Football is an amazing game. Fans sit on their couch all weekend, ready to watch 48 hours of a game that so many fall in love with on the field, and for those who are lucky, their careers can extend past their time on the field. The love and respect for the game are no more evident with anyone than with first-year Ohio linebackers coach Chris Woods.
“I don't really feel like I have worked for 30-something years, (I) just do what I love,” Woods said. “It kind of keeps you young and around young people, and that helps… Find something you love to do, and you won't work for a day. That's the key.”
Woods, a coach who has been in the profession for over 30 years with experience at both the college and professional levels, has never taken his foot off the gas when it comes to learning the game. He feels that the best players and coaches are the ones who are never satisfied and are hungry for improvement every day.
“Experience is just mistakes being made over the course and learning from them and trying not to repeat them,” Woods said. “That's what I see. It doesn't really mean you know more than anybody else. It just means you've tried it, it didn't work, so you don't do it again. Hopefully you can impart that on another coach, players or whoever, and just get people to see things differently, while always retaining the ability to learn from other people too.”
The field may leave the coach, but the coach never leaves the field. Former players make wonderful coaches because they bring a new view to their players with their personal experiences and failures to help develop this generation of athletes.
“I've seen both sides of it, as a player and as a coach, and I didn't at the time when we were losing as a player, you can't get your head around it, of why it's happening,” said Woods. “But now I know exactly why it happened. So the thing that I've taken from that is the attention to the process of winning.”
Woods put this effort towards the process forward during his senior year at Davidson in 1990, when they broke the 11-season-long losing streak, and during his 2003 season as head coach of Mansfield, a Division II program in Pennsylvania. In 2003, Woods took a mediocre program to an 8-3 record and as high as number 20 in the rankings.
“That was rewarding to put in the hard work for a new coach (who) kind of showed a new way of doing stuff, and to see the hard work coming to fruition was good,” Woods said.
Woods has coached across the country and in many different roles, having to integrate into many different programs and find his footing while still staying true to his coaching philosophy. Coaches rotate and change jobs frequently in the world of sports, and a new mind can be hard to mesh with, but Woods has found his way in every coaching group due to his respectful methods in each locker room.
“I think the biggest thing is number one, understanding it's football,” Woods said. “No matter where you are, the rules are the same, it's all the same … Wherever I've been, I just try to be myself and to be genuine. Sometimes that's harder when you're younger, and that's probably why I wasn't perfect at it. I'm sure I tried to be somebody that I’m not, but eventually I kind of found my style.”
Obviously, a coach wants to connect with the staff, but the biggest thing is being able to connect with the players, especially those who come and go as quickly as college athletes do. Athletes are all about routine, and Woods acknowledges this.
“I feel like players really want consistency. For example, if you're going to be a kind of a raving lunatic, to be a raving lunatic all the time, if you're going to be quieter, OK, then do that all the time,” Woods said.
Woods had some coaching associations with a couple of members within the staff this year at Ohio, including both offensive coordinator Scott Isphording and defensive coordinator John Hauser. These associations are not uncommon within the coaching bubble, and someone with the stature of Woods was spoken highly of before the hiring window opened this past spring.
“I didn't know coach (Brian) Smith at all,” Woods said. “I didn't know this, but I knew people who knew him well, and that's how coaching works … I knew other people on staff, so it wasn't like coming in cold. I worked with coach (Isphording), my first coaching job ever. (My) first coaching job was at Wittenberg with (Isphording), and then with coach Houser. I actually recruited and coached him for a year at Wittenberg, so I've known some of these guys for a long time.”
Connections can make or break a coaching staff, and it starts with team culture. Instead of an office setting, football is a competition and something that coaches all have to buy into if they are going to win, and after winning the Mid-American Conference title last year, Ohio wants to keep winning, something Woods could buy into right when he stepped foot in Athens.
“My job was to become this place, not try to turn this place into any other way,” Woods said. “The good part is, as you get along in coaching, you really just want to be in a place that fits you, because it's a lot easier to do that when you just feel the same way that the culture of the program is. So that was an easy transition, because there's nothing we do here that I don't believe in.”
