Football Performance Analysis Coaching Culture

Record, Rank, Publish: 10 Coaching Strategies to Transform Your Football Program

Oct 14, 2025

7 min Read

By Garrett Mueller

Head Coach, Stewartville High School (MN) @SHSCoachMueller

If you’re not measuring, you’re guessing. And when you’re guessing, you’re leaving athlete development up to chance. Are you willing to take that risk?

In December of 2018 I was introduced to Tony Holler and his now well-known philosophy called “Feed The Cats.”

I read his article, New Ideas For Old School Football Coaches, and let’s just say I’ve never been the same coach since. If you’ve never read it, you should. It’ll make you cringe a little bit when you reflect on some of the “old school” decisions you’ve made when coaching kids.

At the same time, it’ll make you feel both uncomfortable about some of the decisions you’ve made as well as hopeful about the change you’ll be inspired to make. It inspired myself and our coaching staff at Stewartville High School to prioritize the performance of our athletes and find ways to make football the best part of their day.

Our program, and every kid who’s come through it since 2019 is better because of it, with a 60–8 overall record and two state championships to show for it.

The Origin of Record, Rank, Publish for Football

Feed the Cats makes an athlete’s performance the top priority by building on a foundation of rest, recovery, sleep and proper nutrition. Tony Holler wrote about the origins of his Feed the Cats philosophy, I encourage you to read it.

One of the key tenets of the Feed the Cats philosophy is “Record, Rank, Publish.” This has been a key aspect of our football program throughout the years. We implement it all year long to help motivate athletes, drive their intent during their practice and training, and measure the things that really matter when it comes to improving their performance on the field.

Record, Rank, and Publish is a system that makes training meaningful by measuring performance, creating competition, celebrating every athlete’s progress and improvement, and providing data to guide programming.

By focusing on consistency and individual improvement it allows athletes to learn to “Build Their Own House.” Rather than only comparing themselves to others, it helps athletes take ownership of their development and increase their internal motivation to be great! Not only does it help athletes, it also gives coaches powerful tools to inspire, recruit, and build a lasting culture of growth.

I believe this to be true: If you’re not measuring it, you’re guessing. And when you’re guessing, you’re leaving athlete development up to chance. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take and nor should you. That’s why I believe so strongly in Record, Rank, and Publish!

It’s not fancy. It doesn’t require a massive budget, a staff of interns, or NFL-level facilities. It’s simply about putting numbers to the things that matter, sharing those numbers with your athletes, and using them to drive both performance and culture.

We Record, Rank, Publish as many different things related to performance as we can. We do it for both speed and weight room training, as well as on the field in practice and on gameday.

Speed Results
Weight Room metrics like ‘Peak Power’
Vertical Jump
Truck Stick (Momentum = Speed x Mass)
Practice and Gameday Finish Grades
Film Study

Here are ten reasons why this approach can transform your football program—whether you’re coaching at a big suburban school or in a small-town weight room with cinderblock walls—like ours!

1. Timing Matters

If you aren’t timing, you aren’t sprinting. Without timing, athletes think they’re sprinting when really, they’re just running hard. Until you put a clock on them, they don’t truly know—and neither do you. Most coaches would think you’re crazy if you didn’t measure weight room work, why would you think anything different for speed development?

When you time sprints, effort goes up immediately and you drive intent. Suddenly, athletes aren’t just “finishing the rep,” they’re chasing the clock and potentially a PR.

Playbook Tip: Start simple. Even if you don’t have a timing system, use a stopwatch or phone app. The key is consistency.

2. It's Not Just For Sprinting

This isn’t just about speed metrics like Fly 10s or 40s. Anything you want your athletes to value, you can record, rank, and publish: vertical jumps, broad jumps, agility tests, or even position-specific movements.

We’ve created a customized Google spreadsheet with all of our athletes’ names, PR’s and season averages. We print this sheet out each day and have one coach record numbers while another one measures. At the end of each day, one coach enters the data into the Google spreadsheet and our PR’s and averages are automatically updated!

Playbook Tip: Pick 2–3 key metrics beyond sprinting and start publishing those. Gradually add more as you get comfortable with the process. Don’t drown in the data! Keep it simple early on.

3. Data Drives Programming

Coaches already track every rep in the weight room—so why not track the things that, in my opinion, have a greater impact on winning games: speed and power?

Data tells you what’s working and what isn’t. It also helps guide training loads to avoid overtraining.

Playbook Tip: Build a simple spreadsheet for weekly times, jumps, etc. Watch for trends and adjust training. I’ve included a template at the end of this blog you can copy to get started.

4. Create Competition

Publishing results turns training and practice into game day. Athletes push each other, talk smack, and celebrate PRs. Make training and practice the best part of a kid’s day!

Competition creates buy-in. It makes practice fun—and fun keeps kids coming back.

Playbook Tip: Post rankings on a wall, in a group chat, or in a shared doc.

5. Celebrate Everyone

Not every kid will be the fastest, but every kid can set a personal best or record. That’s the beauty of this system—everyone gets a win.

Playbook Tip: Always hype PRs, no matter where that athlete ranks. Progress is progress. We have a “PR Bell” we use and ring it every time a kid hits a new PR!

6. Use Data That Inspires

Nothing motivates young athletes more than seeing that the star varsity player once had slow times too. In our program, when a player graduates, we have 4+ years of data to show their growth over the course of their high school career. The ones who are the most consistent have the most growth!

Playbook Tip: Build an archive of past results. Use it to show kids what’s possible with consistency.

7. Recruit Your Hallways

Recruit the “Cats” to your program! Ones that sprint fast, jump high, jump far and have bounce! Athletes love to compete. When athletes see progress published, they want in. Tracking and posting performance metrics attract walk-ons, multi-sport athletes and grow your program.

Playbook Tip: Invite kids by connecting their data to your sport: “You’re already jumping like our receivers—come see what you can do on the field.”

8. Consistency is Key

Data only matters if conditions are consistent. Do your best to use the same surface, same timing system, same setup, etc. Be sure to note if there are any conditions that might skew the data and consider whether or not to include that data if it’s not legit.

Playbook Tip: Start where you are—but keep it consistent every time.

9. Focus On Internal Growth

It’s important to remember this isn’t about comparing and contrasting with other programs. Every football program has different conditions. Focus on the improvement of your athletes in your program. The goal is to compete against yesterday’s self, not another school’s data and results.

Playbook Tip: Remind athletes: “We’re not chasing likes, we’re chasing growth.”

10. Build Their Own House

Teach kids to build their own house. At the end of the day, this isn’t just about numbers—it’s about ownership. Kids will start caring more about the things that lead to improved performance like sleep, nutrition, and recovery when they care about their data and see their results.

Playbook Tip: Kids will become motivated to be great at what they love!

If you want to dive deeper, Tony Holler and Coach Brad Dixon (Camp Point, IL) wrote a great, more in-depth piece on these same ideas a few years back—check it out here.

Final Thoughts

Record, Rank, and Publish is more than a coaching strategy. It’s a culture shift. It makes training competitive, celebrates every athlete, and gives you the data to coach smarter.

Big school, small school, lots of resources, or barely any—this system works. Start measuring what matters. Improve athletes’ performance and help them learn how to build themselves into the best versions of who they can be.

Ready to put Record, Rank, and Publish into action? Make a copy of this template and start building your system.