Football
Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Presents
Off the Field, brought to you by Varsity Gold, heads into Week 2 of the 2003 football season with an exclusive interview with Hillsboro Head Football Coach Ron Aydelott (Personal Profile).
Coach Ron Aydelott
(OTF) Was there a point in time when you decided to become a head coach, or was it a gradual decision?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) I always thought that I wanted to be a baseball coach, and I must have fallen and hit my head. I played football in high school, and always enjoyed the game. I got one offer to play in college, and that was to Austin Peay. The coach was fired and they didn't keep any of us. I always loved baseball, and got some offers to play at some small colleges. I became a head baseball coach when I was 26 years old. It didn't fulfill my needs. But I had always coached football. I just fell in love with it.
I liked football. It is more like chess, more strategy. You get up one week for one game, versus baseball in which you may play two-to-three times a week. The mental toughness of the kids wasn't the same. I'm not saying that baseball players are not mentally tough. But football is a tough game. I think the game of football fits my needs better than baseball did. It's one of those things that removed the parental portion of it.
Football is not something that everyone knows well, and the players are not getting as much advice at home. I'm not sure everyone knows as much about baseball as they think they do, but baseball lends itself to be that type of game. Football is a team-oriented game. I like that aspect of it. More than one person can dominate. I felt as though baseball could be dominated by great pitching. Football is more of a team effort, conditioning and strategy. The kids believe in one purpose.
(OTF) How would you describe your coaching philosophy?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) First of all, I think you have to be comfortable with yourself...with what you believe. For instance, I don't think you make a rule simply because you saw that a Schembechler or Shula made it. I learned those things from Bennie Monroe and other great coaches I worked with in Florida. I think that was the key to me becoming a football coach. I was around guys who coached in college and the upper levels in high school.
If a rule is going to be made, it has to be important to you in order to enforce it. If it is not important, it is just a rule that is there to be broken because you will not enforce it. I think you make the rules simple. It has to be things that you can live with. For instance long hair. Does long hair upset you? Earrings, etc.
Things like loafing in practice, not being on time. Those are things that are important to me. Those are things that are important to everyone. But someone may say, I want this kid to look this way. Maybe that is important, and I may be missing the boat.
I think it is a two-way street today. Kids have to know that you will be there for them when things don't go well. If you are expecting them to do things for you and your team, then you also have to be there for them.
You have to surround yourself with great help. In high school, that is hard to do because of the pay and the teaching positions. It is hard to find smart, young, and energetic, or anyone who is energetic, young or old because of what we get paid. If that is not bad enough, then the commitment level of all the people you are trying to do this for is nil -- the administrators, the community, etc. But when you are winning, everyone wants to be a part of it. When it comes to helping the program out, they are reluctant to do anything.
It is tough to deal with all that.
(OTF) Are you saying that because of the low pay, you have a lousy staff?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) No! I have a great staff. I am very lucky to have them because of all the things we work against. I believe that we have the best staff in Metro and Middle Tennessee. I am not the best coach in the state of Tennessee. But with our staff, I feel as though we can compete with anyone knowledge-wise that we play against.
Just because teams are winning games doesn't mean that they have great coaching. Having great Xs and Os is not great coaching. Having kids who play hard for you is great coaching. That is acquired by being consistent with kids. Not all kids are treated the same. I don't believe that you can do that. You've got to leave kids some room to wiggle, especially the type of kids we deal with. You can't stick them in a corner, unless you want them to be in the corner. You apply pressure when you feel as though they are not providing good things for the program. You only put them in a corner because you don't want them around anymore.
(OTF) Gene Stallings said that every team has great Xs and Os.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) At their level (college) they do. At our level, that is not always true. When you get to play where you want to play...deep in the playoffs, districts, regions...most everyone does know Xs and Os.
In high school you have the limitations of athletic ability because quote unquote, "we supposedly take whoever walks in the door." Some people do, some people don't. But you are at the mercy of your talent level. Knowledge-wise, the Xs and Os, especially after you have played someone for years, and they know you and you know them, there are very few secrets. That's not to say you might not do something that will surprise someone initially.
(OTF) Some teams have offensive and defensive philosophies.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) I think that is very important.
