewart Yeah, because I get paid enough shit. Hey wise coach, Joe, wise coach told me I first broke into. I was still an assistant coach. I had left the McFarland game and took a long hiatus and it was actually my daughter’s basketball coach who’s a legend, Hall of Fame, all these championships and said, Rick, three things will drive you out of coaching, fundraising, referees and parents. And he said the perfect world. What he said is you could just open the gym, let the 10 girls in the gym, bring the referees and let’s play basketball and no parents in the stands. He said that the kids would just then they would just play for the love of the game. And you know what? That is rung true. I’ve been to seven different high schools and yes, referees, fundraising and parents. Holy Moly. And it’s getting worse, right? Social media has not what I’m going to sound like an English teacher, it exasperated the problem, right? So that’s plenty. You avoided it.

[00:02:05] Daniel Chamberlain I can. Yeah. Social media has given everyone a voice. And then even now, like the parent, just think they can yell at you through their keyboards. I’m sure it’s great.

[00:02:12] Rick Stewart That classic. When I post my Twitter, I forget who that head coach is. Instead, so perfect said social media has allowed anyone a platform, whether they’re qualified or not. When we all grew up, you have to have either the education or the experience to be an authority that people would listen to. Not now. Any guy in his basement and a wife beater on unemployment never had a job in his life. Recovering drug addict ex parolee could get on social media and just be an expert on economics and politics and whatever.

[00:02:44] Daniel Chamberlain Right? Well, we’ve heard him speak now. So Rick Stewart is our guest this evening on the podcast. So Rick, if you don’t mind, I know, I don’t know you. And so I’m sure there’s other coaches out there that don’t that are newer to the game. So if you could give us a quick introduction, a rundown of yourself, sir.

[00:02:58] Rick Stewart All right. Well, the coaches that don’t know me are the lucky ones. I’ve been doing this a long time. I got out of the Marine Corps. I started my career at McFarland, the movie Netflix. It has a movie with Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner played for me. I had nothing to do with the movie, but it was a legendary coach that I coached alongside with that was filmed on location coaching the central central California, which is a heavy, heavy Hispanic. McFarland was literally 100 percent Hispanic to kind of frame the type of kid we were dealing with. And they were all in twenty four and we turned around and got when they made playoffs, I took a little bit of break. I had to finish my credential stuff and then McFarland won a 19 and I came back and got the playoffs again, went up the road to another small school that was only twenty seven. We got them undefeated champs. And then and then we really looking to be on the map. I went to a large school here in the Valley 800 kids. They never won a playoff game 100 years and we were able to do a lot of great things there. Five wins the started youth program did a lot of work and over the course of five years, played for two championships and won eight or nine playoff games, I don’t remember. And so you know what all I did at those schools was I just really worked hard and you know, you make mistakes and you fix it or you find mentors and you get answers. And and now I’m in a position now where I know what those mistakes are, and I can tell a young coach, don’t turn left. Watch out for that pothole. And I took what I learned to Pennsylvania. I’ve been there for four years now and I’m in California now. I’m filming this in California, but I really I go to Pennsylvania. I coach with my son, a really good friend out there is the head coach. I met him in Pittsburgh and it’s been a great ride. We’re thirty two and ten and I’ve taken the stuff from there to Pennsylvania. My candle ceremony, my leadership, my character, stuff that I do and it’s and it’s work. We’ve been thirty-two in ten and one of district champs up and played for and lost to these two champs of this year. So, you know, and I don’t say that to brag I’ve been I’ve been lucky that I’ve been around some tournaments now. But listen, on the other side of it, I’ve been a head coach at seven schools and two schools fired, so I have been fired and I’ve won championships. I’ve been coach of the year and I’ve been in front of the school board, you know, and a firing squad. And so all I do is sit before you now coaches. I think in my thirty-second year total twenty-two years head coach and like I said, experience is life’s great teacher and I can sit there and I could help the next generation of coaches, maybe not to stub their toes. So that’s kind of who I am, Like I said Ex-Marine coach. My kids are grown. I’m a grant. I’m a grandpa now. Seven grandchildren and my wife, my high school girlfriend, has been dumb enough to be married to me for thirty five years. She’s tried a couple times, but she hasn’t let me get that.

[00:05:43] Daniel Chamberlain Well, first of all, thanks for your service. From a fellow service member, I appreciate it. I’ve got some old marine buddies that are in the guard with me now, so they tell me a lot of crazy stories. And if you’ve been coaching as long as you have, I can imagine about when you’re marine time was and I’m sure it was with them. So thanks for all that you did over there. That’s pretty awesome. And sitting is a guy that’s in his second year instead of his 30 second year. That’s, uh, I guess where we all want to be, but we don’t want to jump the ride either, right? So I appreciate the experience you bring. But also, we glad someone’s out there saying, don’t turn left and watch that pothole, but also we kind of have to do our own thing, right? We kind of want to go through it.

[00:06:18] Joe Daniel So you’re going to that’s. And Rick, Rick knows this too from I’ve been doing this for 15 years, working with other coaches, and Rick has to for a long time. You’re going to and we know it and we’re going to tell you the same and then know that you’re going to come back, you’re going to come back in two seasons and go, You know what? We finally did that thing that you said two years ago, and it worked right? And we just go, Yeah, I know, I know. I’m glad you finally got there, and I know it’s going to take a little while.

[00:06:51] Rick Stewart So, you know, there’s a lot of really there’s a lot of great books out there, curriculum on how to be a head coach curriculum. Randy Jackson’s culture stuff. Parker has some really good stuff out of Georgia. I’m watching my whole worst to first curriculum, which is going to be pretty intense. It’s a 300 page three-ring binder loaded with Google Docs, one of 18 courses. But you know what? There is no video, no book, no interview. They can prepare you for that first year on the job. Getting called the principal’s office, getting called the AD office. I’ve been dragged into the school board three times, literally begging the school board not to fire me and pleading my case. I’m throwing out. They didn’t fire me, but I went in front of them and they were like, We’re going to fire you. Tell us, tell us why we shut it. And I had mentors, right? And I was warned, and Joe’s right. I think I think you just have to actually live it and go through it and this parent topic we’re going to talk about, Oh, holy moly. Every situation, every parent situation is different. So there’s not like you can say, Oh, here’s my plans, and here’s my three boxes of how I deal with parents because every one of them are different. You know, the great parent to the whack job, to the helicopter parent, to the dad that thinks their kid’s going to want, even though he’s five 10 and has a five to 40. I mean, until you’ve just been out in the firing line, I don’t know how to prepare a young coach other than you just tell me. Joe’s right. Experiences life’s greatest teacher. You still have to go out. And this is the most important thing I’m going to tell somebody is don’t try to be somebody else, right? I’m a huge John Wooden. Lou Holtz is another big one that I really admire. I can’t go and coach like Lou Holtz did. I can read his books, but you know you can still there. Quotes are isms, right? You have to. You have to be you. It has to be your core values, your vision, your mission. You can’t go and emulate and try to be somebody else. I think that’s the biggest mistake, and I did try that. I was younger. I had some really good mentors and I was trying to coach exactly like them. And it didn’t work because it wasn’t genuine. It was authentic. Kids have that have great BS detectors.

[00:09:01] Daniel Chamberlain So if you heard Coach Stewart allude to, we’re talking about dealing with parents tonight. So that’s it’s kind of the topic, maybe a little different format than usual. We just try to hit our three points and talk way too long about each one and then pretend we didn’t and then get out of here. So tonight we’ve kind of got some predetermined topics and we’re just going to go through it and say how each coach does the thing. So we’re going to just jump right in after we pay the bills.

[00:09:26] Joe Daniel Yeah, we do need to pay the bills. Of course, Joe Daniel Football Coaching Systems, go to JoeDanielFootball.com, join.JoeDanielFootball.com get access to five complete coaching systems 33 stack, 4-2-5, the 4-3 defense system and the 3-4 defense system, which is almost completely done. By the time you hear this, it will be fully updated. As far as the information, we’re still getting all the game film in there. We’re getting all the game film tagged and they’re going to put together some more game film for you for the 3-4 defense system, but all updated for 2022 is in there as well. And of course, the Pistol power offense system. It’s all there. It’s all included. Get access for $1 to join.JoeDanielFootball.com. Thanks to JoeDanielFootball.com for sponsoring the podcast for the five hundred and whatever time now that we have done it.

[00:10:11] Daniel Chamberlain The guys committed.

[00:10:12] Joe Daniel Yeah, I mean, they’re really committed to the podcast

[00:10:15] Daniel Chamberlain And you may not find exact information on there. How to deal with parents, but there is a chalkboard and awesome stuff.

[00:10:21] Joe Daniel There’s some stuff.

[00:10:22] Daniel Chamberlain OK, so there’s some stuff there,

[00:10:25] Daniel Chamberlain How would you do this? Thousands of coaches that are reading this question that have probably dealt with this before.

