Does Playing Madden Video Games Qualify You to Coach?

Coach Rick at half time in the Falconz first ever football game.  Falconz won 52-0.

by MICHAEL RAMOS

There's an odd feeling that comes with being dismissed as a coach. It's not unlike being dumped.

Twice as a football coach, I've been asked not to return to a team. Once after taking a near-winless team to the verge of a league title.

The coach who replaced me got his plays from a John Madden video game. But he was more qualified because he was a local. He lived in the same area as most of the parents. He got cozy with them, and promised their kids could play whatever positions parents wanted.

None of those qualifications helped him the next season, when I came back coaching a new team. We beat them by five touchdowns, while keeping their offense scoreless.

Sometimes, people don’t know what qualified truly means.

The University of Michigan just found out the hard way. They fired Rich Rodriguez because he wasn't a “Michigan Man". He was considered an outsider since he didn’t develop within Michigan’s storied program.

So the Wolverines hired a coach with Michigan ties. And this year, they finished with a losing record of 5-7, and fired the coach they brought in to replace Rodriguez.

Meanwhile, the University of Arizona, Rodriguez' new team, just won the competitive Pac 12 South, beating out teams like Arizona State, USC and UCLA.

If there's a downside to coaching, it's coaches being run off because they don't "fit in", whatever that means.  As a result, a lot of qualified coaches leave the game. That leaves more PlayStation-coaches, and more "hit- something" coaches. Players suffer, and the game suffers.

Coaching is more than copying a playbook from a video game. It's more than kids playing quarterback because that's what dad wants him to play. Decisions coaches make can't always be popular.

Coaching is about communicating a philosophy players can learn. It's about helping them file the knowledge away and recall it when needed (when to pick up a fumble and return it versus when to fall on it).

Coaching is about putting players in a position to be successful.

If you have a suck-up coach, chances are you’re going to suck. If you’re getting rid of coaches for reasons other than poor coaching, or a hostile situation, your team is going to struggle. There are examples of this all over the sports landscape.

Falconz coaches are an interesting mix. We’ve got coaches who have played at the highest levels, we’ve got coaches with little experience. We even have JoeWesley, a coach who gets so fired up he used to head-butt players before games.

Our coaches are not from one particular background, team owner Hoki Jolley didn’t choose us because we were all best friends.

We weren’t chosen because we were part of a system, she allowed us to create the system.

 The scoreboard can decide whether or not the right coaches are in place.