Brian Kight knows team culture — and he knows how much assistant football coaches can contribute to it.

Kight, the CEO of Focus 3, a company that helps organizations and teams establish a system for culture, believes that in football programs, it's often the assistant coaches who are vital in establishing the team culture.

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“The number one problem in programs is culture is too centered around the head coach, and therefore, if the head coach is not seeing or doing or driving the culture, is it really getting replicated to the extent it needs to be?” said Kight in an episode of the USA Football Coach and Coordinator podcast.

“Everything that happens inside of a program builds culture,” Right said, so Focus 3 developed a culture playbook that gives assistant coaches a physical document that shows what the culture is and how to integrate it into the program.

Student-athletes typically spend more time with assistant coaches than with the head coach, so it’s up to the assistant coaches to ensure culture is taking root according to plan.

Kight helped both Ohio State coach Urban Meyer and Washington coach Chris Peterson implement a better system and prepare their staffs to help drive the culture, so it wasn’t too centered on just one individual.

“It’s gotta be bigger,” Kight said. “Urban can only be in so many places. The head coach’s job is to equip the assistant coaches with a culture playbook that gets them leading the culture the way they need to lead it so the players can get it. If the assistant coach is only half as culturally competent, you’re missing 90 percent of the team.”

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Assistant coaches, for this reason, must drive culture from that spot.

They don’t necessarily need to wait for their head coach to be the leader on the culture front. An assistant coach can’t take a team in an opposite direction from a head coach, but if a head coach is not stepping up to lead the team’s culture, the role of the assistant coach in driving culture is even more crucial.

“If your head coach doesn’t own culture, then that creates a void and a gap,” Kight said. “And in that gap, you lead. You lead culture from where you are.”

This is an updated version of a blog that originally published March 14, 2017.