This has been a year of big changes, when it comes to Head Football Coaches, at the high school level, in the state of Kansas. Kansas had 71 new head football coaches named this summer. Below is a look at the numbers, over the past few years of new head coaches named in football.

2022     71
2021     64
2020     50
2019     72
2018     72

There are 334 high schools listed in the KSHSAA Football Classifications and Enrollment numbers for 2022-2023. The biggest school is Wichita East with 1,832 students and the smallest school listed is Rolla with 23 kids in school. Take the number 71 and divide by 334 and we have 21% of the schools with new coaches this year.

If you take the years 2018-2022 and total the number of new head coaches you come up with 329 schools. So about every 5 years we replace the entire bunch of head coaches in the state. Although we know that is not the case because we have some of the coaches stay in the same place for years. But what that means is some of the schools are replacing their coaches every two or three years.

That is kind of eye opening. Several years ago, I had a coach who sent me a list, of every football coach the school he was coaching at, had every had. And the years they were the head football coach. The list had about 95 years worth of coaches on it. The average stay at that 3A school, at that time, was 2 years.

Hey you young guys that want to grow up to be football coaches. Grow some thick skin and be mentally tough also. If you are in high school or college start coaching and refereeing in the city/county recreation leagues so you can start working with kids and their Moms and Dads. My other suggestion is study, take notes, read books and work hard at your profession and be ready when the opportunity to be a head football coach comes along.