(OTF) Some people would say that Hillsboro has a Wing-T philosophy.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) I think we are grounded in Wing-T. There are fewer and fewer collegiate teams running the Wing-T, and they are probably dying out each day. We feel as though it is our system. But the Wing-T has had to take on entities to survive defenses. We feel as though we try to do that. We don't feel as though we are one-dimensional, although we have migrated to a heavy running game. I would say that all successful championship football teams must have the ability to run the football. I think that they do a better job, well I know they do a better job of equalizing it. They put a better percentage of passing plays into their game plan. But you must be able to run the football.
(OTF) If you had a young Dan Marino, would you put him in a Wing-T, or would you change your offense?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) His high school coach is actually the coordinator at Carnegie Mellon, which is a Wing-T team. A.J. Suggs at Georgia Tech was a Wing-T quarterback. Rich Gannon was at Delaware and a Wing-T quarterback. So, I think it lends itself to great athletes. I think Dan Marino was a great athlete. He was not always immobile as he was later in his professional career. I think it lends itself to a mobile quarterback. But I think it is like anything else. I think great athletes will rise and do well in any system.
Wing-T is described as a system that helps teams with lesser ability. But I contend that the better the ability, the better the offense should be. At the high school level in all states, there have been many, many championships won at different levels by Wing-T football teams.
The thing about the offense is that it is a system. It is not just a conglomeration of plays or a cluster of plays. It is a system that feeds off a series of plays. The system consists of being able to put people in formation, to be able to run plays out of a particular series: inside, outside, to have counters off of it and to pass off of it. That is a system.
As I watch the collegiate and professional games, I believe there are less and less offensive systems that are used. I believe Nebraska has a system. Georgia Southern has a system. Air Force has a system. There are certain places that have systems. Other people are running a multitude of plays put into a playbook, and trying to do everything.
(OTF) Do you buy into the theory that once a high school player plays in the spread type of offense, that he will never want to play in the Wing-T again? In other words, they will have more fun in the passing, open type of offense?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) That may be true for kids who do it. But I still don't believe that football games are won with basketball types of kids. I believe that football games are won on the line of scrimmage. You can never take the physical part out of football. Quarterbacks and receivers are not considered physical people. They are not involved primarily with physical play.
Now can you keep a lot of people happy throwing the ball all over the lot? Sure you can. But I have not seen many running backs who enjoy it. And I have never seen many linemen who enjoy it...catching people on their heels versus getting off the ball and blooding someone's nose.
(OTF) A lot of people would come in here and wonder how Hillsboro wins so many games with facilities that are considered inferior to many other teams' facilities.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) Facilities don't win games. We put our kids in the best equipment that we can. I am a product of this system (Metro). I have seen and heard about what other schools have, such as the private schools. Some coaches make "this amount of money," some programs have certain things. Sure I would like to have all of those things. That is not the essence of what we are. Do you understand what I am saying? The essence of what we are is that we are only as good as our last game. Sometimes through the season I may be burning out, but a man does not meet his true self until he is put in a situation like this. I need this to feed me. This is what my staff needs to feed them. This is what we "do."
And the kids become the same way. They may not want to be in the weight room. They may not want to be at practice. But when you turn on the lights, certain kids are warriors, and certain ones are not. You want to surround yourself with those kids who when your turn on the lights, their eyes are watering, there are tears coming out of their eyes. Regardless of their environment, regardless of the people who are against them, regardless of the millions of dollars that are invested in the stadiums and facilities, it comes down to man versus man. That is the essence of any young man.
It kind of goes back to the Vince Lombardi theory. He was always torn between right and wrong, and where he fit in. But it was football. That is how football coaches fit into society. Football coaches are cursed to do this. This is the monster that feeds us. Or this is how you feed the monster I should say.
The kids are the same way. The game gets in them. They need that physical outlet. This is where they are. This is their community. They can't be worrying about what someone else has, or what they don't have. We try to tell them this. When you come into this locker room, we try to leave everything outside. Coaches who come through these doors have problems. Whatever goes on outside the locker room, we try to leave out there for the two, two and a-half hours we are playing the game. We will try and pick them back up when it is over, but when we come in here, we play for each other.
Our wins are as important as anyone's you may be comparing us to. I have seen some of the finest facilities there are in places such as Powder Springs, Georgia. Coaches make a $100,000 and more a year down there. Facilities do not win football games. It sure helps.
