Do you need to be a teacher to coach HS football?

As coach said, for public schools, it is almost always mandated in the teacher contracts that any extracurricular must be given to a qualified member of that "bargaining group" before anyone else can be considered. If no qualified applicants come from that group then you would have a chance. Even if you are an assistant coach in a school for years, if there is another teacher (or incoming teacher) who is qualified and applies for the job, they'll most likely get it. Private schools, however, can play by their own rules. Private schools can offer whoever a job whenever they want to. Now often they will follow certain protocols--whether written or unwritten, but they don't usually have the same constraints in hiring processes as public schools. If you keep at it, and stay patient, something may very well fall into your lap, though.

That being said, if that opportunity does come up, you have to make sure that you have coaches in the school--whether they be teachers, custodians, whatever. I think it is of utmost importance that there be someone in the school that the kids can see on a daily basis otherwise issues can come up and they become bigger than they need to be simply because there was no one there to see it coming/head it off. There may be other coaches that disagree with me, but in my experience those programs that have no coaches in the building start to fall apart because that glue of the coach's presence is not there...the most successful programs often have many, if not all, of their coaches in the building. You have to remember, you are dealing with high schoolers. Personally I don't think I could accept a head coaching position where I was not in the building. I think that relationship with the players is that important.

Well said, Bill.

Thank you very much for the responses!

I didn't realized most schools followed that sort of protocol. I feel like if I managed to get myself onto a great coaches staff, and worked my way up to the top, someone would eventually take notice. Maybe a private school would be more likely. If it came down to it though, I'd be more than willing to leave any profession to get my M.A.C. (Masters of Arts with 6-12 certification) and be a head coach.

Blue

Support for football teams can be really different in different places as well. When I started I was fortunate enough to get a job coaching in a very large school in NC, coaching was a HUGE part of what was expected of me as a teacher, I have since moved to western NY and teaching is very much my primary responsibility. Support for football is nowhere near what we had in Carolina. I absolutely loved coaching down there, but the pay was really bad, 25% of my salary went for student loans and I found myself teaching, coaching 2 sports and working at a learning center just to make ends meet. It was great when I was fresh out of college and single, I lived in a shack and had enough money for an eight piece box of Bojangles and some beer, but once I met my wife priorities changed, she wanted crazy stuff like a stove and heat in the winter. Sometimes I think if I would have been doing something other than teaching I could have stayed down there, but I never would have gotten my coaching job to begin with.

greenenough,

Sorry if I asked before, where do you coach up here? Send me a PM if you do not want to post it publicly.

-Scott