My book reviews got started in late 1999, when I realized one day (in the shower, of course, where for some reason I seem to do my best thinking) that I’d recently purchased $65 worth of books on coaching football, and only received about ten bucks worth of useful information.

Understandably, this irritated me a little. You would expect a company with a name like American Sports Education Program to know something about football, since it is an American sport after all. Is it too much to ask that NFL coaches know the differences between their league and Pop Warner before they publish a book on coaching at the youth level?

The best books I’d found were written by some guy I’d never heard of named Jack Reed, and the final straw came when I found a review on www.amazon.com for one of Coach Reed’s books. The review was attached to the ordering page for an A.S.E.P. book of the same title, Coaching Youth Football. Since I had that book already, and wasn’t impressed with it, I delayed purchasing Coach Reed’s book.

Later, when I read Coach Reed’s book on coaching defensive football, a book I give sole credit for my 1999 championship season, I realized that there had to have been some kind of mistake. I took a closer look at the book on his web site and discovered that I’d been looking at the wrong book all along.

This seemed to summarize all of the frustration I’d been feeling. Why were most books on football so crappy? Wasn’t there anyone out there that could write a decent book that mixed common sense with sound football techniques? How much better would my 1999 Kodiak Lions have been if I’d read both of Coach Reed’s books before the season began?

Thus was born the Coach Wade Book Reviews. First published in 1999 on Infosports the initial few reviews were lost to posterity when the server crashed in mid-2000. My personal copies of the reviews had been kept on a balky hard drive and also wiped out, so Football for Youth! is now featuring all new reviews.

For the new incarnation of Football for Youth! I have decided to add a new coaching resource to the list of reviews: video. As video becomes easier and easier to produce, and more and more coaches out there are deciding to purchase the Apple Macintosh^TM computers that make video editing a snap, we’re starting to see a glut of video production. For the most part, the expense and organization these videos require forces only top-notch instruction to be produced; coaches that aren’t organized and don’t know what they are doing don’t have the resources to produce a video. However, since there is usually no editing process and no publisher screening out the crap from the gold, there’s a good chance that before too much longer the video market may be saturated with poor quality materials. Wherever possible I’ll do my best to help you avoid them.

The following F.A.Q. should help answer any questions you may have about my rating criteria, how to get a book or tape reviewed, and how to find the materials I’m talking about.

Q. What kind of rating system do you use?

A. I prefer a five ball rating system. I think everyone is relatively familiar with that type of system, and it requires the least amount of thought on everyone’s part.

Q. What criteria will you use to rate the materials?

A. Similar to the original reviews, I have selected the following criteria as crucial to the effectiveness of a football coaching book:

1) Readability- How buried is the important information under jargon? Will this book take longer to get through than Titanic (C’mon! Freakin’ sink already!), or can you make it cover to cover in three trips to the john?

2) Usefulness- Will the stuff the author describes actually work in youth football? I shouldn’t have to add this criterion at all, but there are books out there that recommend the 4-3 Zone as “typical for the youth level”, and feel that youth coaches have time to practice “hours and hours” on running pass routes. Until the writers of these sorts of books start using a little common sense, I’ll have to rate them by a criterion that could best be described as “How clueless was the author?”

3) Practicality- For the most part, youth coaches are short on two things: money and time. A book that tells you how to coach your offensive linemen using a seven man sled is only going to be a help to you if you have access to such a sled! Since I get paid by the government, I prefer that my coaching books recommend a bare minimum of expensive equipment. (By the way, just in case you’re curious, I’m writing this article while on watch at USCG Training Center Petaluma. Your tax dollars at work!) 

Typically, youth coaches don’t have oodles of time, either. Generally youth football teams practice Tuesday through Thursday, and have games on either Friday or Saturday. This is just six short hours a week to teach and rep your offense, install and perfect your defense, and work in your special teams units. I’m not sure where certain authors got the idea that I had “...hours of practice to rep running backs on proper footwork...”, but I can assure you that I did not. If there are any youth football coaches out there that find they have plenty of time to teach everything they need to, I haven’t met them yet!

Q. Are there any other changes to the rating system in this new version?

A. Good question. I’m glad you asked that.

I’ve put a lot of thought into my rating system, and decided to add an Overall Score category. This is nothing more than the average of all three criterion. I think that this addition will help make these reviews more useful to the average guy that doesn’t have a lot of time on his hands to read these book reviews I’ve slaved so hard to write. I mean, come on, people! Is it too much to ask that you read these things after I go through all the hard work of reading the book, writing the overview, writing the review, formatting the review, and posting it online?

I digress. Using this “short form” reviewing process will simplify the reviews.

Q. Do you take requests for reviews?

A. Yes. If you’ve got a book or other material that you think is the best thing to hit football since the invention of the cheerleader outfit then tell me about it. If you let me know where you got it, I’ll try to get my hands on it as well, and as soon as I’m able I’ll write a review.

Q. What if we don’t want to wait for you to get off your ass and write the review?

A. Considering how long it took me just to get the dang site back up and running, there’s a very real possibility that it might take me a while to get the book read, especially if you tell me about it during football season, when I’m actually busier than I am now.

All I can say is “Deal with it.” I’ll do my best.

Q. How often can we expect a new review?

A. One new review will typically be posted online every time Football for Youth is updated, which, barring injury, illness, death, or something important like the playoffs, will be once every month, on the 15th. Traditionally, that is also payday, so you can rush out and buy the ones I give five stars.

Q. Why are you doing this? 

A. Because I’m an egomaniac with delusions of my own importance.

Q. No, really. Why?

A. Because I’ve spent about $3500 on materials to make me a better coach since 1999. Of that $3500 only about $1200 was worthwhile. The rest is just taking up space on my bookshelves. 

The whole goal, the reason d’etre of Football for Youth!, is to help youth coaches find the materials they need to be successful. Football is a complex sport, and it takes a great deal of study to coach it competently. There are a whole lot of kids out there that will be coached this year by someone that doesn’t know what he, or she, is doing. If I can help just one of those coaches figure out what does and does not work on the football field, then that’s twenty or more kids.

Twenty kids are worth a few hours of my time.

~D.