[00:10:30] Joe Daniel There is the maximum motivation for peak performance has a segment on there which we’re going to talk about. Thank you for segway Daniel. It is an excellent segway into the first topic, which is how to get to know the parents, because one of the things that we talked about in there is the home visits, which is harder to do now, obviously. But you know, in normal times we go around and sit in every single living room there. And that’s one of the things we talk about there. So yeah, I that that is something that we do is as far as getting to know the parents is in there. But yeah, the chalk talks. We get questions on parents and all that kind of stuff. And it’s fun stories. Absolutely.

[00:11:04] Daniel Chamberlain All right. You’re your back up to bat here. So we’re going to start with you on this first topic and just kind of let us know in a rather brief. So we’re not we don’t want to be here for three hours talking because we could be Joe and I could do it by ourselves, but fairly brief.

[00:11:19] Joe Daniel Rick can get us to three, Rick can get us to five hours if we

[00:11:23] Rick Stewart Yeah, not a problem.

[00:11:27] Daniel Chamberlain What have you found has been successful? Just getting to know the parents.

[00:11:30] Rick Stewart You know what the classic this is. This is nothing new. You’ve got to start off with a parent meeting. I always did a couple. There’s always the introduce the coach. When you first get hired, make sure your assistants or they make your assistants get it. Go up, get up and talk a little bit. They need him. The parents need to be assured that you hired some good assistants, men of character. I always jokingly say them. The mother cares about how safe their kids are going to be and how you’re going to treat a little miho and dad’s worried about playing time when often you’re going to run. So when at those meetings, you really want to really hit home to the parents that, hey, you know, we are going to treat their kid as your own. There’s going to be tough love. There’s going to be unconditional love and really hit that on my worst. The first I have my powerpoint of how when I first meet those parents, I don’t bring up X’s and O’s. And this is not this topic. I don’t really bring up fundraising at the very end I mentioned it, but I make sure I have signup sheets of the at the back of the room. So those people are leaving and they’re all fired up. Hopefully I did my job and got them all fired up, but not me and what I and my vision that I have signup sheets where they can sign up for things. And not all parents want to be in charge of stuff. They want to be worker bee. So make sure you have things where they could just bring food on Fridays and just bring some people just want to be worker bees. They don’t want to go off and be a rock, so you have to meet the coach knight. I think in today’s day and age, and Joe and I were talking about it off camera, Joe and I are not huge fans of social media. I kind of like Twitter and I’m starting to figure out Facebook, you know, but I’m not real comfortable in this day and you’re on Facebook Live. I’m not real comfortable in the social media environment. Kelly Simpson is like the master at it, but I think in today’s day and age, you’re going to need a Facebook page. I think you need not think I do. You need you need to have a web page, a free one. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, or you can get to WordPress and maybe trade out some advertising with somebody. I bet you there’s some geek on your team that knows how to do this stuff because you can prevent so many problems and be preemptive if you have information out there. When I do have problems, I meet them head on people. I had a code to say I keep parents away with a ten foot stick and I had another coach tell me, You know, all your parents are your lynch mob. I disagree. If you want to really build a special program and have team dinners and a food and do really great things for the boys, you’re going to have to bring those parents in. And just because you want to have one angel on the team doesn’t mean you’ll have nine parents that are awesome and genuine and they’re all in. And it’s that one or two bad parents that scares you off and you just you deal with those head on, like if I get a parent, they come at me, you know, I just yell and I’m getting your next question. But initially, you’ve got to really put yourself out there as awkward as you’re going to be and really meet those coaches. When you have your first fundraiser, your first car, wash your first seven on seven. You know, let your assistants have a little bit of time for you to walk up and down the sidelines or that car wash and you make sure you shake those parents hands. Coaches, friends, some business cards, right? How do they get a hold of you? You really put your guard down and say, Listen, I’m on your side, I’m going to help you raise Johnny and we’re in this together. We’re a team. And if you really got to do social media through meetings through and do an email blast once a week, once a month, really get the message out there that you really do love the kid and not the jerseys wearing. And I think once that message can come out, I’ll end with this story. So I really at that big fiscal 18, I had one booster mom. I met her at the pizza parlor. She opens up her checkbook and shows me a bounce of 60 bucks and I’m going, Well, where’s the rest of the Booster Club? And she goes, You’re looking at her. I’m thinking, Oh shit, I wear what I’m going to call that other school that I turned down to take this job. So we, we built that up and it fast forward. We had about 40 parents. We did. We did every one Saturday a month, we had the parents come in and we did dinners together. We let parents go with us on our camping trips. I let the parents come to us in seven on 7s. I had parents at my house for barbecues. And you know, what happened was they really got to know me as a person and my wife said that then people would start attacking me in the stands. And all of a sudden I had eight or nine moms standing up and saying, Hey, you need to shut up. You don’t know this man. You don’t know Coach Stewart. And you know you got a problem with us. We all have his cell phone number and he’ll be happy to meet with you, which I will. And that’s I know it’s another question you got coming up. You bring those parents in. And what you end up doing is you build up a fan base of supporters and they’ll kind of have your back. When other people in the community who don’t know you start badmouthing, you know, come to your defense, but they won’t come to your defense and they don’t know you. You’ve got to show them your heart. So, you know, I kind of thought a couple of our girls out there, yeah, especially if you’re in your first year that the parent meaning the social media email blasts a texting app, you know, and just get information out there and let them know you want to reduce them.

[00:16:48] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, that’s perfect. And you did hit quite a few the topics we’re going to cover now, and that’s OK because they’re all intertwined, right? I mean, it is part of getting to know them is how you like. You said you get them on your side and you deal with the problem parent and stuff like that. So well, we’ll get there. Not an issue. Joe, you’re up.

[00:17:02] Joe Daniel I mean, a lot of the stuff that Rick said with your parent meetings and everything, you know you. The biggest thing is it’s not an us first them. I think so many coaches come in with it, with this us first them idea, and it’s not us first them because you will not survive if it’s us firsts them. You absolutely need the parents. You need the parents for meals fundraising. You need the parents for Rickman’s mentioned the parent meeting. And it’s again, it’s really hard to do now. But we did the it’s not as easy to do now. You probably get pretty close to doing it now, but we used to do the home visits, go to the home and the whole idea with the home visit is if you’ve sat in someone’s living room and we’re not talking, I’m not talking about a long time. If they say, Hey. And it would always be the head coach and an assistant would go to, you know, and we’d do like three or four in a night, and you might have one family who’s like, Hey, you know, do you want to come for dinner? And you’re like, We’ll come for dinner. But most of them are like, Hey, we just want, you know, we just tell them, like, you know, we just want to come in for 15, 20 minutes, talk to you. And that visit specifically is never about playing time or scheme or anything like that. It’s about getting to know them. And it’s about that kid academics. You will sometimes would end up talking some recruiting prospects and things like that, but it’s specifically to go and sit down in their living room and say, I care enough about your kid that I’m here on my time at eight o’clock on a Tuesday night to talk to you about non-football, their academics, how I want to find out what home life is like. I want you to know that if you’re having problems with him and you need somebody to help you because a lot of the time we’re talking to, you know, a single mother, look, you need somebody to whip his butt into shape because you’re having problems and you’re having a hard time and you got too much going on. You got two jobs. Call me, text me. Here’s my number. And by sitting in that person’s living room, it becomes very hard. Just like exactly what Rick talked about, it becomes very hard for them to sit behind you on Friday night. Catch you. They still can. It’s not impossible, but for a lot of them now you have. If you get 60 percent of them help you get 20 percent of them who will turn around to that one loud mouth and say, Hey, that guy is doing everything he can for these kids. Like, that’s huge. So along with the pair of meeting along with the pair in meetings, if you can do the home visits or do something like that, even if just a phone conversation or a Zoom meeting, now as things kind of get back, you know when you can. But that is another thing. I think that just letting them know that I care. Just as Rick said, it’s not about the jersey that kids wearing. Care about that kid. I know about his grades. I know about his personal life. I’m there when you’re not there, especially if you’re in the building. If you’re a teacher in the building, it’s really easy to say, Hey, I’m around him all day long. So when you’re like, I don’t know, I don’t really know who he hangs out with at school. I know, I know all these things, and you can call me any time or talk about it. Just let him know like, I’m not. It’s not us versus them, and I’m here to help you. You know, in whatever way you want. And if you don’t want my help because some parents will take offense and you know, I wouldn’t say this outright because some parents will take offense to it. But if you need, I guess it’s putting off, putting off, putting the impression I will help you with. You know, it takes a village and I’m there if you need it. It was kind of in our whole staff is.

[00:20:25] Daniel Chamberlain So I can touch. You obviously know, head coaching experience, so I can’t do those big things like you’re talking about. But if you’re an assistant and you’re listening, you’re like, Well, how can I do anything if my head coach isn’t or even is right? So my head coaches have always had the initial meeting. Some of them were a little more personal than others, some kept them in the grandstand at the stadium and just yelled from the track. But as an assistant, I found that just being there all the time. Like what y’all are saying, like checking on kids’ grades, I ran study halls. I’m well-educated. I mean, most of us have a college degree that are teaching of some type, right? Even if it’s history, so I can help with their science and math homework.

