A grown man who needs an 11-year-old’s football score to feel important has no business leading children. Coaches in their forties and fifties are online taunting kids, calling out other programs and trying to settle personal grudges through youth football. The kids aren’t even the ones doing it. It’s the adults seeking validation and embarrassing themselves. Leadership starts with teaching a player class and character. Teaching them to take correction, own a mistake, control his temper and respect an official. That requires a coach who can do those things himself. Your 11U record won’t earn a kid a high school starting job. No one cares. At the highest levels of high school and college football, the roster is full of size, speed and talent. A defensive coordinator needs to trust you to fit the right gap, execute the call and stay composed after the whistle. A third-down stop means nothing if you hand the offense another set of downs because you couldn’t control yourself. Our coaches have played in college and coach at top high schools. They aren’t daddies running gimmick offenses and defenses. But most importantly they don’t excuse being disrespectful. They understood the boy in front of them will eventually become somebody’s husband, father and leader. Too many adults excuse arrogance as confidence and aggression as toughness, then act surprised when games end in fights and kids lose scholarships because they act like idiots. They’re rewarding the behavior they should be correcting. At Long Island Elite, we coach character with the same attention we give footwork and technique. Accountability, integrity and emotional maturity have to be taught, demonstrated and enforced, especially when your best player is the one who needs correcting. Winning matters. So does sending a kid to high school prepared to compete, accept responsibility and earn the respect of his coaches. Football ends. What matters most is whether his family can depend on the man he becomes. If you’re more interested in humiliating 11 year olds on Facebook and hooting and hollering about how great you are than preparing a child for their future, put the phone down and get a hobby.