With this paper I wanted to show that football coaches make up a discourse community as well as smaller communities of individual

coaching staffs. I wanted to show that the community fit Swales guidelines for what constitutes a discourse community. I think that my project will be effective because I have a pretty extensive knowledge of this subject already. I come from a family of coaches. My father coached football in college before having me and going to law school. He has collaborated with some of the games brightest minds especially offensively including current Washington State coach Mike Leach and current Georgia head coach Mark Richt. I have extensive access to coaching material and have coached my own team. I think at this point my project has some good ideas. There is a lot of information that I would like to dig deeper into, but am not quite sure how to do this. As I continue to research I think this will be clearer to me. Not very many coaches have called me back yet seeing as how it is in the middle of the season. I am expecting some calls by Sunday. Also I plan to meet with my instructor to clarify some things that came up in the completion of this draft. I think that this including more interviews and maybe digging deeper into the connection between coaching and discourse is something that I could do better on. As far as what I have learned I think that I have a new perspective on coaching. Writing and performing this study has shown me that coaching is a discourse community and that I am a part of one. This will help me in writing in school. I can compare writing to football in my head something I understand. I will better be able to reach audiences if I just analyze the discourse community I am writing to. This is something this project has taught me.

As people we are all involved in some kind of group or area of interest. Have we ever stopped to wonder what makes up these groups what they are called or what they bring to others within different areas of interest? These groups are called discourse communities among scholars. John Swales says a discourse community is [A community] made up of individuals who share a broadly agreed upon set of public goals, has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members, uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback, has and uses one or more genres that help the group achieve its shared goals, has acquired some specific lexis, and has a reasonable ratio of novices and experts. A community I am involved in is a community of football coaches. This discourse community meets all the requirements and after an ethnographic study this fact is evident. A definition of what a discourse community is has already been stated by Swales. Breaking it down again we see that there is a six part criteria for the make up of a community. Taking a close look at the second part participatory mechanisms an important aspect of communities is seen from a member perspective. Gee in his article enforces this aspect. The members of any given community need to be active participants in order for the community to function as well as to retain membership. Once membership is established Wardle examines what group membership naturally brings upon inside of a community identity and authority. Another important view would be that of Devitt and Bawarshi. Language and the interpretation of language by members in a community and those outside of a community is different. Communities exist to portray information to members in the same community, but also to other

communities. Understanding the implications of experts and novices is important. It means a lot for the lexis that make up discourse communities. All of these authors explain discourse communities and the importance of their parts. The implication of language and the way it is portrayed is also explained. Essentially discourse communities are complex units that are constantly processing and producing information. As I explained earlier I am a part of a discourse community of coaches. We share the things that constitute such a community. Firstly looking at Swales guidelines we see coaches are individuals who share a broadly agreed upon set of public goals. In my interview with Lane Coffin a high school coach at Marsh Valley Idaho he confirmed this idea. When asked the question do coaches share a broadly agreed upon set of public goals? Lane answered, Of course they do. Every coach on my staff and others like my staff put in countless hours on top of their already busy schedules to win games. There is no point to coaching if you do not win and embark on a process that places winning as a priority. This sort of attitude is consistent with my own staff of coaches. On my eighth grade pop warner team my coaches and I push the kids every week to win. The game of football is competitive. The point is to win. If it was not then score would not be kept. We as a group of coaches game plan to win every week. That is our goal. This goal is shared by coaching staffs everywhere at all levels. Progressing down the list of guidelines it is evident that coaching staffs have mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback. There are countless conventions held every year to swap secrets and game planning tips. There are book and video series such as Coaches Choice that give coaches advice and insight into certain

schemes and strategies. Also coaches generally starting from the high school level on exchange game tape of each other on a week-to-week basis. This sort of activity is done so that other coaches can study opposing teams. Play calling tendencies are charted and information on the opponent is recorded so that play calling and game planning can be done in an organized and prepared manner. Between books, seminars, movies, and actually exchanging film of games there are obviously mechanisms by which coaches provide information and feedback to each other. Moving forward there are multiple genres that help coaches achieve their shared goals. We can see this through the multiple mechanisms that are used to distribute information. All of the different genres film, seminars, meetings, etc. aid in the ultimate goal of winning. There is no way that the game of football could be played at a high level of organization without these different modes of help. By studying the opponent and understanding multiple concepts it is evident that winning becomes easier. Playing into what the last two elements of this discourse community have already shown is the development of a common lexis. There is certain terminology such as position names and conceptual terms that make this element manifest. Only coaches familiar with the Nick Saban and Bill Bellicheck defenses will understand the position Star and Money as well as the type of attributes a player has to have to fit that role. Another example could be that certain teams run a 3-4 defense as opposed to a 4-3 defense or a 3-3-5 defense. There are breakdowns inside of each defense that make contribute to the style. The verbage that make up a play call might be something like, ringo right knight front burnman cover 0. This was a common concept that was used at my high school that was known by all of the coaches. My coaching staff borrowed it and

