[baseball1974]

I remember my former HS coach (Ivan McGlone) was quoted by the Ashland paper in an article (about his career) in which he told a story about his wife complaining about a group of fans who sat in front her at games, and always complained about or criticized his coaching. He told her point blank that those fans had paid for their tickets, and had the right to voice their opinion if they felt the need to do so.
Having said that, that doesn't mean that every fan that complains about the coach(es) or the team knows squat about football or what's going on during the game. Some do...some don't. I'd be willing to bet that most coaches are secure enough in their ability that they don't lose sleep at night worrying about what the fans think.

The majority of coaches do not look at message boards or things that. When I retired the internet was just coming of age really and it wasn't an issue for me. Of course, I was coaching an NAIA school, so the only people that cared were the players and the parents and administration. That was basically our fan base. I will say though that we had one sportswriter that wrote a column, and he always tried to take jabs at every coach within his territory. I knew he probably wrote about me, but I also knew nothing good would come out of me reading. I didn't want something I'd say to him to somehow hurt the players from getting recognized. So I simply just didn't read it. He'd call and get quotes about things from me, and it was easy for me to do that because I had never read one of his articles.