[00:21:00] Joe Daniel Oh, well, even if it’s history, even if it’s

[00:21:04] Daniel Chamberlain Even it’s history coach. Yes. So I can talk about too. But let me put it this way. Sorry, I don’t mean to offend anyone.

[00:21:13] Daniel Chamberlain When five coaches are there to help them with their history, I can help with the biology and their math to try it that way. Anyway, that gets home right. And they say, Hey, who helped you get this far in your homework? And they know so as an assistant, if you’re just there doing the thing being coached, you said a man of character. So just doing the right thing all the time, right integrity, having integrity. That stuff gets back. And then all of a sudden you’re getting calls from parents. Now it’s track season and their kid is acting up or whatever because football is over and you’re the phone call they make. Hey, can you help me with this at school? I’m having this issue. So that’s how I used from the assistant standpoint. I just was there and doing the thing, doing my job, do it well, give them someone to look after. It’s probably the military side, too, because all the kids tell me they’re scared of me for the first three weeks and then they’re like, Oh, now we love you, but that gets back to the parents as well.

[00:22:04] Rick Stewart So I want to test real quick assistant coaches. That’s huge. As head coaches do get busy and I would love it. Love it, love it. If an assistant coach came to me and said, Hey, Rick and I get your vision, I know what you want to do. Can I take some of these home visits off your plate? And if it was an assistant coach has been with me for a while, or maybe he’s had, you know? Anyways, he’s a coach. I know he’s going to impart my vision because it is really hard to make all those home visits. My last head coaching job in California, we have 220 football players in the program. There was no way I could visit 220 homes, so I did small groups and I and I did delegate that to assistant coaches, assistant coaches, be at every fundraiser and take the initiative, walk up and shake parents’ homes. I kept thinking of the classic car wash parents are coming through washing the cars. I want my assistant coaches go up there and shake Mrs. Smith’s hand for driving car in and collecting the money. I wouldn’t let an assistant run the parent meeting. I don’t think that’s the role, but man alive. Joe’s right. Those home visits on lots of levels of troubled kids and getting parents on your side. Those parent visits are huge, huge, huge, huge. But you just don’t have time, right? You only got two or three nights. You can go at eight p.m. at night to somebody’s house and get home late to your wife. So delegate that to the assistant coaches. I really want to get on that. And yeah, absolutely. The study hall part of it, it’s huge. Do we all? I always delegated the study hall to my assistant coaches.

[00:23:26] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, that’s that was probably the number one way that I got into. Parents know their will around them. Knowing about me was, who’s the guy that’s staying after practice and my kids actually doing his freakin homework? This is crazy. So you kind of segue into talking about when I can remember exactly the comment you made, but getting parents involved. So that’s what happens to be our next topic. Joe would like for you to speak first on this one and we’ll kind of alternate back and forth throughout this. But how what is something you use to get parents more involved in the program more than just showing up for family night? And that’s it.

[00:23:57] Joe Daniel Yeah, I think Rick mentioned getting people to sign up for things at a really important point that Rick made was everybody doesn’t want to be the chairman of the Booster Club. There’s a lot of people. Team meals are a huge one. JV meals, you know, team meals are always come up for us. And there’s there might be one person who’s willing to organize the team meals, but there might be eight or 10 parents who are willing to actually cook a meal or, you know, do a meal, but they don’t want to be the one in charge of it. Team meals are a big one, getting parents involved through obviously boosters and all this sort of stuff. But I think just putting it out there and the big thing for me with this is there’s a ton of different things and Rick can go into some of the details. The big thing for me, as again, you’re going to need these people. And just because somebody a quick story, we had a parent who was absolutely early in my coaching life really, really made our head coach’s life pretty rough, pretty miserable. OK, that was with our first kid with her, second by her second kid. I don’t know what changed. The kid play a little more whatever, but she handled everything and she was the best team mom that there was. And one of the things that that head coach said was was, and this is kind of getting into the we shouldn’t be fighting with each other, but it’s, you know, the idea of keep your friends close and your enemies closer. If you’ve got a parent that gives you problems and you can get that parent involved in the program, that’s huge. And of course, obviously if you’re coming into a program and you can get all those parents involved early, then you don’t, you know, you don’t have to worry about it. The. The more involved, you can get people, the more they’re likely to be supportive, so find things that a parent likes to do. If you find out what they do for a living or their hobby, how can that fit into what we need as a program? And so that comes with getting to know the parents.

[00:25:54] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, those are. That’s a great example. Reaching out to them what they like to do and making whatever you’re doing. Part of that and special. I know northeastern Oklahoma, it’s probably going to be something in camouflage. It’s going to be some form of hunting or a gun night or something, right? But reach out to what they’re what they like to do and bring them in with that. Rick, you’re next. Good, sir.

[00:26:15] Rick Stewart Yeah. At the coaches meeting, when we do the sign up sheet, we always ask the parents occupation. I get it either because of time or because of introverts. Not everybody wants to attend the booster meeting as a booster club officer. So if I find out they’re a bookkeeper slash paralegal accountant, you know, there’s a treasurer. I had a cabinet maker would make her guy and he made all of our Plyo boxes. I, at one time, somebody signed up and he was a welder, so he made us like three or four squat racks. So he was really involved, right? But he I never saw him at a booster meeting. But through the course of making those staffers, I got to know those guys. Make sure you have your you have the parent in charge, but there are bombs that every single week or make all the sandwiches and put them in brown bags with as little Snickers bar and a Gatorade for the way trips. You know, the brownie bags, the team dinners. There’s lots of parents that would love to make a pot of spaghetti, but just don’t put a microphone in front of them. So, you know, really, really go through that and then we kind of delegated it. And every fundraiser we did, we would have a parent that we would try to get in charge of that fundraiser. So we try to make sure that we never asked the same parent to be in charge of two fundraisers twice. And some of the parents who are charge of a fundraiser did necessarily they weren’t on the Booster Club. Let me back up, too on that Booster Club. The Booster Club can be a lynch mob, so you’ve got to be careful there, right? Because you’re going to go to them and ask them for, Hey, I need to take all my coaches to Vegas for a coaching clinic. Well, they’re all going to look at you cross-eyed and say what? You want us to write you a check for 15 or bucks and go to Vegas. I had a boutique one time and say, Coach, why you take him to a coach’s clinic and why should we pay for it? That’s why you’re the head coach. You’re supposed to teach the coaches. So I’m always eyeballing then the freshmen, parents and the younger parents coming up and I’m going in and Kamal’s handpicking my next booster officer. If possible, I always started the booster clubs everywhere I’ve been. I made it in the bylaws so that I was a voting member. I made sure I never handled money because there’s two things get you fired and won’t even blink an eye. Money and touching a kid. So I never, ever handled money. We always had the two signature very vacation. Every fundraiser. We had a form where two people counted the money and two people signed the form so that everybody knew how much cash was counted on a Saturday afternoon because it wasn’t going to be put in the bank on Monday. But I would go out and handpick and see those parents and go to say, Hey, Mr. Clark, can I buy you a beer and we go have a beer and buffalo wild wings? Hey, listen, I’m going to be losing our booster president in a year or two. And man, dude, I just name your price. What’s it going to take? You know how much beer and polo shirts and hats is this going to cost me? I need you to be our next booster president because you never really vote on booster officers. It’s not like a bunch of people sold to the booster meeting and say, and three of them say all. We all want to be president and they give speeches, right? Whatever guy shows up to the booster meeting and says, I’m willing to be your next booster president, next, treasury secretary, they’re just going to get voted in. Well, I make sure I’ve already handpicked those people, invite them to the booster meeting, and I tell the current Booster Club, which I also did the same thing to them two years ago and say, Listen, I really have been meeting with Mr. Clarke, and I think you make a great president and great treasurer or great VP. And so you do want to handpick your booster officers, but then make sure you have a structure so that the worker bees who don’t want to be in front of people and don’t want to be in the budget club, they can well, they can put Plyo box together. They can make sandwiches, drivers. Somebody is going to take gateways. Seven on sevens have those jobs well thought out where they can sign up. That’s what we get them involved. And I and well, I’m going to stop there because I know the next question. I was going to talk about other ways to get involved with or trying to coach is a next question.

