If you attend a youth baseball, basketball, or soccer game where one of the opposing coaches is a rookie, you probably will not be able to tell which one he is. Indeed, the rookie coach’s team may well win the game.
It doesn’t work that way in youth football. In youth football, rookie coaches make public fools of themselves. They make every single mistake in my list of youth-football-coach mistakes and then some. Their teams draw a zillion stupid penalties for things like false starts, too many men on the field, not enough men on the offensive line, delay of game, and so forth. They also frequently fumble the snap or hand-off or snap the ball over the punter’s head. They throw more interceptions than completions. They do not scout. They think NFL rules are the same as the high-school rules used in youth football. You may hear pleas like “It was uncatchable!” or “He was in the grasp!” at a youth game where there is a rookie coach. This is very amusing to the officials and opposing coaches, but not to the fathers of the rookie coach’s team. Rookie-coach teams typically go winless for the season and are blown out every week by their opponents. It is not uncommon for a rookie-coached team to not score a point all season.
