For over half of his life, Todd Berry has been a football coach. While he had no intention of getting into the profession, the current Executive Director of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), he soon found he missed the game greatly after finishing his playing career at the University of Tulsa.

His first Job in the profession was as a graduate assistant at the University of Tennessee and he would spend the next 33 years learning, teaching, and honing his craft as a football coach. He ultimately achieved his goal of becoming a Head Coach multiple times, including stops at Illinois State University, the US Military Academy, and finally at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Now, he spends his time as an advocate and leader for the profession. He is fully committed to the role that football coaches play in the lives of young men and women as teachers, mentors, and leaders. He recently took some time from his busy schedule to talk about the ultimate question: what is the role of a football coach?

EM: So, I know you didn’t originally have the goal of becoming a football coach. How did you get involved in the profession?

TB: That’s correct. I had always loved football, but when I originally was finishing at Tulsa, I had plans of going into business and making a career that way. To be honest though, I missed the game. I missed it badly. I had been in contact with some of my former coaches and they said I should do this. I should be a coach.

They felt that I had the intelligence and the drive and the passion to be successful at it. I think I had always recognized the value of coaches as being a kind of guiding force in a young person’s life. There is a lot of good that coaches can do. There is a lot that a good coach can offer someone. Once the idea took hold, I dove into it with everything I had.

EM: So, I think  you are in a unique position to talk about the role of the Head Coach, both in your current role with the AFCA and with your long history in the profession. What I wanted to get at first, was what is the role and responsibility of a head coach – especially at the collegiate level – for the main people he has to interact with: his players and his staff?

TB: That’s an interesting question. As a Division I Head Coach, you have a tremendous amount of responsibilities outside of the football field. It makes it difficult to get the opportunity like you would like to get to know all of your players. However, for me, one of the essential things that I did with players, when we were recruiting them was to go and meet each one and their families. It takes a lot of effort, but I think it is important for the Head Coach to know as much about their players as possible.

With your coaching staff, one of the big lessons I learned along the way from mentors like John Cooper and Larry Coker [when we were at Tulsa] was to surround yourself with guys who can teach you. You as the Head Coach will have a philosophy and you’ll want to try to stick to that.

But, if you surround yourself with a staff of smart, dedicated guys who can teach you, that can only help you get better as a coach. Your responsibilities to the staff though lie in helping them achieve their goals. If you can help them succeed in reaching their potential, they will be able do their best along the way. Success and drive, those can only help a football team.

EM: You mentioned that as a Head Coach in Division I, you have a lot of responsibilities outside of the football field. What are some of those that people might not know about? I’m assuming some of them have to do with responsibilities to your fan base. Would that be correct?

TB: Oh yes, that’s right. When I was the Head Coach at Army, this was right after the 9/11 attacks. I had mentioned some things in the press about the role of the cadets and that got a lot of attention nationally. There were media outlets from all over the country that wanted me to speak and there were groups all over the country that wanted me to give a talk to their meetings.

There were weeks during the season where I wasn’t able to be at practice at all. But, these are part of the job. I always felt that speaking to media could only help raise the profile of our program. There’s a balance though. You have to hear them and understand them but not let them sway you from what you are doing and trying to build. As a Head Coach, you’re responsible for so many people’s lives that you can’t let outside things distract you.

EM: Last thing Coach, let’s talk about the overall theme. What is the role that a head coach plays? Ultimately, it has to be about more than wins and losses, right? I’m assuming part of the reason you go into coaching and stayed in as long as you did was your ability to impact people’s lives in a positive manner, right?

TB: Yes, you are absolutely right. As a football coach, you are in a position to really make a difference in a young man’s life. I’ll give you an example, not too long ago, I was doing an interview with someone and they had a taped piece where they spoke to one of my former players from Army.

They were in Afghanistan and they asked what their favorite memories of being at West Point were and they said it was playing for me. That was what they thought about and given the circumstances that they were in … I mean they were in a war … and for them to think about me in that way, the fact that I made that much of an impact on their lives, I’m not ashamed to say that it brought me to tears right there in the interview.

The role of a football coach is to be a leader, a mentor, a parent when needed, a brother, a source of discipline and structure, and ultimately someone, you hope, who can bring some good into a person’s life. To have someone speak about you the way my former player spoke about me, that’s when you know you’ve done your job as a football coach.