Small College Coaches are Struggling, Here’s Why:

I quit the job I’ve wanted for my entire adult life. I stepped down as Head Men’s Wrestling Coach at Lakeland University over the summer. I’m going to tell you why.

I’ve wanted to coach for as long as I can remember. I have the distinct memory of my peewee football coach mockingly handing me a whistle in the middle of practice because I wouldn’t stop instructing.

I’m not here to blame anyone. There is a myriad of reasons why things are the way they are. My decision was not because of the team, administration, or Lakeland. This decision is what is best for me and me alone. With that said, the logic behind this decision is indicative of the plight of a larger problem.

Private college athletic coaching is not a glorious job. I knew that going in. I knew I wouldn’t make millions or even six figures. I knew I’d have to work my tail off to get what I got. A true, “you get what you earn” scenario. I thought this would be worth it because I love coaching. But the reality is that coaching is a small percentage of what you do as the leader of a sports team at a small school .

In a role like this, you have three categories of tasks. Coaching, organization, and recruiting. Coaching includes all wrestling and mentoring activities. I loved these roles. I loved all the coaching that was outside of the wrestling room. I even loved the organizational tasks. I'm an anomaly here but I enjoyed the tedious activities of making schedules, event planning, and all the details involved. 

What I always had trouble enjoying was recruiting. There were elements of recruiting that I did enjoy and they were similar to coaching tasks. I enjoyed talking to young people and helping to influence their lives for the better. I relished refining the vision of my program and reflecting with prospects about the benefits of my program. But the further I got in, the uglier this component turned.

The sad thing I've learned is that recruiting is sales. It’s not anything different than selling cars or medical equipment. It’s convincing someone to buy your product by whatever means is most effective. This sucks. You’re forced to treat young people’s futures like a commodity. You build relationships only to cut them off immediately when it doesn’t serve you. It felt like shit. Over two years at Lakeland, I contacted 2,407 young men. Yeah, it’s a big number. Horrifyingly big in my mind. 

I hoped recruiting would be an art. Art that includes a careful strategy to find the recruits that fit your school and convince them that Lakeland is perfect for them. What I learned is that at the private school level, it is not art. It’s a numbers game- it's math. This is the strategy: get a massive amount at the top of “the funnel” and beg that your conversion rate is above .66%. Yeah, that’s right. 6.6 of 1000 contacted enrolled over 2 years. It's not fun to treat humans whose lives you want to influence positively as a number.

There's another issue with being a college coach. The issue is that being an incredible salesman is not enough. Along with selling the value, I have to create the value. I’m a salesman who is also the value-added at the university. At Lakeland upwards of 80% of the students enroll chiefly for athletics. This is evidence that athletics is the difference maker for why an individual comes to Lakeland. We end-to-end sell the school (the product) and then we are in charge of making sure that our product is high quality enough to keep them on campus. Our tiny staffs are tasked with making sure students' 15k payment per year is worth it. This doesn't make sense. This is upwards of double the responsibilities all for a wage that is well below what we’d get doing one element of our jobs (sales) at any private firm.

This is a warning about the private school model. Private schools are becoming about JV college athletics. Schools believe adding one coach and some equipment will get 10 more kids on campus and that will save their enrollment. Schools like Lakeland have an absurd 22 teams for only 700 kids on campus. 

We are approaching a reckoning. Currently, there is an enormous 1,660 private college institutions all constantly adding new sports teams. There will soon not be enough athletes who want to pay this premium. Especially when the alternatives like being a trades worker or a software developer are more lucrative and no longer require a 4-year degree.

The constant addition of sports teams to these schools is indicative that they are not profitable enough without athletics. They must add value in some way and they hope that sports will be their savior. It won't be. There is a limited amount of people who want to pay a 15k/yr premium for D3/NAIA sports at the college level and we're approaching the limit.

Then there is the other side. Because these small schools are being squeezed for cash, they can’t support their coaches. Coaching doesn't make sense with all issues described above. Then add in that we don't get enough support staff. Add in that admins want us to do poorly paid and tedious secondary jobs or ask for us to volunteer our free time. All while asking us to do too much in the first place for a pathetic wage. All because they cannot afford to pay us or any other staff well enough.

I do believe we are seeing a large change. We are watching small schools close their doors at higher rates. Some will survive, schools that are spectacular at athletics or schools that have other means of adding value outside of their inherent small size or location. D3/NAIA athletics will not die. But it will shrink drastically.

My colleagues are incredible. They do an incredible amount that they aren’t paid to do all for the love of the young people on their team, but they are taken advantage of for their passion. I am here to tell you this will not work long-term. The talent will drain out of these institutions and the value-added will shrink and shrink until there is no reason for a young person to pay such a premium for athletics. In turn, enrollment will shrink and schools will close their doors. It’s sad but inevitable.

I am not the first to quit, I am not the last. 

Do you know how I know this? I don’t have to explain to any of my peers why I quit. They all know. They consider it every week.