But again, we are not recruiting. We have to provide what we think is important to win.
(OTF) What would you say to the people who think that the transfer rule has helped Hillsboro? Have the transfer rules tightened up?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) Yes, it has tightened up. When we were 2-8 and 3-7, no one really cared about who came over here. We have less kids out of zone now than any time since I have been here. I have had as many as 16 special transfer kids and not gone to a playoff game. I also had 16 kids on MBA's team before the split. So, we lose a lot of kids to private schools.
I basically put it this way: if a kid wants to come here and play football, and it is legal for him to do so, more power to him. If they cannot get here, that is fine. I don't coach in college. It would crush me if I had to go and recruit. I don't beg a kid to play football for me. If they want to play here and are legally able to be here, and they are here when we open the doors, then they are a part of us.
I really don't care what other people think about Hillsboro football. They need to do a better job policing their place. Kids are fickle. Kids are going to go where success is taking place, but that doesn't mean that they can survive the system. It goes back to the attributes I was talking about. It goes back to consistency, caring about individuals, and if you do those things, kids are not going to leave. Eventually you have a cluster of kids who will be magnetizing other kids and get them going. That is what has happened here.
I have had a great group of kids who were not zoned to this school, but the parents put them here. A lot of parents went here, and they are bringing their kids here. It has become a private-type of school thing where some parents do not think their kids are safe going to a certain school. In a metro system, these types of things will happen.
Same thing happens at Hunters Lane High School. Same thing happens at Hillwood High School. Same thing happens at Overton High School. I could name great players who played at those schools who were zoned to go to other schools.
(OTF) As a head coach, you have to do many things. How would you describe your attitude toward fundraising and Varsity Gold?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) Fundraising is on the list of things that I despise. I have to do it. You are supposed to keep kids off the streets, and we have to send them out there to raise money. I am not going to field a team of fundraisers.
Varsity Gold's program is easy to do. It's painless. It is quick and productive for us.
Coach Aydelott, thank you for your time.
Previous Interviews:
8/25/03: Off The Field with Coach Whit Taylor
Brad Durham can be reached at brad412@blomand.net, 615/838-4426
Off the Field with Coach Ron Aydelott
Presents
Off the Field, brought to you by Varsity Gold, heads into Week 2 of the 2003 football season with an exclusive interview with Hillsboro Head Football Coach Ron Aydelott (Personal Profile).
Coach Ron Aydelott
(OTF) Was there a point in time when you decided to become a head coach, or was it a gradual decision?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) I always thought that I wanted to be a baseball coach, and I must have fallen and hit my head. I played football in high school, and always enjoyed the game. I got one offer to play in college, and that was to Austin Peay. The coach was fired and they didn't keep any of us. I always loved baseball, and got some offers to play at some small colleges. I became a head baseball coach when I was 26 years old. It didn't fulfill my needs. But I had always coached football. I just fell in love with it.
I liked football. It is more like chess, more strategy. You get up one week for one game, versus baseball in which you may play two-to-three times a week. The mental toughness of the kids wasn't the same. I'm not saying that baseball players are not mentally tough. But football is a tough game. I think the game of football fits my needs better than baseball did. It's one of those things that removed the parental portion of it.
Football is not something that everyone knows well, and the players are not getting as much advice at home. I'm not sure everyone knows as much about baseball as they think they do, but baseball lends itself to be that type of game. Football is a team-oriented game. I like that aspect of it. More than one person can dominate. I felt as though baseball could be dominated by great pitching. Football is more of a team effort, conditioning and strategy. The kids believe in one purpose.
(OTF) How would you describe your coaching philosophy?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) First of all, I think you have to be comfortable with yourself...with what you believe. For instance, I don't think you make a rule simply because you saw that a Schembechler or Shula made it. I learned those things from Bennie Monroe and other great coaches I worked with in Florida. I think that was the key to me becoming a football coach. I was around guys who coached in college and the upper levels in high school.
If a rule is going to be made, it has to be important to you in order to enforce it. If it is not important, it is just a rule that is there to be broken because you will not enforce it. I think you make the rules simple. It has to be things that you can live with. For instance long hair. Does long hair upset you? Earrings, etc.
Things like loafing in practice, not being on time. Those are things that are important to me. Those are things that are important to everyone. But someone may say, I want this kid to look this way. Maybe that is important, and I may be missing the boat.
