Questions to Ask a Football Coach in an Interview
Twenty questions for an athletic director, principal, or search committee interviewing a candidate for a football coaching job. They cover how the candidate runs a week, decides playing time, handles injuries and eligibility, manages a staff, and behaves during a losing season. The same list works in reverse if you are the candidate.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Walk me through a normal week in your program during the season, Monday to Friday.
Why ask it
Coaches who have run a program answer in specifics: install day, film day, walk-through, how long the script is. A candidate who talks about culture and energy instead of naming what happens on Tuesday afternoon has probably been handed a schedule rather than built one.
Which position do you coach yourself, and who do you trust with the rest?
Why ask it
Head coaches who keep a position group stay closer to players; ones who float spend their time managing. Either can work, but the answer tells you whether this hire depends on landing a strong coordinator, and whether they can name the assistants they would bring.
What do you look for in your first two weeks with a team you have just taken over?
Why ask it
The first two weeks are mostly inherited problems: conditioning levels, seniors who expect to start, a locker room still split from last year. A candidate who only describes installing a scheme has not thought about the takeover itself.
What does a Tuesday practice look like, and how much of it is live contact?
Why ask it
Contact volume is where philosophy meets liability. Listen for a number and a reason behind it. Someone who cannot say roughly how many minutes are live, or who treats the question as softness, will become a problem the first time a parent asks it.
What is your process for putting a game plan together between Sunday and Thursday?
Why ask it
You want a repeatable week, not improvisation. Vagueness here usually means the candidate executed someone else's plan rather than owning one, and that shows up on a Friday night when the opening script does not work.
How do you split play calling between yourself and your coordinators?
Why ask it
Coaches who call everything often lose the wider picture during games; coaches who delegate everything can lose the room. The useful part is hearing how they describe overruling a coordinator, because that is where staff relationships actually break.
How do you decide who starts when two players are close?
Why ask it
Playing time is the single biggest source of conflict in a program. A candidate with a real tiebreaker, practice reps, film grades, attendance, can explain a benching to a parent. One who says they just know it when they see it cannot.
How do you keep a player who will never start bought in through November?
Why ask it
Programs are held together by the fourth-string junior in week nine. Listen for mechanisms: scout team recognition, a real job on Friday nights, developmental games. Talk about family with no mechanism behind it means the bottom of the roster quietly drifts away.
How do you handle a talented player who keeps missing offseason workouts?
Why ask it
This is a discipline question wearing a talent question's clothes. Bending for the best player teaches everyone what the rules really are. Also notice whether they ask why the player is missing, because at this level it is often a job or a ride home.
What happens in your program when a player is failing a class?
Why ask it
You want a system that catches trouble early: weekly grade checks, study hall, teachers who call the coach before the office does. Waiting on the eligibility report means the player is already ineligible and the coach found out too late to help.
What is your concussion protocol, and who has the authority to overrule you on a return to play?
Why ask it
A good answer names someone other than the coach as final authority, usually the athletic trainer or team physician. Any suggestion that the head coach decides who goes back in is a serious problem, and frequently a legal one.
A parent emails you at midnight about playing time. What happens next?
Why ask it
These messages are inevitable, so the question is whether there is a channel: the player raises it first, meetings during office hours, nothing discussed within a day of a game. Coaches without a policy either avoid parents entirely or argue with them in the parking lot.
How would you handle a player accused of something serious away from the field?
Why ask it
Look for someone who knows the process is not theirs to run: report it, cooperate, do not investigate, do not protect. Candidates who talk about keeping it in-house are describing the exact failure that ends up in a newspaper.
Where do your players come from, and what do you do about a class that is thin at one position?
Why ask it
At most levels recruiting is hallways, feeder programs, and other sports teams. Strong answers involve relationships with middle school coaches and a plan to develop a position from scratch rather than hope someone walks in.
Tell me about a game you lost that you would still call some of your best coaching.
Why ask it
The loss they are proud of shows what they actually value and whether they can assess their own work apart from the scoreboard. A candidate who cannot name one tends to judge themselves purely on record, and will coach players that way too.
What would you say to the local paper after an 0-4 start?
Why ask it
A losing streak is when a coach's public conduct matters most. Listen for someone who takes it on themselves without naming players, and who can be honest about the team without either false optimism or self-pity.
How do you know when an assistant is not working out, and what have you done about it?
Why ask it
Removing or reassigning an assistant is the hardest thing a head coach does, and plenty of them avoid it for years. Ask for a real instance. Someone who has never had that conversation will let a weak position coach cost you a season.
What would you need from the school in year one that you do not have here now?
Why ask it
This surfaces what they think the job actually requires: a film system, one more paid assistant, a summer weight room window. It also shows whether they studied your program or are repeating what they said at the last interview.
If the record is bad after year one, how would you want us to judge you?
Why ask it
Serious candidates offer markers that are not the record: participation numbers by grade, retention, penalty and turnover trends, grades. Someone who offers only wins is either not confident about year one or has not thought past this conversation.
What part of this job would you hand to someone else tomorrow if you could?
Why ask it
Every coach resents some piece of it: fundraising, paperwork, buses, social media, banquet planning. Hearing which one tells you where the program will quietly suffer and what support you should build in before it does.
Running the interview
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Do this before anyone sits down
- Pull the last three years of results alongside participation numbers by grade and how many seniors finished the season. A shrinking roster is a worse problem than a losing record, and it changes which answers matter most.
- Work out exactly why the previous coach left, and be ready to say it plainly. A candidate who is given a sanitized version will hear the real one by week three and stop trusting you.
- Settle who in the room has the deciding vote and tell the candidate who they are talking to. Athletic directors, principals, and booster representatives routinely want different things from the same hire.
- Have the stipend, the budget, and the number of paid assistant slots in front of you. Half of a coaching interview is the candidate interviewing the school, and hedging about resources reads as instability.
How to listen to the answers
- Ask for a specific instance every time you get a principle. Holding everyone accountable means nothing until they describe the last player they actually sat, and what it cost them.
- Track whether they say I or we when describing wins versus losses. The pattern often inverts in candidates who go on to struggle with a staff.
- Notice answers that only describe starters and standouts. Seasons are held up by the twenty players who never take a snap that matters.
- Leave silence after the hard questions. Coaches are practiced at filling air, and the second thing they say is usually more honest than the first.
Where these interviews go wrong
- Spending forty minutes on scheme. Scheme is the easiest thing about a coach to change and the least predictive of whether the hire works.
- Letting a playing career stand in for coaching evidence. Ask about players they developed, not the level they reached themselves.
- Skipping eligibility and safety because they feel like paperwork. Those are the two areas where a bad hire creates consequences no amount of coaching fixes.
- Offering the job in the room. Sit with the answers, then call two assistants who worked under them, not only the references on the list.
If you are the one being interviewed
This list works in reverse. Ask who makes the final decision, what actually happened to the last coach, what the stipend and staff slots are in writing, and how the school will judge year one if the record is poor. A program that cannot answer those questions in an interview will not answer them in November either.