LSU Tigers - Coaches Leading LSU to the National Championships

Life is about competition. We work our way to meet our goals. It is not an easy ride but it is something that we must do in order to progress. Everyday we go to school to be competitive in our future jobs. In our everyday jobs, we work our way to get a promotion and a salary raise. However, we do not do it alone. There will always be people who will take part in keeping us on track with our everyday challenges just to reach the end goal. Sometimes, those people are whom we call our guardians, our parents, our counselors or even our life coach.

In sports, whether team or individual, there will always be one person or more to watch out for the team. Of course, they do not act as a police patrol to keep reprimanding the team what not to do. However, they are there to discipline, train and keep the team on track with their goal to win the championship match in every league they join. One of the sports that have many coaches is football. A team full of big and tough men needs more than one person to handle them. However, there will be only one coach that manages the team overall and they are the head coaches.

Let us now look at the coaches of the LSU Tigers football team, who helped them win national championships.

1. Paul Dietzel- He led the team to win National Championships way back 1958. Coaching for this time was one of the best years he had. American Football Coaches Association and Football Writers Association of America named him National Coach of the Year at the time they won the National Championships. He loved the team so much and led them to become the number one in the country. He quoted, "I never considered going anywhere else because I thought LSU was the best coaching job in America"

2. Nick Saban- He was the head coach of the team from 2000-2004. He made history when he led the team to win their second National Championships in 2003.

3. Les Miles- He is the current head coach of the team. He has been helping the team to perform at their best whether it is nationals or just SEC championships. One of his greatest achievements was to lead the team to win the BCS National Title Game last year. It is one of the most important events in the history of LSU Tigers as he made this team the only team to win two BCS national championship titles.

In the field of sports, coaches play a vital role in winning. They can see through the strengths and weaknesses of every player and use that to create a successful play. You can love the most valuable player in the team but in the hearts of the players, they know they were not alone in winning. Great football coaches serve different teams across America and it happened that LSU was blessed enough to make great college football history with their coaches.

Freddie Brister is a huge fan of the SEC and the LSU Tigers. His love for the game of football started with an older brother passing the pigskin around in the backyard with cousins and neighborhood friends. He later played in high school, college and coached high school football for 25 years, before retiring to write for Sports Fan Treasures. Check out his LSU Belt or his BYU Blanket.

How to "Communicate" Your Way to Championships in Youth Football

Effective Communication is Coaching

Many of you come to this site seeking ways to improve yourselves as youth football coaches and many come here to gain advantages on strictly an X's and O's standpoint.
Unfortunately, X's and O's are only part of the puzzle in developing a competitive youth football team. There are many other factors you need to consider and be competent with in order to get the most out of your team including: setting priorities, effectively communicating with your players and practice methodology to name just a few.

How Some of The All Time Greats Did It

Some of the greatest coaches of all time were considered to be X's and O's geniuses like College Football Hall of Fame coach Tom Osborne. While many of Coach Osborne's former players marvel at his playcalling expertise, they also talk quite a bit about Osbornes ability to communicate with his players.

Here are some tips Coach Osborne used to keep his kids grounded. This certainly applies to us youth football coaches as well:

The Tom Osborne Way

During Osbornes 25 year tenure as head football coach, his teams AVERAGED 10 wins per year, never won less than 9 games every year, were in a "real" Bowl game all 25 years, were in the AP top 25 every week of those 25 years with the exception of 3 weeks and won 3 National Championships. They were the model of consistency, like the good old Maytag WashinG Machine. But one "record" most people don't know about: During those 25 years, his teams lost only once to a team that ended up with a losing record. His teams did that just once in over 300 games, an amazing feat in any era at any level of football coaching.

How to Maintain Consistency

How did he maintain this consistency so well for so long?

According to several of his former players, they never saw coach get too excited after a win or too low after a loss. One example would be the breathtaking last second win over Missouri in 1997, you know "The Catch" where NU drove 67 yards with no timeouts in the last 1:06 to tie the game on the last play of the game on a pass play, "99 Double Slant", that bounced off one player into the hands of Matt Davison for the whacky last second score to tie the game. NU went on to win that game on a Scott Frost run in overtime.

Osborne's reaction to the play; nothing much, he did say something to Matt Davison as Matt recalls vividly. Matt was walking onto the team bus after the game, he was nearly the last player on, as you would guess he had lots of interviews that day. As Matt passed Coach Osborne sitting in his customary front row bus seat, Coach said softly in a monotone to Matt "nice catch". That was it, no big deal, bigger fish to fry and on to the National Title game. Of course now when he sees Matt 10 years later, using his dry sense of humor, Coach will often send Matt off with the same monotone phrase "nice catch."

