What Are the Most Important Skills for a Head Coach?

Sometimes, I like to put myself in the Head Coach's shoes and think about how to build a sustainable winning program. To me, there's 4 primary facets of being a head coach that don't include "babysitting" or "being an ambassador for the school." If you're bad enough at either of those two, anybody will get fired, but they're still secondary considerations when it comes to winning. I think those 4 primary facets are 1) Actual Coaching, probably either offense or defense, 2) Recruiting/Player Retention, 3) Staff Hiring/Player Development, 4) Administrative Influence and Fund-Raising.

I believe the highest ceiling coach prioritizes those facets as follows:
1. Recruiting/Player Retention
2. Staff Hiring/Player Development
3. Administrative Influence and Fund-Raising
4. Actual Coaching.

This to me is your CEO archetype, this is what we are hoping Napier will be. This is close to what I consider Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, and Kirby Smart to be. Maybe swap 2 and 3 for some of them. And in the case of both Saban and Smart, their actual coaching is still pretty damned good. A less successful version would probably look something like Ron Zook.

The highest floor coach prioritizes the following:
1. Actual Coaching
2. Staff Hiring/Player Development
3. Recruiting/Player Retention
4. Administrative Influence and Fund-Raising.

This is closer to your Steve Spurrier archetype. Coaches typically call their own plays, run one side of the ball, but typically have some holes because they have less of a bird's eye view of the program by being so focused on actual Xs and Os. Other coaches that fall into this category are Lane Kiffin, Lincoln Riley, Dan Mullen, Mike Leach (may he rest in peace) and Will Muschamp.

I'm no insider, but I think a lot of this depends on the commitment to the football program from the university. If they're willing to get in crazy bidding wars with the big dogs like Ohio State, Alabama, and Georgia... and we have a base of boosters with similar support, that changes what Florida should value. And I'm not saying there's a right answer for that. College Football is an insane world and there's a lot more important parts of a university than the football program. But the first steps to making things better is acknowledging who we are, accepting it or changing it, and establishing an identity.

My perception is we either don't have the administrative or financial support of those schools, or we didn't and we're still playing the same catch-up game we've been playing since Urban Meyer. This includes being a cowboy in this new wild west of NIL/transfer portal college football. If these other teams are pushing the boundaries of the rules and we're not, we're not going to beat them at their own game. If we don't have a realistic plan to catch-up, our best move is probably going for a Spurrier archetype. If we do have a realistic plan to catch up, hope that Napier turns it around and if he doesn't, hire somebody with a similar blueprint to running a program but with better execution.

Which archetype do you think fits best with Florida? Am I missing some archetypes or facets? How would you prioritize them?

 

I would say "Actual Coaching" falls under results over time on one side of the ball. It's what you see on gameday and in the box score. That is most tied to strategy and game-planning, IMO.

"Player Development" is more towards getting individual players to realize their potential, whether that be through motivation, competition, strength and conditioning, development, or some combination of those things.

 

That's the thing, though. I don't think Meyer was much of a hands on coach, at least compared to Spurrier and Mullen. The program had great "coaching" because Meyer generally hired a first class staff. He had great players and he had great development largely due to the competitive culture, high minimum standard for players, and locker room leaders.

Spurrier changed the game. When the entire college football world was going left, Spurrier went right. He's arguably the greatest offensive mind in the history of college football, had scheme advantage, and had an easier time recruiting (while not being the best recruiter) because playing for Florida was cool and fun, and recruiting was much more regional back then which really helped Florida.

 

I know he coached special teams.

I don't think that's even close to the top reason why he was successful at Florida. Recruiting, staff, and competitive culture were the big reasons he won.

He just happened to coach special teams and he happened to play stars on special teams.