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Coaching & Officiating

Professor Buchanan
Joey Gass
3-16-2016

Ethics in Coaching: Coach Interviews

As I thought through the list of coaches I have played under, that I could possibly
interview, two influential figures came to mind. My senior high school football coach, Angelo
Cox; and my junior high school football coach, my father, Joe Gass. I picked these two coaches
because they are both men of great integrity and spiritual influence. They both have been
amazing coaches for me, both with the ability to get the very best out of me on and off the
football field. I chose Coach Cox as my coach that knows the Xs and Os and makes very ethical
decisions with his team. I chose my father because he was a great leader with good moral
principles, but he wasnt always the most knowledgeable person when it came to strategy of the
game. Both of these men were and are great influences in my life, so I chose to interview them
for this ethics in coaching assignment.
I interviewed my father because he is a very ethical leader, and although he doesnt know
everything about the strategy of the sports he coached (football, soccer, baseball) he was a great
coach to his players including myself. Early in his coaching career he was just a volunteer for his
childrens sporting teams. He was my coach for my first season of sports ever, playing soccer,
like so many young children do. He would always see parent-coaches in the league playing their
children the entire game, leaving less skilled players on the bench just to win games. My father
was not a big fan of this strategy. He saw the bigger picture of youth sports, especially kids aged
5-8 years old, and that is to give all the kids on the team a chance to play and get better. No one

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really cares how many wins a recreational youth soccer team gets. All that really matters is
helping kids get better by giving everyone on the team playing time in a competitive
environment, and my father understood this philosophy. To prove his point to the rest of the
coaches in the league he would sit me, his son and best player on the team, longer than most kids
on the team. He played everyone an equal amount for the most part but sat me as an example for
the rest of the league. At the time I thought this was unfair and sucked, but now I understand why
he did it. He earned the respect of all the parents of the kids on the team because they knew I
should have played a lot more based on talent level, but the parents of the less talented athletes
appreciated my father for caring about and coaching everyone equally without bias. A quote from
the New York Rangers director of personnel, Tom Renney, states Never underestimate the
value of compassion, honesty, and trust in dealing with your athletes.(Janssen & Dale, Page
18) My father was certainly coaching with these principals in mind and it resulted in much
respect from the parents and from young athletes on his team.
Later in my fathers coaching career he was a coach for the Lake Norman Storm, a homeschool travel football team in a league full of the same type of teams. We would travel far and
wide for games against these teams. This league had teams from 3 states: South Carolina, North
Carolina, and Tennessee. It was a very competitive league and although all of these coaches were
volunteers it was a full-time job for my father and the other coaches. All the coaches on staff had
children playing on the team except for the teams varsity head coach and general manager,
Chuck Whittington, who had no other invested interest in the team except for his love of the kids
and of the game. My father was the head coach of the Junior Varsity team and he was very much
so a player friendly coach. He would ask his players for input on strategy. He trusted us so much
that he allowed us to create and run plays ourselves. Players like myself and our quarterback,

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Randy Schroeder, would use plays we learned from Madden, a football videogame, practice
them and then use them in the games and we were very successful my final year of junior varsity
football. My fathers approach of trusting us with the strategy, as he led us as a spiritual and
motivational leader, paid off when we won the regular season and playoff conference
championship in 2010. It was a special year as our team bonded together as brothers and used
our tight team relationship to combat and defeat the rest of the league. It goes to show that the
most knowledgeable coaches can lose to coaches who know less about the game if they dont
create good team chemistry and an environment where the players feel respected. A quote by
Dean Smith (Former UNC mens basketball coach) states, I think it is extremely important to
have the respect of the players. (Janssen & Dale, page 18). My father certainly earned the
respect of his players and it resulted in a championship, as well as molding boys into young men.
Coach Angelo Cox was one my coaches at Southlake Christian Academy during my
senior year of high school football, when I transferred there for another senior year to play. He
didnt coach my position or even my side of the ball. I was a running back on offense and he was
a defensive backs coach, but he made it very clear to everyone on the team that he was there to
support every player. Coach Cox is a very spiritual man and he was very open in sharing the
gospel of the Bible to our team. During my interview with him I asked him what got him into
coaching and his response was God gave me the gift (a calling) to develop young men, because
I enjoy interacting in the lives of young men and leading them to salvation through Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Savior, by walking in faith and not just talking about it. Coaching was the best
way for Coach Cox to accomplish this goal as he was a college baseball player and enjoyed
sports.