[00:30:14] Daniel Chamberlain Excellent. Something you said just now. How many beers, polos or hat I learned in the field when I was working there and now as a coach and hat as an invaluable sales tool, I can get read hours and hours of work or whatever it is I need. I can get things that are 10 times the value of that hat if I just give someone a hat. That’s all they want. They want to feel like part of the team, Polo’s more in the school setting, I’ve seen that’s a big deal. You want custodians that are there every Saturday to clean the fieldhouse, give them the stink and polio to wear on Friday night when the teams play an awesome do. So that’s how to get your staff involved. But as for parents, this is the last one I really want to speak on too much, but the what you all are saying is exactly right. My first head coach was really good at this and he had it was only his first year, so he was light years in front of other people. But what he did was every single week we had a family night. And so when some people just bring in the team and feed them, you know, it’s always a spaghetti night or something, he had the whole team’s families. So every parent, Kane, brother, sister, whatever, whoever wants to show up, there’s like a Madden tournament going on. We’re, you know, whatever game you want to play outside horseshoes or or cornhole or whatever. And that’s where he got those the family to come in and then they could talk business if they needed to. Or it was like a networking for them. So we could find people whose occupation was the welder or the carpenter or whatever and allow people to kind of just just network, really. And that helped them be involved with each other. It helped them be involved at the school, other kids. Then you’ve got carpooling going on. It was wonderful. It was absolutely wonderful to see that as a way to get the families involved. Right? All right. So enough about getting involvement. The next topic that we’re going to talk about is parents at practice. I have literally zero experience with this, so I don’t know if this is something that you struggle with or not. We’ve not had it. So, Rick, you were first up on this one, sir.

[00:32:08] Rick Stewart I believe that kids deserved a few part of their parents life. So I’ve never closed things out. The only time is if you get my worst, the first class that we’re going to be launching our move. I have a whole course on team building when we take our kids camping and get them around the campfire. That’s the only time we’re all very politely ask the parents to leave because around the campfire, those get pretty powerful and some kids. I bet kids step up and tell us they’re off drugs and they need their football family to help them to get off drugs. You know, there’s been some very personal stories. The only time I don’t let the parents get involved, parents are they can come to practice. You know, we just we welcome them, right? You know, locker room. They’re not going to be in the locker room at halftime or before the game. You know, there’s certain things. So I have no problem with the parents being at practice. And then and then the game, if you have a problem where obviously a practice of the parent is saying something or trying to coach their kid from the sideline, I’m going to nip that in the butt right away. I’m not going to just that one comment go and say, OK, if he does it again, I’m going to go over there. No, no, no, no. As soon as it comes out of his mouth that he’s telling his son who to throw the ball to, or that his elbow was too low, I’m I’m going over there now. This is going to be very nice, very respectful, and it usually something like a sir. I don’t go to the bank and tell you how to authorize your loans. I don’t go to your car lot and try to sell a car for you. Please don’t come out here and do that. It’s just it’s unproductive. You’re putting a lot of pressure on your kid. And actually, it’s counterproductive because now today in the locker room and when we go to school, the other kids are going to read your son because you over your coaching from the sideline. So just don’t do that. Sometimes I give my Marine Corps analogy that, hey, there can only really be one chief in this thing. Football is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. And the best form of government is a dictatorship. As long as you have a good dictator, right? Russia’s proving that right now. So the other thing is when the parents want to get involved, the games. So I have and this is anything. I have a twenty four hour rule. The parent comes up to me, Hey, we want to talk about playing time. We want to talk about whatever I will talk about parents, about playing time and coaches like, I’ll never talk about playing time, bullshit, bullshit. You do need to talk about playing time. But I say, Listen, I here’s my cell phone. I make up some excuse even if I’m lying and I say, Listen, I can’t meet with you right now because I have to go home and change the batteries on my remote control. But I will tell them, Hey, here’s my cell phone, I will meet with you. Twenty in twenty four hours, you text me and I’ll set up a time and your son will be there. I will not meet with a parent unless their child is sitting right next to him. A lot of us are parents. I’m a parent of three daughters. One’s a d one bass player now coach. My son played for me. We all know that teenagers come home and the story that the mom and dad get is not the story. What really happened? So I will not meet with a parent unless the child’s present. And I have another role if during that meeting, what’s happening with Joe Daniel and it’s about his son and I’m like, Hey, Mr. Daniel, and he’s coming up going well. When we were in eighth grade, my son started over Jimmy, and I can’t believe now you got Jimmy starting at quarterback. And, you know, I was the eighth grade coach, and I know Jimmy and I say, Mr. Daniels, I’m going to stop you right there. If you want to talk about Jimmy, let’s reschedule the meeting and I want Jimmy’s dad and Jimmy here so that they can hear what you’re going to say. They shut up right away, right? Because they’re cowards. They won’t they’re not going to talk about another kid if their dad was there. So we will not talk about another kid unless that kid in that parents present. And and and I just get off of it. Usually it’s after the game. It’s Friday night. It’s usually after a loss. Parent wants to come up to you and they’re fuming about something to happen. And I say, Listen, I am paid by the school district to get these kids on the bus. Make sure they’re safe. Make sure that locker is not vandalized. I cannot talk to you right now, but here is this is where the business cards come in coaches. Here’s my cell phone number. If you call me, you have my word we will meet and you know what happens? I would say one out of every three of those never call me. The twenty four hour cooling off period happens. But yes, I will let him at practice you youth coaches that are listening. Yes, they can be a practice, but they will not under any circumstances, yell anything from the sideline if they want to get in there in their minivan or their Dodge pickup truck and talk to Johnny that I can’t control. That they’re the parent at my parent meeting and in my newsletters, my email blast. I go through all the psychology of why that’s a bad idea, right? Don’t be that parent who thinks your kid riding shotgun in the hallway home, lecturing him about the way he should have blocked or tackled. And I and I try to get that message out right. But I can’t control what goes on at their dining room table or in their pickup truck. But you will not say anything from the sideline or I make it very clear one or two things are going to happen. Mr. Smith, you’re going to leave or where are you going? We are going to cancel practice on this and all these kids home because you are not going to sit here and coach kids. That’s where I’m at. But parents do deserve to be part of their children’s life. And like Joe said, when you embrace this and don’t run from it, you come out ahead, you come out smelling roses. Don’t try to avoid this and don’t give me the bullshit that we won’t talk about playing time.

[00:37:34] Daniel Chamberlain Around here, we need coaches so bad that you could just tell them if you want to coach, be a league coach, come and learn what we’re actually trying to instill here and install X’s and O’s and then show up. And if that’s if you want a coach, we’ll put you somewhere that isn’t your kid, because that’s not fair.

[00:37:48] Joe Daniel Yeah, put you on a different level. Yeah, right.

[00:37:50] Daniel Chamberlain And and then you can you can have every quarterback from now on and sharing their elbows. Not too low.

[00:37:54] Rick Stewart You know what? I don’t know. I don’t know if quicks on, I gather. Here’s a quick story. And this was a basketball story but would work in football and I’ve always wondered this word. Club basketball. Hey, you. The parents are young from the stands as poor refereeing their parents, just getting on and getting on a month. Then they’re gone. This guy’s an idiot. And it was so funny. The referee called a timeout and both kids, the benches went to his bag, pulled out this massive whistle like, you’ve got to Tara’s address. It was bigger than my head. And he and he was really funny about it, and he’s walking up in the stands and he has this big fat pink whistle to this date and. You don’t know how bad we need referees. We would welcome you to just join. In fact, you can ref this tournament right now because I’m doing this tournament by myself, my parting shot. And I always thought as a coach, I want to do that. Hey, here’s a whistle. We need coaches, and it sounds like you’re ridiculously knowledgeable with all this great advice and spewing out of your mouth. How about we meet and let’s talk about you becoming a coach and I want to hand him a big fat pink whistle. It has to be a pink whistle, right? You guys know why. And they shut his butt up, right? But I thought that was classic. That guy Gordon stands, and having that data whistle, that dad shut his mouth the rest there. He was so embarrassed and we are rolling in the stands. I mean, absolutely rolled.

[00:39:14] Joe Daniel I guess the parents at practice. There’s been a couple of things that have come up in the last 20 years that were issues now in general. You know, parents are practiced. Yeah, my dad used to love and my dad was not a vocal parent at all. He never said anything to anybody. He used to write letters to the coach about what my dad loves to write letters still to this day. He used to write letters to the coach. Anonymous letters talking about what a great job they were doing. And I knew my dad’s the one who writes letters, so I knew where that letter came from. And he but he loved getting off work early enough to come and catch the last half hour of practice. So I 100 percent want parents to be able to be a part of practice where we’re at. We’re in the middle of a city. Everybody, I mean, you know, it’s just out there. There’s no way to say like, you can’t be here, like, there’s no it’s not on private property. You’re standing, you can be standing in the middle of the road. And at practice, it’s not even practical, but very important. This is some of the things that have come up. Video in practice, I want to make sure in the parent meeting, this is something that we had to deal with. We dealt with it even before, but it’s something very important now. I do not want parents videoing practice. Hey, look, we’re video and practice in its own huddle you can access at any time, but I don’t want parents and I want to make sure that they know I don’t want your video in practice and putting something out, no matter how great it was that your kid did, that might embarrass. One of the other kids on the team. You know what I’m talking about, some kid gets lit up in a tackling drill and I don’t put that on social media or anything like that. I want our parents to understand. So we don’t want video in practice. If you want a video practice and keep it to yourself, I don’t really care. But honestly, you know, the thing we found easiest, which is to say, look at video practice because we can’t have these kids, you know, kids getting embarrassed on social media because you’re posting, you know, your kid to us. I don’t want that. We’ve had issues between parents when that happens immediately, get administrators because again, you don’t want to tell parents they can’t come to practice, you want to do all that. But I think that that’s a situation where you immediately need to get whether it’s athletic director principle. However, your structure works like the same thing that Rick talking about somebody trying to coach from the from the sidelines at a practice immediately nip that in the bud. So those are key things at practice. Parents should absolutely be welcome to be at practice, but you cannot be a distraction to that practice. And in that case, that’s when we have the, you know, probably me, probably get administration involved, that kind of stuff if it’s not, you know, after saying something initially. So that was that was where that came from, because I’ve had situations where the coach felt like the head coach just felt like in was one season. I think we just feel like there’s nothing else we could do but say, like, you just can’t come to practice. And again, it’s not feasible where I’m at now. But there was that like just totally cornered feeling of like, I don’t know what else to do. And it was because it had gotten out of hand. We were prepared for it. So it’s something I wanted to mention on this episode is be prepared. And Rick mentioned it. Be prepared for parents to have something to say at practice and immediately nip it in the bud. Be prepared for these types of things and just have in your parent meeting. Look, don’t post anything on social media and like that. I think that’s really important for parent behavior at practice. Look. Absolutely. Be there. Don’t be a part of the practice. Your kids should just know you’re there and feel good that you’re there. And that’s it.