While the NU fans were celebrating and making plans for another New Years Day National Championship game, Osborne was doing one of his infamous post game talks with his players. As was the case after every game, he first talked about the good things that the team did in detail and then went into depth of what they needed to work on to correct the mistakes they made in that game. Nearly every week the list of things to work on seemed much larger than the list of things they did well. It didn't matter if the final score was 42-35 or 69-7, he always had the same routine. He always had the kids thinking specifics about what they had to improve on before the next game. Coach never let his kids get too full of themselves. Maybe this was why in 25 years his kids lost just once to a team with a losing record.

In stark contrast to that story, is this years Nebraska team which started off 4-1. The team and coaching staff heard a lot of criticism especially after a come from behing one point win against Ball State, a team they gave up over 600 yards to. This was not a one game deal as the Huskers had looked slow, outcoached and outhustled in 4 of those first 5 games. The mantra from the coaches and players was; "We are 4-1, we are 4-1, we are 4-1 and rated, who cares how many yards we are giving up, we are winning." Needless to say the NU defense ended up at seasons end being ranked 114th in the country and the NU team ended up 5-7. It matters how you are playing, the wins and loses will take care of themselves and if you are giving up 600 yards a game the losses will eventually come.

My Youth Football Coaching Verison of the Story

While I would never ever compare myself to Coach Osborne, we do use some of those same communication strategies when coaching youth football. If you do have the luxury of watching your own team on film you WILL find that even if you play what you think is a fantastic game, when you break the game down, your team won't look as great as you thought they did. The same is true in a loss, rarely does your team look as bad on film as you remember them playing in the loss.

The 2003 Season Example

While I try to stay as positive as I can during post-game, I remember one game against the Boys Club in 2003 where it was tough to do with my age 8-10 team. We won the game 34-6 but we just didn't look sharp, we made too many mistakes and we didn't play near to our teams potential. Some people looked at me cross eyed when my post game talk after that game centered on what we needed to do to get better, rather than basking in the success of our 4 touchdown win. I wasn't happy at all and I let the kids and coaches know it. I had learned my lesson well, the year earlier my team had cruised to an 11-0 League Title only to lose our final game in a blowout Bowl Game loss to Plattsmouth. We had gotten complacent and full of ourselves and failed to improve the last 3 weeks of the year. The last 3 weeks we won in blowouts, but we didn't get any better those last 3 weeks.

The week after our "horrifying" 34-6 win over the Boys Club, my 2003 team worked real hard and tried to correct the numerous mistakes we had made in that game. We even scrimmaged an age 11-12 team to bring us back down to earth. The net result was we won our League Championship game 46-12 over a team we had down 46-0 in the third quarter and won the State Title as well. We then went on to beat an undefeated League Champion Team from Iowa in a Bowl Game under the lights on the field turf at the University of Nebraska Omaha stadium.

This was a huge age 11-12 team vs my age 8-10 "Select" team. The odds were stacked heavily against us. I think what kept us grounded, focused and improving every week in spite of blowout wins every game, was my consistent pursuit of perfection. We were striving to have our kids play to their true potential, not the artificial potential of just winning a silly game. Playing to potential should be the goal, regardless of the final score. Win or lose, that's the goal for us, the final score tells just a small part of the story of how your team did that game

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Dave Cisar-

Dave has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn develop teams that are competitive. His teams have won over 94% of their games in 5 different leagues. He is a Nike "Coach of the Year" designate and his book has been enforsed by Tom Osborne.

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Youth Football - Why Being Different Leads to Championships When Coaching Youth Football

Being Different Pays When Coaching Youth Football

While youth football and college football are worlds apart in many ways, there certainly are some similarities. How many of you are following what Paul Johnson is doing at Georgia Tech this year? Many "experts" said Johnson's Flexbone option attack would never work at the big DI level. Never mind that Johnson was hugely successful with this attack at Georgia Southern, winning two Division IAA National Championships and going 62-10 in six seasons there. Never mind that Johnson then went to Navy and using the very same offense, guided Navy to its first winning season in 14 years. His teams went 45-29 at Navy, which is a miracle turnaround compared to the 72-148 record compiled by his 4 predecessors. Mind you Navy has some serious personnel constraints due to their Military Academy status and the fact the kids have to meet very high academic and character standards as well as serve 4 years in the Service once their college playing days are over, Oh yeah, by the way, we are at war.

Georgia Tech and Paul Johnson

In Johnson's first season at Georgia Tech, his team is on the cusp of winning an ACC Title and is at 9-3. He is doing it with the exact same offense he ran at Southern and Navy, the option. He is doing this in his very first season with a team that was recruited to play a completely different offense. His quarterback is not an option quarterback, his linemen aren't option linemen. Heck his starting left offensive tackle started the season as a slot back and has never played the line at any level of football, even in his Pee Wee days. Georgia Tech also has very high admission standards that other schools aren't constrained with. Did any of you see Tech just blow out Miami and all the top talent the Hurricanes had amassed on defense, or how about the 45 points they put on SEC power Georgia last week? What Johnson has done is nothing short of amazing.

