No sleep and a plan
— -- A lack of sleep, a lack of time and a lack of knowledge are the three biggest challenges a coaching staff faces when taking over a new program. Those factors can't slow them down, though, as the first few weeks on the job can be some of the most important for a newly hired staff.
There are different methods and philosophies from coaches as to what the first step should be when hired, but the end goal is always the same: Identify the problems, identify the solutions, and figure out how to put together a winning team.
A coaching change is usually the result of problems from the previous team and staff. Minnesota's Jerry Kill has successfully transformed three programs and says there are always issues when he first gets to campus, and that's where he and his staff started.
"The first thing we always look at is academics because usually there are issues in that area, and if your players aren't eligible, then you don't have players. You have to look at the weight room, too," he said. "Chances are, when you first start recruiting, you aren't going to get the all-star players, so you're going to have to build them in the weight room, and you can't take any shortcuts. Then you look at the team culture, and most of the time when a team is struggling, there's a lot of things, discipline-wise, and you need to concentrate on changing that."
The way to fix that, as Kill mentioned, is through the coaches -- but also through recruiting.
That's easier said than done, especially because coaching changes typically occur at the end of the season, either in December or early January. That timing can be a hindrance to the new coach and his staff because a recruiting dead period coincides with that schedule.
Because there is so little time, the first move coaches make, in terms of recruiting, is evaluation and assessment. They make the most of the time they get before signing day in early February.
Andy Frank, the director of player personnel at Penn State, was a big part of implementing the proper plan to help the Nittany Lions in his first few weeks on the job.
Frank came with coach James Franklin and his staff when they were hired from Vanderbilt and was also part of Franklin's first recruiting efforts at Vanderbilt.
"The first two things that you try to assess: One is the kids that are currently committed to the program. Figure out who they have that's already lined up and said they're coming. The second thing is to assess the current roster," Frank said. "And between those two things, try to figure out what you have, what you have coming and what you need."
Prior to getting to the new school, the staff does research on the recruiting class and current team, but it's all paper and film evaluations. Penn State uses what they call a scholarship grid as a guideline to where they need to start on the recruiting trail.
The grid maps out who they have on the roster, the prospects already committed and the targets they need to go after. That allows the staff to see on paper what the next step needs to be and how they can fill out their roster with the right players.
The coaches have done all of this without actually seeing the current team in person. That aspect is one of the more difficult facets of the transition, according to Western Michigan head coach P.J. Fleck, who was hired from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2012.
Not being able to fully evaluate the team and understand what the true needs are is part of what Fleck calls a tornado when a coach is first hired.
Some coaches don't offer scholarships to recruits without seeing them play live, so Fleck has to evaluate his current roster off film. Because of that, Fleck went in with the mindset that he needed to fill the roster with the best players he could find, no matter the need or talent level on the current team.
"What Year 1 really was for me was, I don't know how good these players are. I have an idea, and I know their stats, but what I have to do with recruiting is fill depth and fill the numbers to meet depth," Fleck said. "I want to get the best players possible to fill depth, and then in Year 2, I'll really know the talent and be able to fix the talent in Year 2. Year 1 was more depth, especially because I had to finish out the NFL season, and then there was a dead period, and I had a two-and-a-half-week sprint."
That plan has worked thus far, after a first season going 1-11. Fleck lead the team to an 8-4 record in 2014 in his second season as coach.
The evaluations are the first step of the process, but once those are done, the staff needs to move, put the plan in action and then hit the ground running with recruits.
For Matt Dudek, the director of player personnel for the University of Arizona, that meant learning on the fly. Dudek is from the East Coast, most recently Pitt. He had never worked with Rodriguez and knew nothing about Tucson or the Arizona campus. He had only five days until his first recruit would be on campus, and he needed to do everything he could to make sure it was the best visit that prospect could have.
"I didn't know how to get to my office from the hotel I was staying at, and I had to do a campus tour in five days," Dudek said. "It's not just, hey, there's a building, you have to sell it and give a good campus tour. What restaurants are great, what restaurants are bad, what hotels are good. This is all in the first few weeks, so that is really stressful."
Dudek focused his first months on campus on building a recruit database, setting up official visits, finishing the class, gathering names of potential targets, evaluating those targets and getting out on the road.
That is when the actual recruiting can begin.
The pitch for commitments and prospects in this situation is typically different than a normal pitch. The reason for the coaching change needs to be taken into account, and why the current commits chose the school is also factored in.
For Frank at Penn State, it was a unique situation because of NCAA sanctions, so the message to commits and recruits wasn't going to be about watching the coaches win a championship, but rather helping to build toward that team.
"Not that we didn't go into the season doing everything we could to win every game, but for the kids in high school, it's [more] important what's going to happen two or three years from now than it is when they're a senior in high school," Frank said. "They aren't winning or losing those games for you in that first year. They're more concerned that, 'Do I believe two or three years from now, will I be a part of a championship contender?' I think we've been able to sell that, and these kids will have a great chance to do that."
New jobs and staff changes makes recruiting that much more challenging and time-consuming. Convincing high school kids to buy in without seeing a finished product only adds to the difficulty.
While the processes and philosophies might be different to get to the end result of building a winning program, all the coaches agree: None of it is possible without hard work.
"The first thing you do is you don't sleep," Fleck said. "I think I might have stayed awake for the first three weeks when I got the job. You'd rest any chance you could in the car, on the plane or in the airport. But if you want an elite class, we did about a year's worth of work in two and a half weeks. Getting kids eligible, getting to know the families, getting to know us, you have to go into overdrive to get the job done."
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