I think it is a two-way street today. Kids have to know that you will be there for them when things don't go well. If you are expecting them to do things for you and your team, then you also have to be there for them.
You have to surround yourself with great help. In high school, that is hard to do because of the pay and the teaching positions. It is hard to find smart, young, and energetic, or anyone who is energetic, young or old because of what we get paid. If that is not bad enough, then the commitment level of all the people you are trying to do this for is nil -- the administrators, the community, etc. But when you are winning, everyone wants to be a part of it. When it comes to helping the program out, they are reluctant to do anything.
It is tough to deal with all that.
(OTF) Are you saying that because of the low pay, you have a lousy staff?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) No! I have a great staff. I am very lucky to have them because of all the things we work against. I believe that we have the best staff in Metro and Middle Tennessee. I am not the best coach in the state of Tennessee. But with our staff, I feel as though we can compete with anyone knowledge-wise that we play against.
Just because teams are winning games doesn't mean that they have great coaching. Having great Xs and Os is not great coaching. Having kids who play hard for you is great coaching. That is acquired by being consistent with kids. Not all kids are treated the same. I don't believe that you can do that. You've got to leave kids some room to wiggle, especially the type of kids we deal with. You can't stick them in a corner, unless you want them to be in the corner. You apply pressure when you feel as though they are not providing good things for the program. You only put them in a corner because you don't want them around anymore.
(OTF) Gene Stallings said that every team has great Xs and Os.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) At their level (college) they do. At our level, that is not always true. When you get to play where you want to play...deep in the playoffs, districts, regions...most everyone does know Xs and Os.
In high school you have the limitations of athletic ability because quote unquote, "we supposedly take whoever walks in the door." Some people do, some people don't. But you are at the mercy of your talent level. Knowledge-wise, the Xs and Os, especially after you have played someone for years, and they know you and you know them, there are very few secrets. That's not to say you might not do something that will surprise someone initially.
(OTF) Some teams have offensive and defensive philosophies.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) I think that is very important.
(OTF) Some people would say that Hillsboro has a Wing-T philosophy.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) I think we are grounded in Wing-T. There are fewer and fewer collegiate teams running the Wing-T, and they are probably dying out each day. We feel as though it is our system. But the Wing-T has had to take on entities to survive defenses. We feel as though we try to do that. We don't feel as though we are one-dimensional, although we have migrated to a heavy running game. I would say that all successful championship football teams must have the ability to run the football. I think that they do a better job, well I know they do a better job of equalizing it. They put a better percentage of passing plays into their game plan. But you must be able to run the football.
(OTF) If you had a young Dan Marino, would you put him in a Wing-T, or would you change your offense?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) His high school coach is actually the coordinator at Carnegie Mellon, which is a Wing-T team. A.J. Suggs at Georgia Tech was a Wing-T quarterback. Rich Gannon was at Delaware and a Wing-T quarterback. So, I think it lends itself to great athletes. I think Dan Marino was a great athlete. He was not always immobile as he was later in his professional career. I think it lends itself to a mobile quarterback. But I think it is like anything else. I think great athletes will rise and do well in any system.
Wing-T is described as a system that helps teams with lesser ability. But I contend that the better the ability, the better the offense should be. At the high school level in all states, there have been many, many championships won at different levels by Wing-T football teams.
The thing about the offense is that it is a system. It is not just a conglomeration of plays or a cluster of plays. It is a system that feeds off a series of plays. The system consists of being able to put people in formation, to be able to run plays out of a particular series: inside, outside, to have counters off of it and to pass off of it. That is a system.
As I watch the collegiate and professional games, I believe there are less and less offensive systems that are used. I believe Nebraska has a system. Georgia Southern has a system. Air Force has a system. There are certain places that have systems. Other people are running a multitude of plays put into a playbook, and trying to do everything.
(OTF) Do you buy into the theory that once a high school player plays in the spread type of offense, that he will never want to play in the Wing-T again? In other words, they will have more fun in the passing, open type of offense?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) That may be true for kids who do it. But I still don't believe that football games are won with basketball types of kids. I believe that football games are won on the line of scrimmage. You can never take the physical part out of football. Quarterbacks and receivers are not considered physical people. They are not involved primarily with physical play.