[00:42:38] Daniel Chamberlain Yeah, I wish that all parents just follow that right there. The be here, be supportive, go away.

[00:42:45] Joe Daniel I mean, yeah, be here. They should know that you’re there, but they shouldn’t. It shouldn’t change anything. You know that you’re there. Just don’t, don’t try to coach them. You got to coach them when they were eight. Now they’re 16. I do this for a living, so you know, that’s it, right?

[00:43:02] Daniel Chamberlain So our next topic and you’ve both already kind of touched on it. So I think we’re going to have maybe a little bit of repeat here. But how do you handle parents that are issues? Joe, we’ll let you go first this time,

[00:43:12] Joe Daniel Yeah I’ll talk because it’s the same stuff that Rick said. Absolutely. You meet with parents. Absolutely. You don’t say, we don’t talk about playing time or we don’t talk about this or we don’t talk about that. Look, they’re giving you their kid. Don’t forget that they can take that kid off that team any moment that they want to. That kid’s spending a lot of time with. You’re giving a lot to them, too. It’s it’s a two way street. But if they want to come in and talk about things, we’re going to, we’re going to talk about it. No, we’re not going to talk about other players. I think that’s a really good point. We don’t talk about other players, but and I always want the kid to be there. It’s really funny because dad will think that this kid is all world and the kid knows that’s why you want them both to be in the meeting. Because you can ask the kid, Hey, dad wants you to be a starter. Which one of those starters are you better than? And that kid will go, Well, I’m not really better than either one of them. You go bad. This is the deal. Like, he knows it. So some parents are going to be the worst. Parents are the ones who will sit in a meeting with you, who will pat you on the back, who will look at you eye to eye and tell you what a great job you’re doing. You figure out who you can trust and who you can’t. And just like kind of, you know, the parents that are issues, talk to him. You’re not going to make everybody happy. I guess that’s the big thing is give him as much of an open forum to talk to you as you can. I do think at some point, if they start to eat up too much of your time, you may need to get somebody else involved or, you know, something like that. But hopefully you can avoid that. Here’s one thing that I did as like Rick, helped me tremendously in when I became a head coach. Rick gave me all of his stuff and I stole tons and tons of stuff from it. People are always like, you know, they see my program manual that’s in our JDFB Coaching Systems. They’re like, Oh, how do I put that together in Rick’s? Do you mean Dr. Rick Stewart? Because that’s how I put it together. But in what was I talking about? Because I just got off on that. I just slipped into Rick Stewart

[00:45:15] Daniel Chamberlain Selling Rick Stewart stuff. The last thing you said was parents that eat up too much time, get an administrator involved.

[00:45:19] Joe Daniel I came here where I was going with that. But the yeah. Have all your stuff together. I forget where I was going. I maybe I’ll come back to me.

[00:45:26] Daniel Chamberlain So the program guide should answer a lot of the questions for a

[00:45:29] Joe Daniel lot of it’s in your program

[00:45:30] Daniel Chamberlain that they have. Hey, we’ve got the thing we used contracts, right? And so that when parents showed up, I mad because of this, like it’s in the contract, like you’re. Had signed it, you signed it was about as good as we could get for it, but program gun,

[00:45:43] Joe Daniel I forget where I was going with the parents of the issues thing. But yeah, I mean, it’s get- Oh God, no, I don’t know, I lost it.

[00:45:51] Daniel Chamberlain All right, so. So you’ve already claimed your state to the meetings with parents and the kids included. But is there any other ways that you deal with parents that are issues, whether it be repetitive or whatever it happens to be?

[00:46:02] Rick Stewart I got to emphasize again, like said, be very organized upfront so that you’ve got a lot of positive material out there that will be preemptive of the problem. The living room vintage buildings are part of the preemptive and I’ll tell you what the opinion of the parent is, what the problem is. I’m not afraid to meet with the child and the parent in an off school setting. It kind of lowers down the guard. We maybe can be a little bit more friendly, especially with a dad or a mom that has been a good parent. And they’ve done some things for us, like the guy that made welding racks. If he when he came to me with the problem, we would have sat down and had a beer. I owed it to him. He made us for welding racks. The parent, I don’t know, or I’ve already kind of got a bad vibe. Make sure that there’s another adult in the room, otherwise you’re going to leave the room in a, he said she said argument. And they’re going to fire off an email to the school board and stuff. And you want to an assistant coach there, at the very least, but you definitely maybe want to add there so that so they say, no, that’s that’s not what was said in that meeting. I think we’ve kind of hit it all. The big one is the child’s present twenty four hour cooling off period. I’m telling you the best thing I did was because you had the Parent Meeting at the beginning of the year and you’re lucky of about 20 percent of the parents show up, right? The best parent meeting I’ve ever had is usually in August, during, well, back when we could do two of days before we had the. Well, it’s not a good word, but I called it the wussification of America right before we bubble wrapped our kids and there was no Tuesdays. You can’t have anymore. And you know, we’re all worried about concussions. But back when hell week was truly hell week. I would. I would tell the kids, whoever’s if you are represented at this meeting tonight, I would have like on a Monday night, right? So when practice ran a little earlier, the systems that run practice I’m around capturing get this meeting started. If you’re representing older brother and older sister grandma, your represents, meaning you don’t do conditioning the next day. That really helped our attendance at the parent meet. Right? But the parent meetings aren’t, you know, well attended. Let’s be honest, and it’s getting worse. So the newsletter, the texting app, you just got to get the information out there, and I think you avoid a lot of problems if information’s out there. Look, this thing with Ukraine and Russia, we can go back to all the different arguments. Go back to sports the arguments between Shaq and Kobe, right? It always goes back to just miscommunication. Not very often can you resolve something. You just get to people in the room. As long as you both agree you love the same child, you can resolve the problem if it is so it’s just miscommunication and it’s the coaches that are afraid and don’t get information out and they’re not organized. And then parents are confused and are not sure where you’re coming from or what your policy is or how you handle this. And then it leads to a bad situation. So I just got to say get get in front of the problem. I guess what I’m trying to summarize.

[00:49:12] Daniel Chamberlain You know, like what you said about communication there, coach, because that’s I don’t say one of my pet peeves, but it’s like one of the things that I focus on the most. And I’ve been in a lot of bad situations in my career professionally due to lack of communication on one side or the other, whether it be from me or from the other party. And I just don’t know what they want. I’ve been in the guard for six years now and I’ve done about 14 million after action, reviews or a year and every single one of them. Communication has been something we could improve as a team. I don’t care if we didn’t air about a single formation or an entire weekend’s work or a deployment. It’s always communication. And yet it’s the thing that we focus on, least when we’re trying to ensure that a problem doesn’t go bad, right? We’re always so scared to just go talk about the thing. So, yes, communication is super big. So before we,

[00:49:58] Joe Daniel I came up with what it was. Oh, let’s do it. OK. Two things one thing. One thing that Rick said about your early meetings, I think needs to be carried over. And you mentioned the program manual. I mentioned the program manual, and we talked about the program manual being so important, everything being there when you have these meetings with parents. Document everything that is said. Put it in right? Get up, get a notebook. Write down like, hey, on this day we came in and we talked about this because they will go to somebody. A problem parent will go to somebody over your head and say, I tried to get to talk to him about. This issue three weeks ago, and he refused to talk to me when you’ve had six meetings with them, so document. Absolutely. Who was there? What was said? What did we come up with? A document that the other thing is this was one thing that I don’t know where I got the idea from. But when I got my first head coaching job, my only head coaching job, I got a burner phone. Let me tell you, I have talked to so many coaches who were like, Oh my God, not an actual phone. You can go get a service on your phone where it’s just like an app, basically, and you might pay like 10. Or you can do like Google Voice Assistant, I think. But you can get an app and pay like a little bit of money and you can text and you can do whatever. And I would have this app on my phone. OK, so I got a new phone number with it, and I might have been my wife. That gave me the idea because she’s seen the head coaches that I’ve worked for. But like everybody has my phone number right, my on, my, my, my burner phone number. But on that app, I could go in there and put hey at eight o’clock on Saturday night, shut this thing off, send it straight to voicemail, send every text or voicemail, send everything. Now, I’m not going to do that with my real phone, and I know some guys can. Some guys can take your phone, stick it in a drawer and you’re perfectly fine with that. That’s just not happening. I could go out and tell you that, but I got that number and I was able to put in there. Look, I answered all the time. I got all the messages, but I was able to put in there like, turn all times for that, and I could say, Look at this time, it’s OK. And I know other coaches. That phone goes off at 2:00 a.m. and it’s there. They don’t know if it’s like grandpa’s fallen ill or this is a parent. And I knew that phone number when that and I had different ringtone when that thing rang. I knew. And again, it was shut off at night, but I knew it was somebody calling about football and I could be like, That ain’t important right now.

