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Alex Miller

Fielding

WRTC 103

28 January 2018

The Intern

Football coaches often get into the office at 7 am and then won’t leave until about 9pm

everyday during the fall season. I knew this at a young age because I grew up with a football

coach as my dad. The only times I would see him were late nights or Saturdays after his games. I

never once despised his work schedule, because I knew I wanted to do what he does. This past

fall, I was an intern for the James Madison University Football team. Football originally started

as just a game, but has shifted into more of a career path as of late. As it has become a career

path, I have noticed something that has been one of the most important things to a team,

leadership. Leadership is defined as, “a process whereby an individual influences a group of

individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse 7). Although it became defined, leadership is

always evolving with the times and circumstances. Leadership has always seemed interesting by

how it can always become something more, and I’ve used football to help me develop the skills

to lead others and influence them positively.

Once I became an intern, I saw the differences in each coach with how they approached

leadership. I was the intern for the running backs coach, and his leadership towards the players

was more of a relationship. When leadership is more of a relationship, it is a process of

collaboration so that the coach (leader) and players (followers) are affected. This makes the

approach more interactive than linear (Northouse 6). I was lucky enough to witness the positive
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relationship that the coach and the players had with each other. The group would always find

time in the daily meetings to discuss moments outside of football, and I saw the transformation

of a coach to player relationship become more of a brotherhood. They became to understand

each other better and therefore became more knowledgeable about how to be more successful in

the games, and the communication was beneficial to the coach and players because both learned

from each other. As a freshman, I was nervous around the group for the first couple of weeks

because I wasn’t sure how to lead them when I was a new intern. But because of the leadership

of the coach and the positivity in the room, the climate became very apparent that it was

accepting of me. I not only became the intern on the players, I also became a friend to them as

well. That helped me become more comfortable and started to take on leadership roles.

At practices, I became in charge of putting the players through a warm up before

they would stretch. We would focus on catching and route running, and I lead it in a democratic

way and let the players give me feedback on what they think they needed to work on. But as my

leadership style was democratic, other coaches would show signs of autocratic leadership. In

autocratic leadership, the leaders demonstrate the highest task activity, but only as that coach was

there (Ayman 1565). This was evident in the wide receiver group as they would normally be

sitting around and relaxing as much as they could before their coach came out and told them to

get going. As the wide receivers began to do their warm up drills they became very efficient in

getting work done. The receivers group would do the drills none stop for the next 10-15 minutes

before practice, but always under the direction of the coach. If the coach wasn’t out early for

practice one day, the receivers wouldn’t go on their own to do the drills the coach had lead them

to do. That is what makes it such an interesting environment to be around. The differences that

are brought together is fascinating, every coach is from somewhere else and has different ideas
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on how to lead their particular group. To me, I began to measure a coach’s leading ability to be

how well the players were perceptive to what was being taught.

As I went through the entire season I started to pick up on the tendencies of all of the

coaches and thought to myself, how I can be seen as a good coach? The coaches this past season

lead the players to their second straight national championship, something very unique. I have

taken notes on strategies the coaches use, and how the interaction with players go, even if the

interactions are negative. I have seen the spectrum of the leadership models, seeing an uptight

autocratic style in one group, to a democratic style in another. My experience with football has

expanded what leadership means to me by becoming something that always can turn into more.

Leadership has been studied for centuries and it is continually developing and becoming more

complex. To handle society is seen as, “‘a pretzel shape universe that requires a pretzel shape

model.’ (Ayman 1572). This makes the theory of leadership having to have many twist and turns,

so it is flipping and evolving. Going into my career of coaching football, I hope to have the

prescese of leadership that can benefit someone else. In the next 5 years, individual leadership

could be defined differently than it is today, and it is due to the always evolving world of today.

Although individual leadership is always evolving, team leadership seems to be the next

approach, “It may be that the future of leadership will also be a team leadership approach”

(Ayman 1572). If that is where leadership is going, I am glad to have spent the early years of my

life with the James Madison University football team because I have learned how to be apart of a

team with so many different approaches to leadership.

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This is me dressed in my gameday attire. This was one of my first games as an intern and

I was waiting for the players to get to the stadium from the hotel they stayed in the night before.

Saturdays are the best days during the fall because that means there is no school, but plenty of

football. I look forward to my future with the James Madison University Football Team.
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Works Cited
AYMAN, ROYA. "Leadership." Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2nd ed., vol. 3, Macmillan
Reference USA, 2001, pp. 1563-1575. Gale Virtual Reference Library,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3404400205/GVRL?u=viva_jmu&sid=GVRL&xi
d=012af43a. Accessed 23 Jan. 2018.

Northouse, Peter Guy. Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice. 4th ed., SAGE, 2018.