Now can you keep a lot of people happy throwing the ball all over the lot? Sure you can. But I have not seen many running backs who enjoy it. And I have never seen many linemen who enjoy it...catching people on their heels versus getting off the ball and blooding someone's nose.
(OTF) A lot of people would come in here and wonder how Hillsboro wins so many games with facilities that are considered inferior to many other teams' facilities.
(Coach Ron Aydelott) Facilities don't win games. We put our kids in the best equipment that we can. I am a product of this system (Metro). I have seen and heard about what other schools have, such as the private schools. Some coaches make "this amount of money," some programs have certain things. Sure I would like to have all of those things. That is not the essence of what we are. Do you understand what I am saying? The essence of what we are is that we are only as good as our last game. Sometimes through the season I may be burning out, but a man does not meet his true self until he is put in a situation like this. I need this to feed me. This is what my staff needs to feed them. This is what we "do."
And the kids become the same way. They may not want to be in the weight room. They may not want to be at practice. But when you turn on the lights, certain kids are warriors, and certain ones are not. You want to surround yourself with those kids who when your turn on the lights, their eyes are watering, there are tears coming out of their eyes. Regardless of their environment, regardless of the people who are against them, regardless of the millions of dollars that are invested in the stadiums and facilities, it comes down to man versus man. That is the essence of any young man.
It kind of goes back to the Vince Lombardi theory. He was always torn between right and wrong, and where he fit in. But it was football. That is how football coaches fit into society. Football coaches are cursed to do this. This is the monster that feeds us. Or this is how you feed the monster I should say.
The kids are the same way. The game gets in them. They need that physical outlet. This is where they are. This is their community. They can't be worrying about what someone else has, or what they don't have. We try to tell them this. When you come into this locker room, we try to leave everything outside. Coaches who come through these doors have problems. Whatever goes on outside the locker room, we try to leave out there for the two, two and a-half hours we are playing the game. We will try and pick them back up when it is over, but when we come in here, we play for each other.
Our wins are as important as anyone's you may be comparing us to. I have seen some of the finest facilities there are in places such as Powder Springs, Georgia. Coaches make a $100,000 and more a year down there. Facilities do not win football games. It sure helps.
But again, we are not recruiting. We have to provide what we think is important to win.
(OTF) What would you say to the people who think that the transfer rule has helped Hillsboro? Have the transfer rules tightened up?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) Yes, it has tightened up. When we were 2-8 and 3-7, no one really cared about who came over here. We have less kids out of zone now than any time since I have been here. I have had as many as 16 special transfer kids and not gone to a playoff game. I also had 16 kids on MBA's team before the split. So, we lose a lot of kids to private schools.
I basically put it this way: if a kid wants to come here and play football, and it is legal for him to do so, more power to him. If they cannot get here, that is fine. I don't coach in college. It would crush me if I had to go and recruit. I don't beg a kid to play football for me. If they want to play here and are legally able to be here, and they are here when we open the doors, then they are a part of us.
I really don't care what other people think about Hillsboro football. They need to do a better job policing their place. Kids are fickle. Kids are going to go where success is taking place, but that doesn't mean that they can survive the system. It goes back to the attributes I was talking about. It goes back to consistency, caring about individuals, and if you do those things, kids are not going to leave. Eventually you have a cluster of kids who will be magnetizing other kids and get them going. That is what has happened here.
I have had a great group of kids who were not zoned to this school, but the parents put them here. A lot of parents went here, and they are bringing their kids here. It has become a private-type of school thing where some parents do not think their kids are safe going to a certain school. In a metro system, these types of things will happen.
Same thing happens at Hunters Lane High School. Same thing happens at Hillwood High School. Same thing happens at Overton High School. I could name great players who played at those schools who were zoned to go to other schools.
(OTF) As a head coach, you have to do many things. How would you describe your attitude toward fundraising and Varsity Gold?
(Coach Ron Aydelott) Fundraising is on the list of things that I despise. I have to do it. You are supposed to keep kids off the streets, and we have to send them out there to raise money. I am not going to field a team of fundraisers.
Varsity Gold's program is easy to do. It's painless. It is quick and productive for us.
Coach Aydelott, thank you for your time.
8/25/03: Off The Field with Coach Whit Taylor
