Re: From 1997 to 2003.........
Great facilities and great school enrollment are very much over rated in my opinion. Some of the best football facilities , like lower merion, will never win in football. If the size of the school mattered, Reading and Upper Darby would be good every year.
To me its talent first, coaching second. Ask any PCL if he had to decide between a million dollar football upgrade but he could not actively go out and solicit / sell his program and instead would have to coach whomever walked through the doors in 9 th grade and im sure they would all turn down the facilty improvent. The ability to attract players , and talented players cannot be discounted.
Now, once you get the talent, it still has to be coached. And coaxching football in D1 has almost become a tenured position. Unless you do so,etching stupid or commit a crime,it your job for as long as you want it. The poster above is right, no one ever gets fired for a bad won loss record. Ridley went 8-3 this year and mostb ant the coach fired. But that situation is rare. In many of the other districts, coaches change teams on a regular basis, are lured away from other schools , the coaching jobs almost always come with a teaching job in the school and other perks. But not here. Since the playoff system started in the late 80's, has there been any coach who has had any success at two different D1 programs ? I can't think of sny. But in each of the other major distrcts there is always a coach moving from one school to another because the school wanted him. Happens in D3, D7, zd11. But not here. You take any of the council rock schools for example. If their ad picks up,the phone tomorrow and offers a combined coaching /teaching job to Schmidt or Devlin that pays $90,000 a year , that might be enough to make that school a playoff contender in 3 yrs. but the parent booster program gets involved, or the teachers union, or the school board, etc and iit would never happen.
