At School Leader Lab, we love a guided dinner. When we held one in August, one of the prompts was “What’s your unpopular opinion?” Mine was, “Sports fanatics are weird and make loving sports their whole personality.” Fast forward to October and I’m so obsessed with football I’m wondering how to score tickets to the Super Bowl. And it’s not even to see Bad Bunny. Shockingly, I want to watch the actual game.
Real quick detour, before we get into all that… this is my first newsletter since June 2025. I needed a break. A real one. I do my best writing when I’m fully recharged and I just couldn’t bring myself to share something uninspired. So I’ve been spending time with my family, leaders in schools, and working alongside the School Leader Lab team launching a new school year with many exciting things happening (more on that later). And I’ve been searching for inspiration.
Surprisingly, I found that inspiration in the strangest place. Football.
I’m coming to understand and love football the same way I taught my third graders math. It all began with a suggestion from my teammate Akosua to watch the Quarterback and Receiver series on Netflix. I was gripped by the behind-the-scenes look at how some of the most talented athletes in the world struggle with performance anxiety and balance their careers with their responsibilities as husbands and fathers. I was fascinated by the leadership required of both the players and the coaches. I also learned a little bit about the complex game of football that had confounded me for so many years. Something that had been so confusing and unapproachable became real through stories. Like when I started with the concrete with my third graders, using manipulatives to teach fractions or division.
From there, once I started to understand and care about football, I could move to Hard Knocks on HBO Max which delved slightly more into the strategy, plays and technical side of the game that would have been completely elusive (boring) to me before. For third graders this would be like moving to the pictorial—drawing fractions or circles and dots now that they have the basic concepts.
Now finally, I’m watching the actual game. I’m in the abstract phase: writing fractions as numbers, doing long division. My journey into football feels like a really well-executed long-term plan. I learned football the way the best teachers teach: starting with stories, connections and concrete real-world applications, building slowly to the abstract and complexity, meeting learners where they are but never lowering the bar (understanding the actual game).
I’m now wildly, embarrassingly obsessed. Ordered NFL+ one week in obsessed. Recording every college game obsessed. Talking constantly with passionate confidence despite minimal actual knowledge obsessed.
When your career is leadership development, every TV show becomes a lesson. Apparently, so does every football game. I cannot watch a fourth-down conversion without thinking about leading schools. Since my family and team probably can’t stomach one more shaky football metaphor, I’ve decided to come to you with this instead. Luckily, I can’t see you rolling your eyes.
Here are the leadership lessons I’m learning as the world’s most passionate novice football fan. Warning: lots of potentially wildly wrong football terminology coming your way. I’m still in the productive struggle space with this.
What I Notice: Every player has a specific assignment on every play. If you do your job, you’re in the right spot for the interception. If you do your job, you’re perfectly timing the block so the running back has the hole. The quarterback can do his job because the blockers are doing theirs. You hear it in football commentary constantly: the offense did their job, the defense did their job. The power of the team is that everyone is doing their job. Everyone knows their role and executes it with precision. But if you’re focused on doing someone else’s job or not where you need to be for yours? You’re taking away from the entire flow. The play is broken.
Leadership Takeaway: When you’re doing your job well, you’re positioned exactly where you need to be for the moment that matters. As a leader, you have to be relentless about doing your job AND making sure everyone on the team understands how their job contributes to the overall play. Part of doing your job is making others’ jobs exceptionally clear. Define responsibilities, help people see how their role matters, trust them to execute while holding them accountable to outcomes, and stay in your lane. That’s how the play works.
What I Notice: The head coach isn’t calling every play or coaching every position. Offensive coaches call the offense plays. Defensive coaches call theirs. There are linebacker coaches and quarterback coaches. The head coach trusts their expertise while holding them accountable to outcomes. Why? Because it’s unsustainable to coach each individual player, and doing so makes them lose perspective of the whole game—which is their actual job.
But this doesn’t mean losing touch with what’s happening on the field. During a recent halftime interview during the Indiana vs. Oregon game, Indiana Coach Curt Cignetti said, “We have to quit jumping offsides, we gotta do a better job of stopping the run. We gotta quit laying around on defense and coming back the next play (referring to a missed tackle from Jamari Sharpe). We gotta play better.” He knows exactly what the players are doing. The head coach is relentless about monitoring the game so they can coach their coaches with confidence and precision. They intervene with purpose when coaches are off, then hand the responsibility back with intention and clarity.
Leadership Takeaway: If you’re the Executive Director intervening on interpersonal dynamics between your Principal and APs rather than coaching your Principal Supervisor to coach the Principal on management techniques, you’re off. If you’re the Principal with 15 teachers on your caseload, there’s no way you have time to coach your APs.
Your job is to build leadership capacity in the people below you. They do the direct coaching of the people below them. You coach them on how to coach, hold them accountable to results, and maintain perspective on the whole system. Yes, you intervene when necessary—but then you hand it back. You can’t see the whole game if you’re running every drill. This is often much harder and requires much more restraint, but it is your job.
Still, don’t mistake this for losing touch with what’s actually happening. You need to keep your pulse on the ground, in classrooms, so you can coach your coaches with expertise and clarity. Each year we have Pat Brantley, CEO of Friendship PCS, come speak with our cohorts. She shares this wisdom: “When teachers see me come in their classroom, they get nervous. But I’m not there to give feedback to them. I’m there figuring out what I need to talk to my Chiefs about.” That’s coaching the coaches.