[00:52:33] Daniel Chamberlain That’s that’s an awesome idea. It is, I mean, an app, right? Technology saves the day

[00:52:37] Joe Daniel Yeah, it’s an app. And it was, you know, even then, it was like ten bucks a month.

[00:52:41] Rick Stewart Yeah, their apps. I’ve done the same thing. You don’t need two phones, coaches. It’s an app that’s on your phone and it’s a totally different number. I want to leave something else. If you do have a meeting, follow up. First of all, at the end of the meeting, when they’re there, agree on some action items, like about the playing time. I listen, let’s kind of recap this week and I’ve kind of told you, Mr. Smith and Johnny, if we can increase Johnny’s bench, press to this number and we can improve your photo time, we can improve your attendance. If we can improve your GPA, then then maybe playing time could improve. Right, let’s have some. Let’s have some action items that so we leave positive so the dad can get the truck and say, Well, boy, I guess we got to get you stronger corn coach. We’ve got to get you a little stronger. You get a little faster. Well, I didn’t know you were missing. We’re going to fix that problem. So you get some more playing time. Let’s leave with some action items, then the very next day and copy your ad, follow with an email and say, Mr. Smith, thank you for meeting with me. I would like to recap our conversation. Bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point ball. And you copied somebody on it so that an elite leave with a leave of some positives, right? Give that parent and that child something that they can feel like well coached. We don’t agree with coach, but Coach is saying that Johnny’s not starting because he’s too slow. You know, an eight eight Johnny, you know, hundred and twenty pounds is just not cutting it at right tackle. So, you know, we need dad to go buy you some more Twinkies and let’s get you. Let’s get you. Let’s get your weight up a little bit. So action items, positive actions when they leave and follow up email, that’s awesome.

[00:54:19] Daniel Chamberlain And that’s not an idea that I’ve ever considered or heard of what you talked about action items. I have a nephew that he’s probably six three now. I think he’s 13 or 14 years old, but the problem is is he’s over 300 pounds, so he’s slow and he can’t play. And I think there’s this perception or perception that perception that he should be the starting right tackle for the high school team as soon as he steps on the field because of his size. But the point is his feet are slow, right? And so he’s at the school that I’m at now, so I tried to bring him in and he’s just not there mentally. He doesn’t want to be the starting right tackle in the high school team. And so the action line is awesome because I use that my personal life like, Hey, man, here’s what you need to do to play football. If you get to these, you can play. If not, that’s OK to just understand that you’re telling us that that’s not your priority. And so we won’t make it our priority either. Right? You’ve got to help your help you help yourself, kind of thing. So I just want to just quickly add that I kind of thought of something to talk about and that is just once again on the assistance coach side of things. And if you’re a head coach, I fully believe that it is your job to handle the parent issues, whatever whatever they are. And if it’s if it’s with an assistant coach, then they need to be in the room. We’re talking about the kid and everything else. If you, for whatever reason, are completely unable to deal with confrontation in and that’s OK too, some people just cannot handle confrontation, whether they lose the ability. Use their words, or maybe they just have a short Fuze and they know it. Just make sure that if you send someone else in your place, an assistant coach, that they are on the same page as you, you’ve covered. Here’s whether it be your action steps like you’re talking about or that we will give up to this much or whatever it is, just ensure that everybody’s on the same page. I know that I have had parents reach out to me after they didn’t get the right answer that they wanted from the head coach, and I was quickly able to say, Hey, listen, you know, it’s not my place. Whatever he said has to go. But not everyone has that filter and right off the bat, they may think I can save this situation and they may go in a different direction. So just ensure that your assistant coaches are on the same page as you when it comes to any issues. It may just be because on Friday night, your coach in a ballgame and they’re worried about watching the running backs, feet, and now they have to turn around and handle an issue. That’s OK, right? As long as they’re on the same page as you. So for our last topic tonight, we want to kind of we’ve we went from like, Hey, we know our parents and then we went into this like, how are we doing with them when they’re complete jerks? So now we just want to hear a funny parent story. And Rick, we’re going to start with you. So just whatever the one that stands out to you, the one that you remember, because because of the comedy factor, what does a funny parent story that you’ve had in dealings with a parent

[00:56:51] Rick Stewart Thinking of all the bad ones? I can’t think of funny ones

[00:56:53] Joe Daniel Get enough money.

[00:56:56] Rick Stewart I can be a bad one. As long as it ends, I’m going to want to maybe kind of a feel good one that I think it would help a coach. And I want to touch on that real quick when I say that with the three things that will drive you out of coaching, fundraising, referees and parents. And I make it very clear to my assistant coaches and I say, Listen, make me the bad guy. You are not. As the assistant coach allowed to deal with fundraising parents or referees. I deal with the referee. You do not talk the referee twice. In my career, I’ve sent an assistant coach up to the press box. At halftime, I’ve suspended a coach assistant coach for the next week. You do not talk to the referees if you’re an assistant coach and make me the bad guy. So when the parent comes up to you, even if they’re in their nice voice, hey, listen, you’re going to get me fired. You need to go talk to the head coach. Now I’m including my head job coach. I do let my head coach do the job parents. And in California, we have larger programs. I let them deal with the freshman head coach, but the parents only deal with the head coach. And I want the coaches at the fundraisers, but I don’t put a coach in charge of a fundraiser. You know you’re going to lose assistant coaches. Listen, one of the things we did was really cool was we would always make our kids do ups for swearing and practice. Well, if anybody knows me, I swear, and I and I tried to stop at that damn Marine Corps sailor mouth never come out. So the kids were given our time to say, Coach, you guys are cussing what you guys do pushups. I go, Well, my fat ass can’t do a pushup. So we had a swear jar, so every time we cast it, we made it sure it was in front of the kids. We would put whatever it was in there, and the rule was an assistant coach where they put a dollar in. But if the handcuffs were, I put five dollars in. So I usually lost my entire coaching staff in that year because of the swear jar. So I had a bunch of money in this swear jar and the coaches were like, What are we going to do with it? So we said, Let’s take all of our wives out to dinner on a Saturday night, and we went out to dinner on Saturday night and a rule was we couldn’t talk football. We were talking about. They could talk about how much Tom Brady, how cute Tom Brady was, but we could not show up. And I can say, Hey Joe, did you watch that film and see what they’re doing? You sat quads formation on film. No football at this thing. We would go to dinner. Maybe some dancing. Well, the next week, my wife’s like, Hey, that was a lot of fun. And you know what? For the first time, I sat with all the wives in the stands because we got to know them last Saturday at the at the dinner. So we started doing it every month for try to do it for nine or 10 months a year. One Saturday a month, we would take the coaches and their wives out to dinner. Well, then it even went further. We said at the end of the season, we had all this money in the swear jar. We said, let’s get our key parents invited. And so one time we did go out and this is like your boost. Your parents are really hard worker bees. You know, I’m talking about you’ve got about a handful of, I don’t know, five, six seven parents who really just kicked ass for you and you invite their spouses. And we’ve done it at somebody’s home with a nice barbecue in the back patio. We have some fun games. We played the newlywed game. We did charades. Hilarious. Lots of fun, right? The outgoing senior parents. Kind of. That’s their last hurrah because this is usually around December. But the underclassmen parents are getting to know them better, and it was a lot of fun. I don’t know if that’s a funny story now that I’m thinking about. There’s lots of funny stories. When we did this rage in the newlywed game and things like that, there was a lot of fun. You always have the single coach who can’t get a girlfriend. So we gave him a hard time like, Hey, hey, hey, Mario. The guess is the only single coach who is here that could even find a girlfriend to come to this damn thing, right? And so there’s a little bit of raising of that. So that’s kind of a good thing. I hope it’s kind of a funny feel-good story, but that was really big for us, too. It’s our way of rewarding our worker bees, right? Those I’m talking there was like five to. But they’re hard core. They do a lot of for us and you said, listen, we’re going to ask coaches are going to treat you guys. We did was our money and swear jar. So it was the coaches, their wives, they the quote unquote booster worker, bee type parents and their spouses. And we just had a fun Saturday night. It was usually like one or two Saturdays before Christmas. You could do what’s that white elephant gift exchange thing? And that’s a lot of fun. That’s a lot of fun. Like I told you, my last school, we started with that one parent, and five years later, we had 40 parents coming to our booster meeting. Our being part of the boosters became fun, like we would joke and we made it fun. And so people wanted to be part of that. It wasn’t just come to a booster meeting, and I’m going to give you a bunch of jobs to do. And so anyways, that’s kind of my I wish, I wish. I had a funny little story, but I’m not really a funny pick. I can’t think of a funny appearance.

