Episode 7: Season 7 Episode 7- Matt Gildersleeve: “You Don’t Get Awards For Protecting Your Desk”

Matt Gildersleeve on trust, authenticity, and rebuilding onboarding for a faster college football world

Jay DeMayo welcomes back Matt Gildersleeve for a wide-ranging conversation about coaching philosophy, staff development, family life, and the increasingly demanding reality of college football roster management. Matt shares how his program rebuilt its onboarding process to gather better injury, leadership, and learning-style information before athletes ever hit the weight room.We also discuss why trust is built through character, competence, and connection, why coaches should be their real selves instead of copying someone else’s style, and why young coaches need an extra skill beyond hard work if they want to stand out.

Key topics

• In this episode, Matt makes the case that coaches can live full lives outside the weight room and still be excellent coaches.
• He emphasizes that family, marriage, and travel are not distractions from coaching, but part of a healthy and sustainable coaching life.
• Matt and Jay revisit the idea that trust is not something you ask for, but something you build through repeated actions over time.
• Matt breaks trust development into three parts: 
  • Character
  • Competence
  • Connection
• He argues that coaches should not copy another coach’s personality or style, but should lead with their own authentic voice.
• Matt explains how his program audited a full year of training and realized they were wasting the first four weeks with transfer athletes.
• The transfer-portal era forced his program to become much more aggressive and detailed in pre-training evaluation.
• His onboarding now includes: 
  • Full injury history review
  • Weight-room modification history
  • Additional movement screening
  • Leadership and personality questions
  • Learning-style questions
  • Direct contact with previous strength staffs
• Matt says the goal is to know every athlete before the first whistle, so training starts with context instead of guesswork.
• He and his staff also learned that many athletes are kinesthetic learners, which changed how they approach teaching and film work.
• Matt explains why he prefers face-to-face conversations over mass questionnaires for building real connection.
• A major theme is that hard work is expected, but young coaches also need an “and” - something beyond effort that makes them valuable.
• He believes coaches should be able to explain their unique value, not just say they are early, energetic, and hardworking.
• Matt closes by stressing three responsibilities for anyone in the profession: 
  • Take care of the athletes
  • Take care of the team
  • Take care of the industry