Steve Axman via Coaches Choice Football Coaching Library
Success, in a basic form, is the systematic, progressive, and quantitative achievement or accomplishment of a goal or goals. The concept of goal represents something that you want, or need, your program to do or have. The systematic, progressive, and quantitative achievement or accomplishment of a goal is represented by a plan to achieve or accomplish what you desire for your program and a course of action that produces an earnest attempt to reach such desired team and program results.
The achievement of your ultimate program goal, or goals, may be the major target of your success attempts. However, you must also learn to never overlook all of the benefits of the smaller achievements your program may accrue along its success journey. To delay the joy and gratification of the results of hard work, sacrifice, and the overcoming of adversity, persistence, and determination along the road to success would be a big mistake. In reality, it is often the conglomeration of your program’s many success journeys that may very well help to make up the essence of your program’s total success.
It is also important to note that success certainly goes far beyond the simplified definition of success being the achievement of desires and set goals. Success can become a very special place, a state of being, a spirit, whether it’s for an individual, an organization, a team, or a football program. It becomes a process of living your life to the fullest, applying your gifts and talents with energy and excitement. It refuses to give up, rebounds from failures and contributes to life in the things you choose to do.
Very specific, lofty goals such as league or conference championships, state championships, play-off appearances, and bowl games may very well be the obvious apex of the goals a football program might set for itself. However, you should keep in mind that success also deals with the earnest efforts to achieve other meaningful and satisfying goals that are worthwhile to achieve in relation to all of the people, all of the coaches, players, and support staff that makes up the total program constituency that your program may touch.
As Nebraska’s Tom Osborne has said, true success is how you did with what you had. It’s how you did it and how you went about it in regard to the relationship with others that really counts. Yes, coaches may, very well, seem to be judged on their won-loss record and their number of championships when it comes to keeping their jobs. However, success also becomes the realization and achievement of the worthwhile in relation to the interaction with the people that surround a program and the worldly, daily environment with which your program interacts.
Wins and losses may, very well, seem to be where it’s at. However, receiving a thank-you phone call 10 or 12 years down the road from a player who you, or your program, stuck with through immature growing pains as a student and person and is now a loving husband and father and a productive member of society is also success—deep, meaningful success. Successful people, successful organizations, successful football programs strive to reach their highest levels of self-actualization in becoming all they are capable of being by embracing worthwhile challenges and pursuing their own excellence.
You can find out more about and purchase the eBook that this article is from at: 101 Concepts for a Successful Football Program