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I experienced the love of God through Coach Cox on a personal level. During my final
season of football I had fallen into an emotional state of depression for circumstances I would
prefer to not talk about. My head coach didnt seem to care about my personal life, just my
performance on the field. I would continue to show up to school, practice and games in terrible
moods until one day Coach Cox approached me. He had noticed that I was down and confronted
me about my issues. I tried to shake him off but he cared so much about me as a person that he
wouldnt leave me alone until I would open up about my internal struggle. He would talk to me
every day and I slowly began to open up to him about my problems. He would let me know that
God had bigger and better plans for me than I could imagine and that life is hard but we get
stronger through our struggles. This man saved my life from spiraling into a deep dark place in
which I dont know what terrible things may have happened. I will forever be grateful for the
perseverance this man put into me during the darkest point of my life.
During this season there were multiple other problems that plagued the team as a result of
our head coach, Coach Bub, having a son on the team (a freshman). He had also brought in some
young, talented, freshman that were hot prospects for college football. Coach Bub was very
knowledgeable of the game of football because he had played college football himself when he
was younger. He designed some great concepts for our team to be successful on the field.
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf said, Leadership is a potent combination of strategy
and character. But if you must be without one, be without strategy. (Janssen & Dale, page 71)
Unfortunately in the end we found out that Coach Bub lacked the character needed to be a good
leader. He was a slimy business man and you could never really tell what he was cooking up
behind the scenes, but a lot of us on the team knew there were problems with him as the coach.

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We had a lot of talented seniors that year, including myself, that were underutilized
because these freshman Coach Bub brought in were taking reps away from us seniors. Everyone
on the team knew that the seniors gave us the best chance of winning but Coach Bub was more
concerned about his child and his friends getting scholarships than the success of our team.
Coach Bub is the type of man that wont take no for an answer. He wanted his son to play college
football and he was going to do everything in his power to get him there. In the book, the ethics
of sports coaching, chapter 10 discusses coaching and the ethics of youth talent identification. A
portion of this chapter talks about luck [hard luck: physical attributes (mostly uncontrollable) &
soft luck: luck that can be modified based on circumstance] (Hardman and Jones, page160).
Coach Bub was determined to manipulate this soft luck at all costs to gift his son with all
opportunities to impress college coaches, even at the cost of his integrity. Even though these
freshman did not perform as well as they needed to for us to win, it didnt really matter to Coach
Bub. We seniors were getting tired of the crap and so was Coach Cox, so he dug deeper into the
situation.
At the end of the season Coach Cox found out that Coach Bub and his associates
(statisticians who also had kids on the team) were boosting the stats that were recorded for his
son and a couple other individuals in his inner circle. His sons stats were falsely recorded so that
colleges would think he was doing amazing when in reality he did not produce the work that was
reported in the stat book. Coach Cox found out about this secret plot and knew this was wrong,
so he confronted Coach Bub about it. Coach Bub denied the accusations even though there was
video evidence to prove that he was falsely reporting higher statistics for his son and some others
to the paper and college coaches. Coach Cox then took his case to the administration of the
school and they backed up Coach Bub regardless of the immoral lies he was reporting in his self-

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interest. Coach Cox left the team and eventually the school as a result of the lack of integrity that
they showed in handling this dilemma. Coach Cox is now the head football coach at Statesville
Christian School, where he strives to do more than just win ball games and get kids scholarships.
His coaching style is based around his love of the Lord and his priority is to teach his players the
love of Christ and how to live for Him in everyday life and in football. He preaches three key
components to his players: 1) Success starts on your knees, this means that in order to be
successful in football and life you must start by giving your time to the Lord in prayer. 2) Give
your best effort in the classroom and in everyday life outside of football. 3) Give your best effort
on the field. These components of structure he teaches his athletes hasnt given them the best
record as they lost almost every game in his first season coaching this start up program, but he is
changing the lives of these kids on the team and Im sure that the parents of these kids are very
appreciative of the life lessons being taught to their sons by Coach Cox.

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References

Hardman, A. R., & Jones, C. (2011). The ethics of sports coaching. Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Janssen, J., & Dale, G. A. (2002). The seven secrets of successful coaches: How to
unlock and unleash your team's full potential. Cary, NC: Winning The Mental Game.