taught it to our eighth graders. Some of these words and ideas are complex, but they are understood by those inside of the discourse community. One last example could be the term cover 4. Every coach in America is familiar with this term and others like it. There is obviously an evident language that is common among coaching communities. Not every coach is an expert. There are coaches that are professionals and there are coaches that volunteer their time to coach their sons. There are men who get paid millions of dollars and those that work for free. There is definitely a reasonable ratio of novices and experts. Sort of tying into what was mentioned with the language and lexicon that coaches have the complexity and overall amount of content of the schemes and game overall depends on the level of coach. An example would be me compared to a man like Nick Saban. I am young and do not have much experience coaching. I come from a coaching background, but do not have any years coaching in college or really even at the high school level. I am definitely a novice. Coach Saban is a three time national champion at the college level. He has coached the Miami Dolphins in the NFL and has also coached multiple college teams including Michigan State, Louisiana State, and Alabama. The man conducts multiple seminars a year for coaches at all levels and many people come to hear what he has to say. He has orchestrated one of the statistically greatest defensive programs in the nations history, and he continually coaches his team to top five finishes year in and year out. This man is a professional and is one of the best that there is. This is a similar comparison to many that could be made. There are many youth football coaches just as there are many college coaches. The doors are always opening

and closing on coaching opportunities and many coaches enter and leave the professional and novice ranks every year. Lastly looking through the guidelines that make up a discourse community set by Swales it is seen that there is a threshold level of members. It can be said that the common phrase to many hands spoils the pot holds true for many staffs. The number is different for each staff, but many staffs are limited to at least a head coach, an assistant coach, an offensive and defensive coordinators, and two or three position specific coaches. Many college and professional organizations have more coaches than this but generally do not exceed 12 coaches. NCAA Article 11: Conduct and Employment of Athletics Personnel: Section 11.7.2 Football Bowl Subdivision states that, there shall be a limit of one head coach, nine assistant coaches and two graduate assistant coaches who may be employed by an institution in bowl subdivision football. This is generally true at every level except for the youth football level. My eighth grade team caps the number of coaches on our staff at 5. We do not have very many players and do not want or need very many coaches. We have one head coach me and four other assistants all in charge of their own responsibilities. This data was found through extensive interviews of coaches at the high school and youth football levels as well as from firsthand knowledge of the game myself. I asked coaches how they felt coaching fit into a discourse community after describing to them what a discourse community was as well as prepping the coaches on Swales guidelines. After sifting through the interviews I also looked at books and websites for examples and information that aided in the production of my research. By looking at all of the data that I found it is evident that football coaches belong to a discourse

community. They also belong to smaller discourse communities within the initial community. These smaller communities would be the coaching staffs themselves as opposed to the large group being made up of every coach.

Interview Questions: Coach Lane Coffin Coach Coffin is a coach at Marsh Valley High School in Moscow, Idaho. Coach Coffin has won state championships and has also coached with my father. He has been coaching for many years and has a son who is now on his staff.

How does your community of coaches fit the six guidelines presented by John Swales? Well we want to win. We focus a lot on the process of winning and what it takes to be a winner. We share film and go to seminars. I dont really understand what you are saying about the genres. We definitely have a specific language and lexicon. We have new coaches and more experienced coaches. That plays into novices and experts. We also have a threshold cap of 9 coaches.

Work Cited http://www.annarbor.com/sports/um-football/how-many-college-footballcoaches/

http://smartfootball.com/offense/oklahomas-fake-screen-and-post-and-other-pop-screenpasses

http://smartfootball.com/offense/the-air-raid-offense-history-evolution-weirdness-frommumme-to-leach-to-franklin-to-holgorsen-and-beyond

http://smartfootball.com/offense/beating-the-blitz-with-the-one-back-offense-bobbratkowski