Access is a habit, not a badge system
Every facility has a credential system, and every facility has a side door that is propped open during practice, a receptionist who waves through anyone who says the right name, and a set of people who have been walking the building for so long that no one remembers who authorized it. The badge system describes who is supposed to be there. The habits describe who is.
We do not recommend that a program become unfriendly. Boosters fund the building. Former players are the program's history. Media coverage is part of the job. The goal is a staff that is courteous to everyone and useful to no one, and that knows the difference.
The people in the building
- Boosters and donors. They are in the building because they are invited, and they are invited because they give. A booster who knows the quarterback's shoulder is sore will say so at dinner, where someone's brother-in-law coaches at the school down the road. Not malice. Pride.
- Former players. They know where everything is and they are greeted warmly in every corridor. Some of them now work for other programs, in media, or for agencies.
- Vendors. The company that services the drop ceiling, the vending machines, the copier and the audiovisual equipment has a master key or an escort, and in most buildings it is the key. A vendor on an unscheduled visit behind the staff room is the most common physical finding in our assessments.
- Media. Reporters are professionals whose job is to learn things the program has not announced. A good one notices the whiteboard behind the coordinator during the interview and the name on the visitor's badge in the lobby.
- Recruits and their families. An official visit walks a seventeen-year-old and his uncle through the war room, the film room and the staff offices. The uncle may be a high-school coach who speaks to every college staff in the region.
- Rival staff on a visit. Coaches visit other programs in the spring to exchange ideas. It is a courtesy of the profession and it is also an afternoon inside another program's building, with a notebook.
- Student workers and interns. They have more access than anyone realizes and they want jobs, often at other schools.
How collection actually sounds
Nobody asks for the game plan. They ask how the quarterback's shoulder is. Whether the new coordinator is settling in. Whether the transfer is as good as his tape. Whether the staff is worried about Saturday. Each question is ordinary. Each answer is a small piece. The person asking has been doing this for years, is likeable, and does not think of himself as collecting anything.
The answer that gives nothing and offends no one is a skill that can be taught in forty minutes. It is mostly a matter of having decided in advance what the staff does not discuss outside the building, so that no one has to improvise at a dinner table after two glasses of wine.
Five building habits
In the tradecraft session the staff drafts its own list. It is owned by the director of football operations for the season, written on the board, photographed and handed over. A typical list looks like this.
- The meeting room is cleaned before the door opens. Whiteboard erased, blinds closed, telephones face down, printouts collected. The shared printer and the recycling bin are part of the room.
- Visitors are escorted past the lobby. Including vendors, including former players, including the booster who has been coming for twenty years. Escorted is not interrogated. It is accompanied.
- The visit route is decided before the visit. Official visits, media and spring visitors from other programs walk a route that does not pass the war room during the week it is in use.
- What the staff does not discuss outside the building is written down. Injuries, personnel decisions, the plan, recruiting targets. Four items. Everyone knows them.
- Keys are reviewed once a season. Facilities produces the list of who holds what. The director of operations reads it. Someone on the list always surprises him.
What this is not
It is not a reason to investigate anyone. A booster who repeats what he heard is not a spy and should not be treated as one. The remedy for a building that talks is a building that has decided what it does not say, and a staff that has rehearsed saying nothing pleasantly. The access review in our assessment names no one. It describes who holds keys, who is escorted, and who is not, and leaves the department to decide what to change.