Up until retiring after the 2013 season, Nick Aliotti's entire adult life was spent in the coaching profession, and that equates to hundreds, if not thousands of conversations with parents of prospective players, current players, and future players.
So naturally, with the situation at UCLA between Diddy and strength coach Sal Alosi playing out earlier this week, parental communication was a topic of conversation on Sirius XM College Sports Nation when Aliotti joined the crew.
Aliotti explained his one simple rule he lived by as a college coach. It was something which he communicated to both his players, and their parents:
“I always treated them the same, here was my rule: If you want to call me and talk about your young man’s school, academics, social life, how he’s getting along in the real world, how he’s dealing with the team, I would give you all the time in the day and answer those questions."
“But there was a line I drew, and I always told them this - I will never talk to you about your son’s playing time, his ability or anything like that. That’s what we (coaches) took care of. He’s a grown man now. He knew why he was or wasn’t playing. Let him tell you. That was my simple rule.”
“I would explain that to my players, too. That was etched in stone and communicated from day one. I never had that kind of confrontation. I did have one time where I got a phone call from a parent and I said right on the phone, ‘End of conversation, football-wise. Let’s move on.’ I never had any [confrontations] with parents. I know there were some parents that weren’t happy, because you heard about it. But for the most part, there were very few of those in my career.”
Take some advice from the veteran coach, with only a few issues over a long coaching career, Aliotti has clearly found something that worked for him.