One of the foundations of Charlie Strong's success as a coach is an unwavering discipline. It was that way as a position coach, as a defensive coordinator, and most recently, as a head coach.
When he arrived in Austin as the head coach of the Longhorns, players that weren't willing to fall in line with the new expectations were shown the door, and the same thing happened during his first head coaching stint at Louisville.
It should come as no surprise that his no-nonsense approach has been a target for other programs to use it as negative recruiting ammunition, and when asked about that over the weekend, Strong shared some thoughts that every aspiring head coach should read, and take to heart.
"You know what happens sometimes is when you talk about discipline, and I think that a lot of coaches try to use it against you, but once you get with the families, that's what they want. Even the players, the players deep down really want you to be an example for them and what happens is that we have allowed so many of our high-profile players, or whatever we want to call them, to do whatever they want to do." Strong explained. "Everything you're going to be taught is how to go be successful in life."
"When you talk about recruiting, the only thing that you want to happen for a young man is that once he leaves here with a degree in his hand, he can go be successful."
"I always say to them, I say, 'Let me tell you something. If you weren't a football player, if you were just a young man just standing out there on the corner, could you do the things you're doing? No, you couldn't do them. So why do you feel like when you're a football player that you're allowed to do those things? No. That's not how society is, son. Once you leave here and you enter society, you're not going to be able to do those things, so I'm going to tell you right now this is the way you're going to be taught.'"
"I always say this - when I tell a parent, that if you took my children, then I want you to raise them the way that I raise yours. So I don't understand when some coaches take a player and they don't raise that player like he's your child. Because you're not going to let your child just go do anything he want to go do. So why all of a sudden, now that you have someone else's child, you feel like hey, this is what they can go do."
"I don't understand it, but that's the way a lot of people are, so that's how they run their shop. It's their store. They're the manager of their store."