5 Things No One Tells You About Being a Football Coach’s Wife

When I met my husband, he was already a football coach. So I had some idea of what I was getting into. I knew about the long nights, the busy fall season, the high emotions and the time commitment. I had watched him coach and knew almost immediately that this wasn't just something he did for work. It was his purpose, his calling, his passion.

What I didn't understand was how much our life would change as his career evolved.

When we met, he was a defensive coordinator at a school without a particularly competitive football history or established football culture. For the most part, he could show up when the players did and leave when they did. But by the time we got married, he had completed his first season as a head coach, and being married to a head football coach turned out to be an entirely different experience.

As a head coach, he's not just coaching football. He's managing schedules, personnel, parents, players, and volunteers while still handling defensive schemes, film, scouting and everything else that comes with actually preparing a team to play. He's also changed schools, and I've learned that every program comes with its own culture, expectations, infrastructure and community. Sometimes less infrastructure means more work and stress for him. While a supportive community can make all of that work feel worth it.

I proudly consider myself a coach's wife because while the bulk of the responsibility belongs to him, our entire family makes sacrifices for him to do this work. For three or four months every year, we give up time together, family events, help at home and plenty of quality time. I take pride in holding down the fort while football is what he eats, sleeps and breathes.

I just don't want anyone to mistake that for my entire identity. I don't particularly care about sports, and I'm still not entirely sure what's happening during a football game! I'm there for the cute outfits, concessions and to support him, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

After several seasons together, though, there are a few things I understand now that I wish I'd known before marrying a football coach.

1. The Schedule Isn't Just Busy; It's Unreliable.

I thrive with structure, predictability and consistency. A football coach's schedule offers me absolutely none of those things.

I understood that practice might end at 5:30. What I didn't understand was that "practice ends at 5:30" does not mean my husband leaves work at 5:30. A player may need to talk. A parent may stop him. An administrator may need something. A coaches meeting that lasts an hour by conference call one week can somehow become a four-hour dinner the next.

Eventually, I stopped planning around the idea that he might be home. During the roughly 10 weeks of games, I eat dinner without him and assume he'll miss events. If he makes it, wonderful; but I've learned not to sit around waiting for the text that says he's finally leaving.

That doesn't mean our family calendar stops. We're going to Hawaii during football season, and Eddie won't be coming. My eldest daughter plays volleyball at the same time as football, so we go into her season knowing he may only make a game or two.

To his credit, he really tries 😍. He'll move practice, leave early or have another coach take over to make the things that really matter. For example, Ava’s birthday falls during summer ball, and he has never missed her birthday dinner.

I've just learned that when a football coach tells you what time something ends, you should consider that information aspirational.

2. You're Sharing Him With 50+ Other People

Nobody told me that being married to a football coach meant sharing my husband with 50-plus other people! 😐

When we first started dating, coaching calls happened around the clock. He'd walk into the house on a call, finish it and make another one. He'd talk through dinner or even get out of bed to answer the phone. I eventually told him that we already got so little time with him, and we didn't want to spend that time watching him talk to other people.

Again, to his credit, he listened. He has a long commute, so he makes most of his coaching calls in the car. If he takes one at home, he keeps it brief or waits until we're all doing our own thing. He still watches film and works on schedules at home, but that doesn't bother me because I'm someone who will pull out my own laptop on a Saturday afternoon to catch up on work.

What matters to me is the difference between free time and family time, and he's gotten very good at protecting that distinction. At the same time, I've had to learn that protecting our family time doesn't mean treating every person who needs him as an intrusion. These are players and coaches he genuinely cares about, and the relationships are part of why this work means so much to him.

Coaching has never been just a job for him. I knew from the first time I watched him on a sideline that this is what he was born to do. So while I don't believe our family should simply get whatever time is left over after football takes its share, understanding why he gives so much of himself to it has helped me find the balance between asking for boundaries and respecting his calling.

3. Football Season Changes Your Marriage for a Few Months

Every football season comes with a two-to-three-week adjustment period for me because the contrast between our offseason and football season is dramatic.

In the offseason, he is ever-present. He does maintenance around the house, cleans, cooks, plays with the kids and attends any and every social event with me. Then football season starts, and he's just...gone!

