How to Build a Thick Institution: Organizational Lessons from a Championship High School Football Program

Prologue

All of us are smarter than any one of us.

- David Cutcliffe

I’ve heard this quote from my dad countless times, but I don’t think I truly appreciated it until I became a head coach. My first season as the head football coach at Oxford High School was 2016. I was 29-years-old and eager to see our program succeed. I realized after my first season that I couldn’t do it all by myself. I knew I needed to do a better job of empowering our assistant coaches, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. Enter Dr. Hunter Taylor.

Hunter had recently come on board as a professor in the University of Mississippi School of Education. He reached out to me and shared his research on common traits of some of the most successful high school coaches and football programs in the state of Texas. I was instantly intrigued. We set up a plan for Hunter to come observe all aspects of our program for a week. Hunter sat in on staff meetings, player meetings, weight room sessions, practices etc. The following week, Hunter and I met to review his notes. He confirmed what I had suspected— we were doing things well, but could be so much better with some purposeful planning.

Hunter’s week with our program turned into weekly meetings where Hunter and I would work together to discuss ways to continue improving our respective programs. Some first steps we took with our Oxford football team included launching a leadership council, improving staff and player meetings, increasing our efficiency, and beginning what we call our Charger for Life program. This program really is the cornerstone of what we do at Oxford. As part of Charger for Life, we work with our players weekly, year-round, on leadership and character development.

Hunter and I work so well together because we are both hungry to help our teams improve. We are not afraid of hard truths and always welcome honest feedback. There is no doubt that both of our teams have benefited from this growth mindset!

It all started with one leader asking another for a fresh set of eyes.

A little over two years ago, Chris and I met in his office at the athletic field house. He was three weeks into his second football season as the head coach of his alma mater, Oxford High School. I was a new professor at the University of Mississippi and eager to get started building a research portfolio. A mutual friend had encouraged me to connect with Chris, so I reached out and sent him my dissertation which studied the organizational structures of six highly successful high school football programs in Texas. I figured maybe I could study some aspect of his program.

Chris is from Oxford, has a reputation of being highly successful in whatever he does, and is never complacent. This is what I respect most about him. He invited me to his office a day after reading my study. During our first meeting, we spent most of the time getting to know each other. He told me a little bit about his team and then gave me the invitation to spend a week with their program. How about you just take notes, and then we can meet next Monday and talk about what you saw. Then we can go from there, he suggested.

I wanted to start conducting more research in this aspect of education, but I didn’t yet know what facet of his team to study. I had never been around his football program, and I wanted the future study to be something that was mutually beneficial. This was the perfect opportunity to be a fly on the wall.

The week he allowed me to observe was also his school’s rivalry game—Oxford vs. Lafayette County High. Most leaders would shy away from having someone like me come around during such an important week, but not Chris. I was able to see everything—scouting reports, position meetings, locker room procedures, practice drills, and scrimmages. I even got to ride the bus to and from the game with the team.

I took copious notes, yet didn’t make any comments about offensive or defensive schemes. What I watched was