One Sports Industry Booming During the Pandemic? Private Football Coaches
By Ross Dellenger, SI.com
Not all private coaches are dipping their toe in the water. David Morris, a former Ole Miss quarterback and founder of the Mobile-based QB Country, has completely shut down his 11 locations spread across eight states. He won’t reopen until individual state gathering orders are lifted. His training has almost strictly turned to FaceTime. Mom holds the phone while dad or brother serves as his trainee’s throwing partner. Morris diagnoses their arm angle, footwork and release from afar. “It’s worked. It’s been neat,” Morris says. “Everybody is rethinking the way training is heading, at least for the time being.”
In fact, many private coaches who spoke to Sports Illustrated predict that training through FaceTime and Zoom is here to stay. They expect such tools to be used in the future, even when social distancing restrictions are gone. Still, there’s nothing quite like working in person with a player. Private coaching, especially for quarterbacks, is a big business. Last year, QB Country trained nearly 1,000 different quarterbacks, ranging from middle school to NFL. April through July is usually their busiest time of the year. Morris shrugs off the loss of business. “Under special circumstances we still train one-on-one with a quarterback using a family member,” he says, “but we took it seriously and thought it responsible to not train.”