Leadership in the weight room looks different from leadership on the sideline. But the coaches who do it best across college football keep landing on the same truths. We sat down with five of them on the Captains & Coaches Podcast: Cory Castro (Texas), Ryan Davis (Maryland), Loren Landow (Notre Dame), Jim Kiritsy (Navy), and Philo Ka'aiohelo alongside Coach K (UTSA).
Here's what they taught us about building leaders, not just building bodies.
1. Trust Is Spelled T-I-M-E
Ryan Davis learned this one from his mentor Pat Sullivan at Samford: love only gets spelled one way, and that's time. Not time in the weight room. Time with the person. Jim Kiritsy runs the same play at Navy. His staff shows up to breakfast with the team every morning, not to check a box, but to learn where a kid is from, how many siblings he has, what he's afraid of. That's what earns an honest answer when it actually matters.
Cory Castro said it plainly at Texas: trust has to be earned. It happens over time, with consistency. You can't shortcut it and you can't fake it.
2. Meet Them Where They Are, Then Push
Every coach in this group talked about individualizing without losing the standard. Davis takes his freshmen fishing and golfing because that's what they love, not because it's in the playbook. Landow strips his skill players out of cleats for two weeks just to see how they actually move before he decides what to coach. Castro builds one-on-one work into his quarterback program based on what he sees on film that week.
None of them lower the bar to meet an athlete. They just get to know the athlete well enough to know how to raise it.
3. Programmed Vulnerability Builds Real Leaders
Ryan Davis runs a drill called the 3 H's: Hero, Hardship, Highlight. Every athlete stands in front of the team and talks about who they look up to, what they've overcome, and what they're proud of. The coaches go first, and Davis is blunt with his staff about it: don't go up there with something you can read. Go up there with something real, or the players will see right through it.
UTSA runs the same play with a different name. Their culture pillars, integrity, passion, toughness, selflessness, and perfect effort, aren't posters on a wall. They're a shared vocabulary the entire building speaks, from the equipment room to the head coach.
4. Leadership Is Influence, and You Don't Get to Choose It
Davis borrowed this from Pat Sullivan too: leadership is influence, and you don't get to pick who's watching you or when. One of his most understated players won a team vote for "who inspires you most by the way they work" and had no idea anyone was paying attention. That moment did more for his confidence to become a vocal leader than any pep talk could.
Jim Kiritsy sees the same thing at Navy. He hands attendance and communication to position captains, not because it's convenient, but because giving real ownership is how you find out who can actually carry it.
5. Process Beats Outcome, Especially When Things Go Sideways
Loren Landow's "golden standard" at Notre Dame comes down to three things: challenge everything, unit strength, competitive spirit. None of it is about the scoreboard. UTSA's version is E + R = O: event plus response equals outcome. You can't control what happens. You can control how you answer it.
Kiritsy put it simply: make it about process, not the result. When the season doesn't go the way you wanted, you lean harder into the things you can control, because that's the only place growth actually happens.
The through-line across all five conversations isn't a rep scheme or a periodization model. It's this: the strength coach's real job is building the person who can lead once the whistle blows and the coach isn't standing there anymore. That's the whole idea behind Captains & Coaches.