What Does This Mean for the Youth Football Coach?

But the question is why is he so successful and how can I use that information to my advantage when I'm coaching youth football? One huge reason his teams are so successful no matter where he goes is; Johnson runs a system no one else runs anymore. Teams just aren't used to defending the option. Miami and Georgia, both teams loaded with High School All-Americans and Rivals top 10 Recruiting classes, looked completely lost against Johnson's offense. These college defenses are used to seeing the spread offense or versions of it nearly every week. The defensive schemes and techniques they use to shut down the spread teams are much different than what you use to effectively play a well executing option team.

In fact some of the read and react concepts a 3 technique defensive tackle uses to defend the option are 100% contrary to what this player has learned and practiced for in the last 9 months. So you get one week to retrain that defensive tackle to "forget" what he has learned the previous 9 months and to react perfectly to his option reads in split second real time. Oh yeah lets not forget that you also have to retrain your force and alley defenders as well and remember Tech does throw a descent play action pass when you least expect it as well. That is why you see Georgia Tech going on drives where they get plays of 2 yards, 5, 8, -1, 8, 3,2,2,7, 2, 50. The defense just has a heck of a time staying perfect with their reads being done in split seconds, using techniques and schemes they use for just 1 week per year. Just one wrong read and boom it's a huge gain or 6 points.

Execution

Another thing Johnson's teams do is execute. Against Miami, Tech ran the midline option at least 22 times, in one drive sequence they ran the same midline option play 3 times in row. In the Tech and Miami games about 90% of Techs offense was the true triple option, midline and a little bit of rocket to keep the edges honest. Yes, just 3 football plays but the execution was flawless, the downfield and perimeter blocking was incredible.

Player Talent Available

Johnson also is a realist. At Navy and Georgia Tech, is he really going to be able to recruit the best passing Quarterbacks in the country? You know the 5 star kid being recruited by USC or Texas ? Is he really going to get a kid like that to go to Navy or Tech? How about that 5 star 300 lb Offensive Lineman? Is he going to get that kid over LSU or

Oklahoma? Heck at Navy they wouldn't even admit a 300 lb kid. So Johnson chose a system that allowed him to be successful with the grouping of kids he was realistically going to get.

Here in Nebraska the Huskers are set to play on January 1 in the Gator Bowl. Who does this team NOT want to play? I guarantee you it is the Georgia Tech Yellowjackets. Even with a month of preparation time, NU would much rather face another spread attack, We love the option here in Nebraska and we love to watch Johnson's offense, but we definitely do NOT want to see it being run against us.

Applying This to Your Youth Football Team

What does this mean to the local youth football coach? Should you shuck your current offense and sell out to an option attack? I'm not sure. I coached Nebraska style "I" option football for 7 years at the youth level. We did fairly well for 4 of those 7 seasons, winning 2 League Titles. But when I didn't have a smart and athletic Quarterback and a difference maker at Tailback, we struggled ( really need to have 2 good Quarterbacks in that offense). I just couldn't count on having that type of talent every year when I coached non-select teams. I also didn't want to practice 5 nights a week anymore, we wanted to go to a 3 nights a week format.

What Johnson's offense means to you is you should consider running something that you have the talent and time for as well as something that is different than what everyone else in your league is running. It means you should perfect a handful or complementary series based football plays that put the defense in conflict. It means you don't run 40-60 plays in some disjointed playbook. These are some of the main reasons we run the Single Wing offense with our youth football teams. Less than 3% of youth football teams are running this offense. Your opponents just are not used to defending this attack and some of the unique series or blocking schemes we use like the full spin, half spin, wedge, jet, traps etc Most youth football teams have lots of "I", Pro, Spread, "Multiple" and even Wishbone or Double Wing teams, but how many Single Wing teams do you see? Very very few. It's a series based offense based on putting a defense in conflict and execution, it isn't an offense that relies on great talent making huge plays.

So all the "experts" and naysayers have been proven wrong so far about Paul Johnson. That "%$3&' won't work in big time DI football, they said. You don't see the pros run it they said. Same goes for the Single Wing, we are seeing it with more and more High School teams as well as of course Florida and Mississippi in the SEC and of course now in the NFL with the Dolphins and Ravens. Hopefully the Single Wing won't get too popular, because how effective can you really be running what everyone else is running unless you have the very best players? How much fun would that be? It would all be about recruiting or drafting players and very little to do with coaching.

Dave Cisar-

Dave is a Nike "Coach of the Year" Designate and speaks nationwide at Coaches Clinics. His book "Winning Youth Football a Step by Step Plan" was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington. His personal teams using this system to date have won 90% of their games in 5 Different Leagues.

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