[01:01:33] Daniel Chamberlain At least it was fulfilling. Like, we got something out of it

[01:01:35] Rick Stewart So that I can see the best stories. I mean, I literally had a dad come up to me after a playoff loss, and I mean, just full force in my chest showed me. And you know, I went flying across the field and we had to deal with that. So I got those bad stories of the parents who literally physically assaulted me and those things I got. But I don’t know about funny stories other than my wife telling me in the car, you know, hey, how was the game? And she just tells me, you should a round wrap around salad more, but that’s using my

[01:02:02] Daniel Chamberlain playbook woman.

[01:02:04] Rick Stewart Give me, give me. My wife loves wraparound salad and she wants me to call on every play.

[01:02:08] Daniel Chamberlain So I think, you know when you talk about a story, so I’m hoping we hear it here.

[01:02:13] Joe Daniel I got one. I got one. That is kind of a funny story in that it’s not like I got another one. This popped into my head, probably my favorite parent story. And this was a this was a good parent, not a bad parent. This parent, I don’t see too much, but we had a kid who was a really, really good football I say was really good football player. He didn’t play. He only played like a senior year. But, you know, getting like a scholarship and playing like three games and hurt got hurt. But he was. He was a player like he. This kid would walk from class and he would walk from like, you know, we had wings and he would walk a girl down between classes. He would walk her to like the edge of the wing, give her a kiss, slap on the boat, send her off to class turnaround, pick up another one, walk her down C wing, give her a slap on the butt, send their on down that he’s heading down to B wing and then he’s walking into my class because I taught him, You walk into my class. And of course, he’s sitting next to another girl in there that he’s flirting with. So he was he was the man, right? And he this was the wildest night after a game. We lost the game. I’m sure we weren’t very good. But like afterwards, everything just is like, you’ve had those post games where there’s just total chaos. There’s like a fight with the kids and you’re like, you know, you’re up there trying to, like, get the laundry started and like, there’s a fight and there’s this going on and that going on there, screaming and yelling. The two girls got in a fight in the fieldhouse, and one of them was the sister of one of our players. So mom is their mom is. Daniel knows we’re at the schools on Fort Lee or Fort Lee is in the county and she is probably her son was enormous. She is probably six foot two and like, like tough as nails, you know, raising these kids on her own and just she was phenomenal. She was great because these were I mean, these kids are that rock, but she was great. You know, there be times when she’s deployed and stuff and she is super tough. So we’re trying to get everything settled down with this by trying to figure out what’s happened. These two girls got into it in our fieldhouse. Basically, we’re like right outside of your house. And I think our head coach walked down and this mom is like not having. So we think that we’re going to have to go down there and get administration. I think in Missouri to go to a mall, we’re thinking like, this is going to take forever to clean up. This was a mess. Like, we’re going to be here all night figuring this thing out. And we walked downstairs and she has. She has settled it and this place is dispersed now. The kids, just like all gone home. She is settled it and she has her daughter. And apparently what had happened was they got into a fight because of the kid. That was the stud. Right? And they were both seeing, or no, I’m sorry she wasn’t seeing him. Her friend wasn’t, but she got a real fight because her, you know, she’s the friend with this girl and the mess around, whatever, whatever. So the mom is down there screaming at her, What are you doing? What are you doing fighting here? What is happening, what is? And she explains, like, you know, hits, he’s doing this and he’s been around with this girl and he’s doing that. And he starts screaming, if your kids are listening, I apologized. But you know, this is not getting the clean tag today. It’s not going to cut real bad, you know, over some dick.

[01:05:38] Rick Stewart Even yours.

[01:05:42] Joe Daniel And see this, this woman handled the entire I mean, this was one of those things that you could have been at the Field House until 3:00 a.m. trying to sort everything out. And she has laid into every kid there and she has settled it. She is not. Again, she’s a soldier poorly. But she settled the entire issue. She dispersed the kids. It was incredible. We just went upstairs. We, of course, have told the story 10000 times since then, but just went upstairs and watched film after broadcast. If she so parents can be very helpful at times, but it was hilarious. She was screaming that at her daughter and I was just like, it was great. But the other one was about the only pair of me, my one years a head coach. I had one bad parent meeting and I did not expect it to be a bad parent meeting because the kid is great. And he was just and the dad had been around. He’d never been negative or anything like that. The kid is great, but he was a sophomore and I’ve talked a lot about our 4-2-5 defense. When you have that kid who you know is going to be the Mike linebacker. He’s physical enough, but he hasn’t grown into that Mike linebacker body yet. In our system, he play strong safety until he grows into that body. There’s a glorified outside linebacker, so we had the meeting and he’s like, My kid’s a linebacker. And you know, he should be starting at linebacker and I’ll explain, you know, and he’s I mean, he’s really upset. Like, he does not think his kids are safety. He’s be a linebacker. He’s always been a linebacker. I’m like, Well, you know, here’s this is way it is in our system, and I’m explaining all of this and he’s going on and on and on it. It was one of those you feel like you’re not getting anywhere, and all of a sudden it’s just like, Oh, OK, he’s just accepts whatever the discussion was and was like, I got it. I understand. Now, at the end of this meeting, this went on for like 30 minutes only bad parent meeting. I had the entire year at the end and it was started out kind of rough at the end of this meeting. He’s like, Well, listen, my, my, my company, you know, we want to make sure that we support the program, and one of the things I want to do is want to do this and that he leaves the meeting, writing me a $500 check to put into our funds. So that was the in a full year that was the only bad parent meeting I had, and it ended up with a five hundred dollar fundraiser.

[01:07:48] Daniel Chamberlain Sometimes it pays to deal with the problems coach. Sometimes it pays, though.

[01:07:52] Joe Daniel That was my two did the one of my bad story.

[01:07:54] Daniel Chamberlain My story’s not. Not really bad either. We had a a kid that was very disciplined by dad, so that was his commander in chief. He was his the guy that made all the rules. And when dad talked, it was yes, sir. And he went off and did the thing super well disciplined when it came to us. Not always right. Sometimes he would listen pretty well, but he had this thing where he would just get to a mental place where he was a different kid and he wasn’t listening for nothing. So he has that anyways, and we’ve had to deal with that in a game or two. Like you can’t get him off the field. Like, Nope, come out. We’re going put somebody else in. No, I’m the I’m the defensive end or whatever, right? So one night where my wife is, uh, she worked the sidelines for us as the one. She’s checking kids off like a medical, get an exam before they have to go to the ambulance, and they’re ruled out for the rest of the game because that’s what they like to do. So she could kind of give us a real life-like, here’s what’s broken, and here’s what’s wrong. Yes, they can play. Let me rapper real quick and send them back out. My wife is a physical therapist, so she’s fairly well educated in that. So she checks this kid. He gets pretty, pretty good. Look to the head. He comes off. He’s a little dazed. We’re not qualified to call it a concussion, right? And to be honest, I just sent another kid out and I’m coaching the game on the DC, so I don’t have time to check him out. So he goes to my wife and she comes and grabs me. And as she’s talking to me and she tells me, Hey, I think you might have a concussion. I advise that you don’t play him any more tonight. Do whatever you want your team. But that’s that’s my advisement and was like, OK, cool. Well, we’ll just sitting and I’ll go tell the head coach like, Hey, once again, it’s my what I advise doing. You make the call. He’s like, Absolutely, we’ll set him. There’s no reason to risk it. Well, we turn around and he’s in the damn game. He’s already put himself back in the game. He ran out as soon as she came to talk to me and sent the other guy out, and he’s playing. So he’s got like three plays in and I’m like, Wait a minute, what the hell is going on? And we couldn’t get him off the field. I mean, we’re screaming like we’re about to have start burning time out because the offense, of course, they don’t care, right? They’re running plays. Luckily, his dad understand he kind of sees what’s going on. His son had to go see the medical person and then he sprints back on the field and we’re yelling at him and he comes down and I’m in a booming voice, tells us, Kid, get back over there and some pretty foul language. And then here comes this kid. Just like, Oh shit, wrong guy, wrong guy to make mad. And he goes running off the field and he’s still mad and he’s still pleading his case. But you could tell dad like that that was the voice that he was waiting to hear. So once again, like you said, your parents are important to have in the program and be involved because you might just need to keep yourself from getting a lawsuit. Yeah, a kid that will not stop playing. Yeah. All right, gentlemen. I think we’ve covered all the topics that we plan to cover tonight. If if you’re listening, hopefully from both perspectives, a head coach or an assistant coach, you’ve taken some of this and I can put that in the toolbox. This we didn’t cover enough to give you all the answers, but most of them. And as Joe is going to pay the bills here, he’ll tell you where to find some more answers, I’m sure.

