College coaches with families… was it worth it?

This happens a lot more than you would think or is spoken about. In most cases it’s amicable and nothing negative comes from it. It’s when coaches do weird pedo things and make advances at someone clearly not interested or not mentally ready and they report them. 21-23 yr old who knows what they want it doesn’t go anywhere as far as outside of their privacy.

The sweet spot is coaching at a private HS. You get the resources of college, you can recruit, you have kids that are committed to the sport, and the best thing.. rich parents. So lots of support both financial and time wise from the parents and administration. Want to travel? Sure! New uniforms, no problem!

Public HS you are limited to coaching the kids that just happen to be zoned to your school. There are dozens of sports but only a small percentage of the student body that is interested in athletics, so everyone is trying to get the same 80 kids out of 1500 student body. The administration is completely indifferent to your existence. They dont care if you win or lose, just dont be a problem. I lose more kids to the part time job than I do to other sports or injury or burn out.

My B.S. was in business administration, and I worked in that field, so applied in advance for that. My wife and I got teaching certificates in the state where we intended to move as a back-up. We moved, and had some job interviews shortly after arrival. I was hired by a financial services firm about five weeks after the move. Retired at the firm 24 years later. I think the skill set was interpersonal skills, teaching skills, and recruiting clients.

Also, I enjoyed my years of coaching, very rewarding. I am traveling this spring for a reunion with one of my teams. I am just glad I moved on to something I considered better for my family and my future.

I am an assistant at a power 5. I get paid well. The answer is becoming no. I used to justify it with "my kid is getting to do things that I dreamed about." Running around a college campus, growing up being able to play inside a college football stadium, playing basketball inside the arena. Some high level athletes become their big brothers and sisters

None of that *ish matters when the kid looks at you carrying out a suitcase every weekend and says "why do you have to go? I wish you didn't have to go every single weekend." That will tear your soul out man.

I left coaching just before my 30th birthday. I was a successful D3 coach who had a lower level D1 and mid level D2 coaching offers. The money at higher levels was still not going to help me pay off student loans and be able to live comfortably. At the time I was getting engaged and knew starting a family was in the future. The head coach of our program turned out to be a real jackass and really took the enjoyment out of it for me. Spending 50-60 hours a week coaching and recruiting, only to get cursed out in front of athletes when he's in a bad mood, can be a real joy! I ended up starting a career in a large urban fire department and have since been promoted several times, bolstering a very healthy six figure income and great benefits. My work schedule gives me four days a week off, as opposed to no days off. I'll be retired at 59 with a six figure pension and those same benefits, if I grace Earth long enough to see it.

I am forever grateful for the opportunity to watch my athletes accel and grow as adults. Some of those kids kept me going through some rough days in my life. I always viewed them as my little brothers and sisters. I miss coaching, but I can be a life coach for my own kids now. I stay involved from a distance now. I donate money to programs of my old friends and even get out to see them compete from time to time. I don't regret leaving coaching, though. Not one bit! My life is way more stable, sustainable, and enjoyable without that stress. Besides, kids are really soft these days. I don't know if my personality would fly in today's environment.

Also for anyone considering coaching, think about how much the NCAA environment has changed in the last 10 years.

Transfer portal, NIL, Covid Budget cuts, Cost of attendance, recruiting juniors, contact rules for recruiting, social media, mental health decline, conference realignment.

Depending on the University you are at, you may be on your own for ALL of these things.

Where I was, I did has distance for both genders, head XC assistance track. The practices and “coaching” were the easy part. What burnt me out were the constant issues with student athletes and recruits.

Eating disorders, severe mental health situations, suicide attempts, drug issues (all kids I didn’t recruit but inherited). Somehow that all falls on you, while recruiting and traveling ALL THE TIME.

I didn't coach but just in my 4 years of college I was very surprised at the turn over rate on the team. One girl ran off with her HS bf and got married, one girl was hospitalized with an eating disorder, one guy moved home because his college gf dumped him, two guys quit college because it just wasnt for them.. And that is just MY little team over a few years.

I can relate to this poster comment. I am a little too “old school.”

“I don't know if my personality would fly in today's environment.”

Thanks all for the input!

Let me second this. I started coaching 20+ years ago and the fact of the matter is, the job used to be lot more fun. The fun compensated for the long hours / low pay. Everyone (students, parents, admin) now expects coaches to be attentive to and ultimately responsible for all kinds of of-the-track issues. And it seems everyone has a complaint about something.

My first job was as a low-level assistant at a high-level DI program--half the time in the office we sat around, planning training programs and just talking track. Athletes hung out in the office just because they were bored and also wanted to talk track. We built relationships and fostered enthusiasm for the sport. (And if we had an athlete who was a negative force in the program, we could show him the door without worrying about backlash.) We did grind on recruiting, travel every weekend, and run 2-3 practices a day, but we didn't do much else. We also took 2 hour lunches or disappeared mid-day to go workout. We had fun. I never had to attend a compliance meeting, or for that matter ANY department-wide meeting.

My last few years as a coach, if an athlete dropped by, it was because of a problem and dealing with it meant I didn't finish whatever bs administrative task I was working on. I never had time during the day to run. If somebody wanted to waste time in the office, it was kind of fun, but I would also be irritated because I wasn't getting the bs done and would have to do it at night. (And good luck getting that bad apple out of your program--might want to have a lawyer available.)

I only watched my college coaches' trajectories plus that of a guy who gets mentioned on these boards as well as former running buddy who is still on the grind, but the sum of it all put me off aspiring to that career. It seems like the truth of it is that you can really only get freedom where there's low funding and expectations and that in order to move up to better pay and greater prestige you have to accept higher constraints and demands. There are exceptions to that, though they're rare. Now the trade-off is that you can get better recruits and help them to high levels of success, and winning is pretty fun. Of course, recruiting more Type A athletes means dealing with personality quirks and disorders (not to mention helicopter and bulldozer parents) with increasing frequency. NIL and transfer portal just gives them a lot more leverage to threaten you. Does someone like Wetmore really want to spend time trying to lure in the next Karas and Dathans just to have one or two transfer within the conference or region after one semester or, worse, go to the press with complaints of toxic culture? And honestly, the rule is you need lots of friends in high places just to get a foot in the door at the stepping stone programs to move to that level. If you're over a decade at one doormat program or another with an AD that would be just as happy to hire someone under 30 for even lower pay to run it then see the writing on the wall: that opportunity has long passed you by.