7 Spots To Fill: What's Going On With High School Football Coaches?

Lanness Robinson's job as director of athletics is to oversee interscholastic athletics for the Hillsborough County School District, but don't ask him why a number of head football coach positions are going into the off-season unfilled.

"Personnel decisions are individual school decisions, so without you speaking to the seven individual school administrators, it would be hard for you to get a consistent answer," Robinson said in a telephone interview Jan. 13. "I talked about each case with the school principal but they had to make that decision and it wouldn't be right for me to say what caused them."

The question concerned a report published by TBO.com on Jan. 12, in which writer Bill Ward reported on that day's dismissal of the head football coach at Freedom High School, which left "more than a quarter of the county's" high schools without a head football coach.

Schools without coaches are Brandon, Blake, Chamberlain, Freedom, Lennard, Riverview and Strawberry Crest.

In December, Brandon Patch reported on the community's reaction to the ouster of , the head football coach of Brandon High, for which the school's principal, Carl Green, and athletic director, Tibor Kovacs, gave no reason, other than that the two had decided "to move in a different direction for 2012." (See, .)

The TBO.com report noted as well, in reporting on Tchecoy Blount's dismissal from Freedom, that "as has been the case at most of the [other schools] that have asked for resignations of their football coaches, Freedom athletic director Eli Thomas said his school has decided to 'go in a different direction.' "

Green held to his similar comment in an interview this month for an , based on FCAT testing, noting that his focus was on his students coming back from the winter break and getting through their tests for the end of the semester.

Indeed, when Brandon Patch called the school today, Jan. 13, both Green and Kovacs were busy with the final day of testing and could not be reached for comment.

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UPDATE POSTED 1 p.m. Jan. 13: Kovacs has since returned our call. “It’s still where it stands at this time,” he said about Lima’s dismissal. “We just have decided to go in a different direction.” He offered no additional details other than to say he’s in the process of gathering resumes and fielding inquisitions and a decision on Brandon’s new head football coach will be “forthcoming shortly.”
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Robinson is not surprised that decisions on new coaches have not yet been made.

"My guess is most schools will wait until after exams this week to start focusing on their off-season" issues, Robinson said. "Obviously, they'll want to [hire coachs] as quickly as possible so they can begin their off-season preparations for next year's season."

Robinson said the high number of vacancies is not without precedent.

"It depends on the year," he said. "There were eight new coaches the year before. You have people who move away, people who retire, there are lots of reasons why a coach leaves. I think there's a though process kind of floating out there that it has to do with wins and losses. If you really do your homework, that's not what it's about."

As for Lima, he's been a two-time Coach of the Year honoree, who took Brandon to the playoffs four out of the six years he was with the Eagles.

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To apply for the head football coach position at Brandon High School, email Kovacs at tibor.kovac@sdhc.k12.fl.us. Or, mail or drop off a resume to the school, at 1101 Victoria St.

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