[01:10:38] Joe Daniel Well, Rick, you know, Rick wants you. First, because you mentioned your all access coaching and the things that you have going on, you want to talk about that first.

[01:10:46] Rick Stewart Yeah, we’re it’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I’ve had some coaches who have been very patiently waiting for me to finish it. I’ve had coaches like Joe say that, Hey, you really need to put some of this stuff on paper, you’ve got a lot to offer. And again, I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do claim to have made all the mistakes. So I’m but we’re going to launch it March 15th. We’ve got a three ring binder. It’s a turnkey thing. It’s not a book. It’s not a book of philosophy. You turn it. Here’s the parent meeting. Here’s the inventory sheet to keep track. Here’s your how to go to your vision statement. Mission statement These are actual 26 lessons for character. What how I take my kids to the leadership training, which the Marine Corps is. A lot of that come from the Marine Corps. So it’s a 300 binder. There’s a Google folder where you’re going to download all this stuff so you can customize it to your program. And then I’ve now started off there’s only nine and now it’s eighty one hour courses. Each course is obviously by subject of being a head coach. So really excited about that. I hope that coaches are going, get it. If you get it, I’m going to join your coaching staff. I’ll be with you for a year and just help you through it. I’m really excited about it because honestly, it’s my passion now. It’s not my X’s and O’s, my pistol wing tee and my reading rack 4-2-5 stuff. I kind of probably put me on the map, but it’s I don’t really honestly, I don’t care about that anymore. This was the first step is really important. I’m turning fifty five next month and if I want to give back to this game, I’ve only got a couple of years left of coaching. I want to make sure I help the next generation of coaches with what’s important, which is what we talked about tonight. It’s about making a better sons, fathers and husbands. It’s it’s not about making them a better linebacker or quarterback. I just I get so mad on social media when they say, well, the head coach is not doing a good job developing his players for college. Dude, are you freaking kidding me? That is not in your job description. As a head coach in high school, your job is not to get the kid ready for the next level. That is absolutely hogwash. And but I was that coach, right? I was that coach. I love my playbooks and I was always spinning my whole off season on the playbook. And I tell coaches now, don’t preach that you love your kids and you’re going to make them better adults. But then you spend 90 percent of your time on your playbook. If you say you’re going to make them better adults and do what Joe and I said, take some time out of your schedule, go visit them at their home, do some leadership lessons, do some character lessons, take them camping, right? If you’re going to spend 90 percent time in your playbook within, preach that you’re about character and about the young man. I’m going to. I’m going to. I’m going to call you out on some hypocrisy there. So I’m really excited that we’re launching our words. The first it’s on my website, allaccesscoaching.com, and I hope you guys get it because I’m really excited about that and that and the coaches that get it, I’m really, really fired up to be able to help them through, you know, I’m committed to you for a year or two years, three years. If you get that program, I’m committed to helping you privately one on one text message, whatever I want, I want to help the next generation coach. And I was very, very humbling because I’ve been following Joe for so long. When Joe said I got my first head coaching job and I was able to share my head coaching manual with him, and that’s been really cool. That’s find the only cool thing about growing old. You know, I can’t I can’t jump anymore. I can’t do a pull up anymore. My knees and my hips are always cussing at me. But it’s the cool thing about being old is that I can help out some young coaches, and that’s where I met my career. So I, I hope you guys get that worst. And first we’re going to want to hear March 15th and Joe, thank you as always. Have me on podcast. I’ve done a couple of things Joe and I love it for Joe, though, knows that Joe. I was timing it where we’re at a minute. 20. He always knows when he has Rick Stewart on. It’s not going to go very. It’s not going to go quick.

[01:14:35] Daniel Chamberlain Coach, there, you know, he hired me and he gave me a timeline to set an hour per episode and we’ve hit it three times and 20 30 episodes, so he didn’t know he was trying. We’re working on it. We aren’t working on it. We started timers and stuff like, we have things. But you know, I like talking. He likes talking football. Who’s going to just shut it off. It’s hard.

[01:14:54] Rick Stewart Well, I think I want to thank everybody. This has been fun.

[01:14:57] Daniel Chamberlain And so while we’re at it since we’re here at this point, where can people find you social media email if you want to give you a phone number, whatever it is that you like to give out to people to get your burner, phone your burner account, where can someone reach you if they said, Hey, I want to get it all access coaching, how do I do that?

[01:15:13] Rick Stewart You’ll get a big mountain top, send me a smoke signal, allaccesscoaching.com. I’ve dumped a bunch of money in our new website. I’m competitive like everybody else, I want to have the best football website on the planet, so I think we’ve got that allaccesscoaching.com and my email is rick@allaccesscoaching.com, and I’m really good with the emails. I’m not real good with people that private messaged me on Twitter and Facebook. Joe, do you get those messages on social media and you got that little box at Typekit? You thumbs and they want to know, Hey, how do you stop? How do you what do you do against a 3-4, 4-3 defense? I go, You want me to answer this on this little private message box on my phone? So the best thing for me is to email rick@allaccesscoaching.com and my website allaccesscoaching.com. We’ve got tons of free stuff on there. I really want to make sure I give coaches resources. We’ve got tons of free downloads. I’ve got several hundred blog articles on there. We do three webinars a week. I’m now podcasting, thanks to Joe. He kind of showed me the ropes there. I’ve only got like twenty six episodes, and I think Joe has two thousand episodes, so. So but that’s important because podcasts are free, webinars are free, downloads are free. Blog articles are free. I don’t want to be that coaches just selling product, right? There’s too many coaches out there. They’re only worried about making a buck, and they’re not worried about helping coaches. And I want to make sure that its coaches helping coaches. So all this is coaching dot com, fellas.

[01:16:33] Daniel Chamberlain Well, we definitely appreciate you coming on tonight. I’m glad to have met you finally. You know, we’ve talked about you a couple of times on the podcast and just I’m on the Twitter verse, so I see you there from time to time, so I’m glad to finally meet you. Bill pay on time, sir.

[01:16:46] Joe Daniel Yeah. Well, my bills are paid by JoeDanielFootball.com. Go to join.JoeDanielFootball.com. Get access to five complete coaching systems 4-2-5 Defense System, 33 stack, 3-4 Defense System, all updated for 2022 and the 4-3 defense system. They’re all there, plus the pistol power offense system. You get access to all of them for $1 by going to join.JoeDanielFootball.com. Imagine we have a chalkboard coming up soon. When you talk Talk’s private Q&A calls every single over Zoom. We do those every other week in the offseason. We do them every week during the season we’ve got a chalkboard forum. We can ask questions, lots of other resources that are in there and of course, all the archive, chalk talk and everything as well. Check it out. Go to JoeDanielFootball.com. If this is your first time listening The Football Coaching Podcast., make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. We have new episodes coming out every single week and we are wherever you get your podcast that we are on Apple Podcasts, we are on Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, we are on Apple, we are on Amazon Music and probably some others that I’m forgetting. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you’ve been listening for a while, leave review. It’s a huge, huge help in getting the word out to other coaches to get those reviews in there. They’re always nice to have. I hit my mic. Sorry about that, on Twitter, Twitter verse stuff. I’m @footballinfo.

[01:18:07] Daniel Chamberlain I’m @CoachChamboOK. O You’re @footballinfo. The podcast is I’m not going to cheat. Not even looking @theFBCP. Nailed it. I told you it would take to the season if you are following it, especially by the time this beast comes out, you should be seeing quite a bit of stuff on there. We’re trying to be more interactive. We do have the guest request form, right? Yeah, well, I do. I do what I can. If you haven’t filled out the form and you have something to provide to the podcast, you want to put out what you have two other coaches. By all means, fill out the form. We’re trying to get people on, please coaches. If you fill it out, do not to be disheartened if we haven’t reached out to you in the next two, three, four weeks. This season’s pretty much filled out, and so we would really want to start bringing you guys in next season, and that’s why we’re collecting our data now. So please don’t be disheartened if I don’t reach out to you immediately, but you should get an email pretty soon, and we’ll start talking about the logistics are of getting you onto the podcast. We do appreciate you wanting to participate.

[01:19:08] Joe Daniel Yup. I think that’s going to do it, Rick. Anything else? Anything else we want to add?

[01:19:12] Rick Stewart No, I want to give a shout out. I’ve been a member of Joe’s website for several years now. It’s definitely worth it. I enjoy the forum I like. I like the chalk talks. I don’t get on him as much as I, as I like to. But on Joe’s website is a great resource and I’ve been a member of it for quite a while and definitely have stolen some defensive ideas from him.

[01:19:33] Joe Daniel That’s always my favorite part of the podcast is when somebody is forced at gunpoint to say something nice about my website, so that’s a great spot.

[01:19:43] Rick Stewart You have my Venmo, Joe, just send me the money

[01:19:47] Joe Daniel That’s going to do it for this episode. Thanks for listening. Remember Coach simple, play fast, win.