By Staff
Coaching Management, 9.8, November 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0908/qamacdougall.htm
Few coaches have won as many games while receiving less fanfare than Bob MacDougall. Now the Head Coach at Joliet (Ill.) Junior College, MacDougall won 174 games against 59 losses during a 21-year stint at the College of DuPage in suburban Chicago.
From 1993-96, MacDougall's teams won an NJCAA-record 36 straight games, including 12-0 seasons in 1993 and 1995, and an 11-0 slate in 1994. A member of the NJCAA Football Hall of Fame, MacDougall coached 37 All-Americans and several NFL players during his time at DuPage.
After DuPage dropped football following the 1996 season, MacDougall, 57, remained as a counselor and spent two years (1998-99) as a volunteer linebacker coach at Naperville (Ill.) Central High School, helping the squad win a state title in 1999. A linebacker during his playing career at Eastern Michigan University, MacDougall was named head coach at Joliet in January 2000, and led the previously struggling Wolves to nine wins in his first season at the helm, although seven wins were later forfeited due to a violation dating back to the 1999 season of rules governing the number of out-of-state players.
In this interview, MacDougall talks about his success at DuPage, his reaction to the program's termination, and the challenges of coaching at a junior college.
CM: How did you end up at the College of DuPage?
MacDougall: After being a high school coach, I was the defensive coordinator at Michigan Tech for two years. We went undefeated my first year and 7-2 my second year. We had great athletes. But I'd always wanted to be a head coach, and I knew I wanted to be in a metropolitan area.
One of the basketball coaches at Michigan Tech put a flyer in my mailbox that said the College of DuPage, outside Chicago, was looking for a head coach. I applied for the job and five months later I got it. Like every head coach at a junior college, I thought I would stay for three or four years, but then I found out it was a pretty good job.
What made you realize it was a good job?
I said to myself, 'You're your own boss. You're going to be as good and as strong as you want to be. They're paying you more than they're paying the Mid-American Conference coaches. What's wrong with what you're doing?' I knew if I could surround myself with great coaches, guys who really understand the game and want to be part of it, I could have something special here. And we did, for 20-plus years. I think in most years, I probably had better freshman and sophomore athletes than a Western Illinois or Southern Illinois would get.
How did you handle it when the program was dropped at DuPage?
Not very well, in part because it was never presented to me in a fashion of 'This is what we're going to do.' I had had to resign because I was facing surgery and I knew my health would prevent me from coaching for at least a year. Then, out of the clear blue sky, the president walked in and told the athletic director he's going to drop football and if he doesn't like it, to find another job.
Did I handle it well? No. I saw a total disrespect by the president for this facet of athletics. I fought for two years to bring it back and we got it back.
So even after resigning, you campaigned to bring the team back?
I saw such a need for it in the community, and I was asked by so many high school principals and athletic directors to do all in my power to bring it back. I would have liked to have thought that the president and I could have debated it, or at least shared some thoughts on it, but he didn't seem to want to listen to anybody.
Maybe he woke up one day and thought bringing the team back was the right thing to do. Maybe he felt he had made a mistake. I don't know. He's never talked with me about it.
Is it difficult when you play DuPage now?
No, because I don't look at it that way. I've tried to get that out of my system. I just look at it as another game and another opportunity for the kids here at Joliet to excel.
Do you feel that junior college football is given due credit?
I've always felt it's been overlooked and that it will never get the recognition it deserves in the public eye. Coaches understand--just take a look at Division I or NFL rosters and see how many of them were junior college players--but the public just doesn't understand.
How do you handle having players around for only two years?
When your recruiting is right, you should probably start maybe five or six freshmen a year on a regular basis. In our best years, it becomes sophomore-dominated with freshmen getting some experience at starting positions. But most of them serve in back-up roles because it takes them a while to adjust to the speed, the intensity, and the execution that go into being a successful football player. We also try to keep it as simple as possible. The more sophomore-dominated you are, the more sophisticated you can become.
You started your career as a high school coach in Detroit. What did you learn from coaching in the Detroit Catholic League?
I learned you better be prepared every Friday night. It was an extremely competitive league and division, which had outstanding coaches. [Former University of Colorado Head Coach] Bill McCartney was in there, and so were Woody Widenhofer [Head Coach at Vanderbilt University] and Lloyd Carr [Head Coach at the University of Michigan]. I was surrounded by all these guys who are excellent with kids and great at the Xs and Os.
I learned how valuable tradition was and how valuable the experience of veteran coaches can be. I learned the key to being successful is to surround yourself with good coaches and then administrate properly.
Was it intimidating as a young coach to get your first head coaching job in that kind of environment?
In my first game, we lost--and this was at a school that was not used to losing--and the booster club put a noose over the goal post after the game. I asked one of the assistant coaches, who had been there for 15 or 18 years, what that was all about. And he said, 'That's for you, Mac. They're trying to tell you something.' That was a little intimidating. Fortunately we were able to get things going, and we won the next nine games and the Catholic League championship.
How did you end up coaching at Naperville Central High School?
My hours [as a counselor at DuPage] permitted me to be free after 3:30 every afternoon and my sons played at Naperville Central. I was good friends with the head coach, Joe Bunge, so I volunteered to coach there for two years.
How did you deal with the transition from being a head coach to being an assistant?
It wasn't hard because I knew I would be a head coach again soon. I wanted to contribute something to the community and this was the best way to do it.
What did you learn there?
Patience. You have to be more patient with high school kids. But I enjoyed the teaching. There was no pressure on me outside my assigned area, because the pressure falls on the head coach. Plus, I was familiar with those coaches and the structure of the program because my kids went through it.
How were you able to turn things around so quickly at Joliet?
They were striving to win here. They had averaged only three wins a year for the last 18 years and I always thought this was a sleeping giant. And we caught a break or two here and there.
Overall, though, being able to bring all my assistant coaches is what made the transition easiest. As a head coach, you have to teach the coaches their particular areas. If you've done that already and worked with them for a number of years, it's a lot easier. They know what's expected of them, and I know what I can expect from them.
How do you coach your coaches?
It's hard to coach them during the season, so you spend time out of season coaching them. You know what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are, and you try to get them to buff up on certain areas. Obviously, you'll make some corrections during the season, but the bulk of that takes place in the off-season.
What do the players do at Joliet that helps you to win?
The biggest thing is that kids are willing to work. I could look in their eyes and tell they wanted to win and wanted to be successful. I think they felt if they did the right things and did what we asked of them, that they were going to be successful on Saturday afternoons.
What do you think are the major issues facing football coaches today?
Obviously, the challenge is preparation and recruiting. What you do in the nine months out-of-season really dictates what happens in the three months during the season. If you don't do the right things from a recruiting standpoint, or in running your off-season programming, or with training coaches, it will be reflected in what you do when your season begins.
Even the high school coaches now work so diligently with the passing leagues in the summer, the strength programs, and this and that--it becomes a 12-month program. You hear about college coaches who 25 years ago used to have 25 kids stay on campus and work out and take summer school classes--now they have 70 to 80 stay on campus. The time commitment of doing things right has expanded dramatically.