I’ve seen more announcements recently that are troubling to me: “I have resigned as Head Football Coach at…” “Citing personal reasons, Head Football Coach at… has stepped down.”

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These aren’t retirement celebrations. They’re quiet exits. And it should concern every administrator, school board member, and leader in this country.

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Because when good coaches walk away, the relationships, trust, and stability they built don’t always stay behind. And when that kind of impact disappears, the kind that marks athletes for life, it leaves a gap that’s hard to measure but impossible to ignore.

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The truth is, there aren’t many people who can do this job well. Not just teach the game, but lead with character, competence, care, and humility.

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So when the best step away, it doesn’t just thin the ranks. It shifts the standard. The people we need most are often the ones getting hit the hardest.

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And the loss isn’t just theirs. It’s ours.

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The Numbers Are Real. And They’re Rising.

In Texas alone, over 236 head football coach positions opened last season. That’s more than 20% turnover in a single year. The national picture isn’t much better: the NFHS reports coach attrition up 5% since 2020, and more than 50% of high school coaches now report moderate to high burnout.

I wrote this line in my closing, but I want to address a specific group of readers who may not make it to the end, so I am saying this here… “There are parents who will scoff at this. They’ll immediately deflect and say something bad about their kid’s coach. They are, in fact, the most significant part of the problem.”

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The Job Hasn’t Changed. Everything Around It Has

It’s not just the hours (though those are unsustainable). It’s the weight of the role: coach, mentor, administrator, fundraiser, brand manager, therapist.

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It’s not just burnout. It’s overload. And it’s cultural.

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Add to that the growing comfort of fans, and, at the high school level, often parents, to lash out publicly. Social media makes it easy. Too easy. A loss, a call they didn’t like, a season that didn’t meet expectations, and now it’s a post, a thread, a DM, a screenshot.

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And that weight doesn’t just hit the coach. Over my career, my wife and kids have heard some awful things said about me from the stands, even during four straight conference titles and part of the most successful run in that program’s 100-year history. It didn’t matter to some. They still made sure their words reached my family.

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Earlier this year, Savannah Tujague (daughter of a coach) reposted a powerful video from Chris Fowler with the comment: “This is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen.”

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The clip was about the human side of coaching, and how quickly we, as fans, are to forget it. And it adds up. Maybe the coach can handle it, but how much do they want their family to endure?

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I followed up her post with this:

“What is often overlooked by those who yell the loudest is that coaching is overwhelmingly a grassroots endeavor, not an elite profession.

Speaking in terms of football only, there are roughly 140,000 coaches across all levels in the U.S., but only about 0.5% work at the NFL or NCAA Power 4 level. The other 99.5% coach at the high school or small college level, where the pay is minimal and the work is a labor of love.”

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Fowler said it best:

“Coaching is a calling more than a profession… Most of them just want to help people. That’s the greatest joy they get out of it.”

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Even the strongest coaches can only carry so much when the noise gets louder than the support. Administrators feel that pressure too, not always from what’s true, but from how loud the discontent becomes.

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This is the new landscape. And it’s costing us the people we can least afford to lose.

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This Is More Than a Trend

Just scan X or LinkedIn: post after post from respected coaches quietly stepping down. Some cite personal reasons. Others don’t say much at all. But behind the silence, we know what’s happening:

• Overload: 50+ hour weeks. Teaching, planning, compliance, recruiting, managing parent expectations, and more.
• Culture stress: Work Ethic. Entitlement. Distraction. Commitment. Toughness. Admin pressure to win without investing in what it takes to get there.
• Personal toll: Coaches struggle to separate their job from their personal lives. And their families feel it.

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As Fowler said, the reasons coaches get into the profession are what every parent wants for their children. Many coaches are altruistic in their approach, wanting to use football as a vehicle to change lives. There are a lot of coaches who operate this way. They lead with heart. But the very thing that makes them great, that emotional investment, is also what makes it unsustainable.

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If they could only be disconnected, cold, or indifferent, it would help them. But because they care, the toll is heavier. 

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The Price of Losing Good Coaches

These aren’t just staffing changes. They’re culture shifts. Every time a respected coach walks away, a program loses continuity, mentorship, and trust. Players lose a stable adult figure. Communities lose a leader who often did more behind the scenes than most will ever know.

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And when replacements are rushed or underprepared? The cycle repeats. Shallow relationships. Lower standards. More exits. The downstream effect? It doesn’t stop with one season or one team.

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General H. Norman Schwarzkopf once said:

“The reason we have the greatest military in the world is that we’re the only nation that plays high school football.”

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He wasn’t talking about wins and losses. He was talking about grit. Discipline. The ability to lead and perform under pressure.

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That was over 30 years ago. And for a long time, it felt undeniably true. But in recent years, it’s become harder to say that with the same confidence.

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Not because the game has changed, but because the people who make it matter are being worn down or driven out.

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When you lose good coaches, you lose the very people responsible for building those traits in the next generation.

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This isn’t just about the future of sports.

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It’s about the future of leadership in classrooms, communities, and every corner of society, which depends on young people showing up with courage, character, and commitment.

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And when the people best equipped to develop walk away, we all feel the loss, whether we realize it now or not, until it’s too late.

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What Needs to Change

We can’t fix everything overnight. But we can stop pretending it’s not happening.

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This is not sustainable. Support for coaches is not optional. Coach well-being must become part of how we measure success.

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Coaches who read this will nod. They’ve felt it. They’ve lived it.

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There are parents who will scoff at this. They’ll immediately deflect and say something bad about their kid’s coach. They are, in fact, the most significant part of the problem.  (Am I right?) But here’s the truth: when we get this right, we’ll outlast you by coaching your kids to be better when it’s their turn.

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Administrators will say they’re overworked. Under pressure. And they are. But I ask you, what’s the mission? If administrators lose track of the mission, and parents lose trust in the process, who is left to carry the culture forward?

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If the best coaches are walking away not because they failed, but because they cared too much, what does that say about what we’ve built?

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Final Thought: This Isn’t Just a Sports Story

This is a national story. A leadership story. A youth development story. And yes, our country depends on it. If we care about our kids, we have to care about the people we’ve asked to lead them. That means more than a stipend and a handshake. It means real support. Real structure. Real protection.

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Let’s stop losing our best people. Let’s start building programs that they can stay in. Not just for their sake, but for the generations they’re shaping.