Very cool how both coaches in Seattle, Mike Macdonald with the Seahawks & Jedd Fisch at UDub have amazing origin stories about getting their foot in the door of the coaching world. Fisch left notes on the windshield of Steve Spurrier’s Buick in the UF stadium parking lot, offering to volunteer on his staff, anything—after he wasn’t accepted as one of 11 student equipment managers. He did for that 400 days:
nytimes.com/athletic/5619992…
Mike Macdonald reveals that before he got into the NFL he spent 2 years begging Georgia for a job, he would show up to their football offices everyday asking for an opportunity, then eventually just took out a loan to work for free
“I kind of weaseled my way onto the Georgia staff. It took two years. Every Tuesday for about two years, I had a hole in my schedule, so I’d go over to the building. It was always inevitably during Coach Richt’s staff meeting.”
“I’d sit outside and read the NFL list and try to memorize all the Dawgs in the NFL until Joe T got out, and I would just try to pepper him for an opportunity.”
“Finally, right before I graduated, they let me come aboard. So I took out a big loan and got an apartment and went to work. I joke I was the first graduate student assistant. There were graduate assistants that got paid. I was a graduate student acting as a student assistant.”
“I was working for free. I was volunteering. But I was just like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to do what the guys do. No one’s going to know the difference.’”
“I’m just going to go to work, and I want to be the go-to guy. It took me a couple years to get there, but that was the goal.”