As he gathered players and equipment for spring practice, Red Bank football coach Tim Daniels began to hear the grumbling in the community.

This year’s team will be shooting for the school’s fifth consecutive Region 4-4A football championship, but Daniels heard pessimism: that the 2008 squad would have just 13 seniors; a starter and nine potential players had decided to attend Signal Mountain, the new county school that covers an area previously zoned for Red Bank; offensive coordinator E.K. Slaughter had left to become a head coach.

It brought back memories of Daniels’ first couple of years when the Lions had a combined 3-17 record.

“Some administrators would have fired Tim after a year or two,” Rhea County coach Jason Fitzgerald said. “I remember walking off the field, especially after one year we won down there, and players and parents were giving him down the road. He wasn’t doing it the way Tom (Weathers) had. He was doing things differently, and his way.

“He didn’t have a lot of success early, but look now. Thank goodness for strong administrators.”

Strength from administrators can be more valuable for head coaches as strong players and solid assistants with today’s win-now, win-always expectations. Without time to shape and redevelop the program at Red Bank, Daniels would not have been around for the Lions’ recent run of championships.

That pressure to win has become as much a part of the job as X’s and O’s, field maintenance, fundraising and compliance with TSSAA rules. It’s a trickle-down theory of athletics, according to Cleveland coach Danny Wilson.

“If you look at college coaches, it’s a revenue deal,” said Wilson, whose Blue Raiders were picked to supplant Red Bank’s Lions as 4-4A champs. “They have to win because of the money, but winning has folded over to high school. Money isn’t part of the high school deal, but the mindset is that you’re going to win and if you don’t you’re going to get fired.”

Many administrators, especially those who are former coaches, understand the scrutiny. It’s part of the job, but it’s not the only part of the job.

“I believe you’re hired as a teacher and appointed as a coach,” East Ridge principal Mark Bean said. “I love winning as much as anybody, but I care more about kids learning life’s lessons, and I have tried to hire coaches who teach that. Looking back over the years at some of the good coaches — Benny Monroe, Tom Weathers, Ted Gatewood — they were really good teachers on the field.”

Bean believes administrators have a responsibility to investigate complaints about their coaches, but rarely does it involve a won-lost record.

“We’re concerned about the total student. High school sports in not a big business with coaches making $2 million a year,” he said. “High school football, you want the community around and you want their support, but sometimes you have good years, sometimes you have mediocre years and sometimes you have horrible years.”

Wayne Turner has endured all types of seasons during his coaching career in Hamilton County. Turner has been coaching football almost twice as long as any of the area’s current head coaches — four years at Kirkman until it closed and the last 17 years at Tyner. He has seen peers come and go at every school the Rams have played.

“Coaching football takes a lot of time now, a lot more than it used to, and a lot of the younger guys want to spend more time with their families,” Turner said. “Football takes closer to 12 months now as opposed to the four months that it used to be.”

Turner’s long run with the Rams has yielded nine region titles and 14 straight playoff appearances. In that time, all the other high schools in Hamilton County have hired new head football coaches at least once. The only other area coach with more than eight years experience at one program is Vic Grider, who has been South Pittsburg’s coach for 12 years.

Not all of the turnover is from outside pressure, though. In fact, most coaches will say that no parent or fan could exert any more pressure than what they put on themselves.

“I don’t think any of us are in this business to be average,” Fitzgerald said. “But pressure is all over sports: What have you done lately? People want quick satisfaction.”

Former Cleveland assistant Mark Tipton left coaching but has a vested interest in the Blue Raiders, especially this year: His son Tucker is Cleveland’s starting quarterback. Mark Tipton, who was a part of Monroe’s Cleveland staff that won three straight state championships in the mid-1990s, is now in private business but has a firsthand knowledge that most of the people in the stands on Friday nights do not.

In fact, he said he has had several conversations with a friend who is a former state championship coach, and the friend often asks about Tucker and Wilson and the Blue Raiders program.

“I told him Danny has the kids’ best interest in mind. He asked how Danny treated them at the end of the day, and I said that Danny was good to them,” Mark Tipton said. “He said, ‘Isn’t that — and the lessons they have learned — all that matters?’”

That’s a perspective most coaches value, regardless of their level or success. Baylor coach Phil Massey compared it to a speech he heard from former Alabama coach Gene Stallings during a football convention.

“One of the things he said that struck me was about coaches at Notre Dame and Vanderbilt receiving awards for the highest graduation rate of football coaches, and that both of those coaches had been fired that year,” Massey said. “People tend to lose track of why we’re here — the kind of role models we are and the fact that the lessons players learn and the discipline we try to instill are going to play a part down the road in those players’ lives.

“I can look at wins and losses, but I judge success by the guys who come back five to 10 years down the road and they are successful businessmen and good fathers.”

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