Before him, it was just Ava and me for about six years. So independence isn't particularly difficult for me. Once I settle into the rhythm, I'm perfectly capable of handling the house, parenting and social calendar without him. But those first few weeks still make me sad.

And tired. Still very tired.

Having a baby this football season has made that adjustment harder. I'm doing more at home while also trying to figure out things… like how exactly one entertains a baby for three hours on a football field. Thank goodness for the other coaches wives and all of their tips.

The hardest part, though, is the expectation that because it's football season, I'm simply supposed to manage everything and do so happily. Most of our football-season arguments eventually come back to time and household labor. Sometimes I'm looking at a full sink, an overflowing trash can and something that needs to be repaired while he's at another meeting, thinking surely there is a better way to do this.

Marriage has required both of us to adjust. I've had to accept that coaching isn't a rigid work schedule where quitting time means you're headed to the parking lot 15 minutes later. He's had to learn that doing this job married is different from doing it single because he has a family now, and we are a priority too.

Supporting your husband's career doesn't mean silently absorbing every inconvenience it creates. There still has to be balance. There still has to be give-and-take. And I will probably always be irritated when a super-long coaches meeting takes precedence over dinner with the family… or when they call each other for the fifth time that day 😂.

4. The Football Community Becomes Your Community Too

This may be the part I was least prepared for.

I'm an introvert. I don't walk into spaces assuming I'm going to make friends, and I certainly don't assume anyone is going to care that I'm there. But at some point during his first season as head coach, I looked up and realized people knew my name. They knew Ava's name. They were looking for us at events and bending over backwards to find us parking, concessions, seating and team gear.

Football communities have thrown us a baby shower, given us wedding gifts and shown up during major transitions in our lives in ways that were both grand and needed. It was then I realized, Oh. These are our people.

People's gratitude and love for him often extends to his entire family, and that has been incredibly meaningful.

But football has also taught me that community can change quickly when the scoreboard does. When you're winning, everybody is around. Everyone's on the sidelines. Everyone is calling. People are buying things. And they’re suddenly telling you they've known your husband since he was a child.

Then he had back-to-back losing seasons, and it got very quiet. People disappeared.

That astonished me because we all understand intellectually that you can't win every game forever. Loss is inherent to sports. But watching how quickly some people's support changed taught me which relationships were actually relationships and which ones depended on the scoreboard.

5. Watching Him Live His Purpose Makes the Sacrifice Worth It

For everything football asks of our family, it has also given us a lot.

It's given us shared experiences. We go to the games together, and afterward we talk about everything that happened: the actual game, the people, whatever incident occurred, the commute.

It's given us a community that has shown up for our family during some of our biggest life transitions.

But most importantly, it gives us a happy Husband and Father. He is intense on the football field in a way that almost contradicts how even-tempered he is everywhere else. I watch him jump and shout. I watch players gravitate toward him, parents shower him, and administrators recognize him. I get to watch my husband do exactly what I believe he was put here to do.

He's fulfilling his purpose and supporting his family while doing it, and that fulfillment comes home with him. And him being fulfilled makes him a better leader for our family.

That's what I remind myself during the weeks when I'm exhausted, he's barely home and I'm wondering how another coaches meeting could possibly need to last this long.

Would I Marry a Football Coach Again?

I mean… I’d marry this one 😂.

I would just go into it understanding that you're not marrying a man who happens to have a demanding job. You're marrying someone whose calling will occasionally make demands of you too.

You'll share him. You'll attend things without him. You'll eat dinner without him. You'll learn not to believe the scheduled end time of anything. If you have children, there will be stretches when you carry more at home because he's carrying more somewhere else.

But I don't think the answer is for a coach's wife to silently accept all of it in the name of being supportive. (That’s what the patriarchy would have you believe!) Marriage still requires boundaries. Your family still deserves his time, and your needs don't disappear when the season starts.

The hardest part of being married to a football coach isn't attending all those games. It's being without him so often and for so long. But then I watch Eddie on the field, jumping and shouting, surrounded by players who believe in him and a community that values what he brings, and I remember why we do this.

…Even if I still don't entirely know what's happening in the game.