Sometimes leaders misinterpret this and take it to the other extreme: “These people are leaders. These are adults. I shouldn’t have to tell them how to lead other adults or do their job.” Wrong. That’s precisely what you’re supposed to do when you’re leading leaders. It’s about being clear on your vision and multiplying your impact, not abdicating your responsibility.
What I Notice: I’m struck by the level of preparation that goes into every moment of football. The teams prepare for every inevitability. They sub fast players in during crucial third downs. They have play calls ready for any scenario. They have backups for backups. They watch tape and prep for the weak spots on the other team. Every single moment is thought through. Players who don’t work hard in practice don’t get game time. Period. I was recently watching a college football game and the sideline reporter asked about a talented player who was finally back on the field after a long hiatus. The coach said, “He’s good but he wasn’t good in practice. He couldn’t play the game until he earned the game.” Unreasonable preparation is the standard.
Leadership Takeaway: Yet when it comes to what I believe is the world’s most important job, educating children, we don’t assume this level of practice and precision. We don’t make sure every single lesson has an exemplar. We aren’t prepped for common misconceptions. We don’t make teachers stand up and deliver during lesson prep. We hope for the best.
As much as I’m starting to love football, it is a game at the end of the day. If we took one-tenth the level of unreasonable preparation that goes into football and applied it to educating our children, a lot would change for kids. How you show up to planning meetings matters. How you prepare for walkthroughs matters. Whether teachers practice their lessons before delivering them matters. The preparation IS the performance. That ethos starts with the leader.
What I Notice: After losses, coaches say “I have to do better.” Quarterbacks put the weight on themselves, even when receivers drop passes. The best leaders take all the blame and give away all of the credit. When Arch Manning finally won after being nationally ridiculed for Texas’ poor early performance, he gave the game ball to teammate Tre Wisener. It’s tough, but that’s the job. I’m realizing I’ve said that a few times now. That’s why School Leader Lab exists. That’s why leaders need supervisors, cohorts, peer groups, and coaches who are their caring critics, champions and cheerleaders. Leadership is tough. It’s tougher when you do it alone.
Leadership Takeaway: When things go wrong in your school, what’s your first instinct? To explain all the external factors? To identify who dropped the ball? The most powerful thing you can do is own it. It doesn’t mean everything is your fault, but it does mean you accept the role of ultimate responsibility.
What I Notice: Rituals. Fight songs. Cannons blasting. Storming the field. Fans and coaches are incredibly tough when things are going wrong, but my goodness do they celebrate when they go well. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve shed a few tears over college football players jumping into their teammates’ arms after big wins.
Leadership Takeaway: If it’s all grit and grind, there’s nothing to work toward. If you treat wins as people “just doing what they’re supposed to do anyway,” there’s no motivation. Being tough is great. But if you’re all tough and no fun, you won’t have anyone left to be tough on. Create rituals. Celebrate publicly and loudly. Let people feel the win. That’s what keeps teams coming back.
Finally, the lesson that might matter most:
What I Notice: Football is won with positive yardage, a down at a time. Sure, big throws are exciting. Innovation and big swings are necessary. But the game is mostly won through consistency. The best teams aren’t trying to score on every play. They’re gaining positive yardage every time. Three yards. Five yards. First down. First down. First down. They play their game regardless of the opponent.
Leadership Takeaway: Rather than constantly trying to reinvent the wheel, coming up with some new trick, some new silver bullet—do what works. Every single day. Grade level work. Strong exemplars. Well-planned and executed turn and talks. It’s not always sexy, but day in and day out consistency is much better than trying to throw a Hail Mary each play. Stop chasing the big flashy initiative that’s going to transform everything overnight. Start making forward progress every single day. What’s your “positive yardage?” Maybe it’s sticking with a weekly walkthrough schedule no matter what. Maybe it’s leaving time in every planning meeting for stand and deliver practice. Consistency compounds. Win the down (daily consistent excellence). The game (such as end of year state testing) will take care of itself.
So yeah, I’m that person now. The one who has a sports analogy for every challenge. The one I judged in August.
But here’s what I keep thinking about: There’s something powerful about being a beginner again. About not knowing all the terminology but feeling the excitement anyway. About being willing to look a little ridiculous in service of genuine curiosity.
It also reminds me that the best learning happens when we meet people where they are. Akosua didn’t tell me to watch game film or study playbooks. She gave me stories. She gave me the concrete. And because she did that, I could build toward complexity. How often do we skip that step with our staff? How often do we jump to the abstract—the data, the standards, the frameworks—without first building understanding through purpose, story and connection? Maybe the lesson isn’t just about football and leadership. Maybe it’s also about remembering what good teaching actually looks like.
As school leaders, we spend so much time being the expert, the one with the answers, the person who’s supposed to know. What if we gave ourselves permission to be wildly, enthusiastically novice about something? To be in that productive struggle space that we ask so many staff and students to get comfortable with. Where we’re learning and making mistakes and still showing up with full passion and never lowering bar as we move toward something greater?
So here’s to unexpected obsessions. To finding inspiration in unlikely places. To becoming the person you once found weird. To modeling risk taking and getting things wrong with confidence in the relentless pursuit of deeper understanding.
What’s teaching you about leadership right now? What unexpected source is showing you something new about your work? Email me and let me know. I promise not to respond with a football metaphor. Probably.
On a final note, football certainly inspired this newsletter, but so did many of you. I love to write. I always have. It’s my safe space. But it’s also very scary to put something that matters so much to me into the world. Each time you respond to this newsletter, or tell me in person that you read it or print it out or share it with your teams, you make me braver. So yes, football inspired me, but you make me press send. Thank you.
PS- If I got something wrong about football in this…that tracks.