Coaches Corner: Five signs it might be a football coaching job to stay away from

You've moved on from your former team or are looking for a new opportunity. It might be a good step up and new start. Or it could be a bad news.

Whenever you decide to take up a new challenge, it pays to do your homework. Looking at the school, its history and staff are crucial in order to ensure you're not walking into a nightmare situation you'll end up regretting.

Here are five signs that it might be a football coaching job to stay away from.

First off, look at the "turnover garden." If the past history of the school shows lots of turnover, meaning they're cycling through head coaches, that's one sign that it's a bad football job.

You probably want to stay away from that school. Some schools are like this: They have a guy for one year, then for two years and for maybe three years. Fact is it's a turnover circuit and you're probably better off staying away. I'll bet it's a bad football job.

Another bad sign is a revolving door for administration — and a bad look for the school as a whole. A positive campus climate and culture is hard to establish if there's a lot of turnover in the front office.

A good football school should have a solid administrative staff. After all, it all starts at the top. And so a principal with longevity is able to build the type of athletic programs he or she wants at that school. The success he or she wants to see at that school can usually only happen when they've been there for a little while. If there is a lot of turnover in admin, the athletic football programs may never really get a chance to gain traction and succeed.

Roster numbers are one thing to study when looking for a new job. What is the trend over the past two years? Five years? Ten years?

We've all seen good football jobs turn into bad football jobs in a matter of a few years because of another school opening in the area. So, studying the roster numbers, I can tell you if that football job is a good job or a bad job. I have inherited programs where we had to build those roster numbers up, and we were able to do that.

But some jobs, where roster numbers are low, you can't build back up. Sometimes it's because the school enrollment numbers have dwindled. That becomes a no-win situation for a coach. And so understanding enrollment numbers at the school and how that coincides with the roster numbers is important.

Some bad football jobs have overwhelming parents, the kind that make a coach's job darn near impossible.

Those parents can overwhelm your office and time, the administration's time and can run roughshod over many aspects of your program. And so if there's a bunch of "helicopter dads" and "tiger moms" in that community, in that football program, you might want to stay away.

It's always important to find out, heading in to the new job or perspective job, how much money the football team is allocated from the school. That's always a sign as to what kind of overall commitment it has in terms of overall success of the football program.

If the school doesn't commit much money to the football program, and it must created multiple fundraisers for success, or even sustainability, you might want to stay away.