For decades, the informal consensus surrounding high school football has been that the top qualification for coaching is toughness. The image of a hard-nosed football who yells, snarls and cusses in practices and on the sideline is so common as to be cliché. But slowly, that's changing.

Fictional coaches are part of the trend. Iconic roles like Denzel Washington's Coach Boone in Remember the Titans and Kyle Chandler's Coach Taylor in NBC's Friday Night Lights series have shown audiences that successful football coaching, especially at the high school level, requires emotional intelligence as well as toughness. But that lesson is also sinking in for actual coaches.

Lou Racioppe, a 20-year veteran head football coach for Merona High in Merona, New Jersey, was recently relieved of his duties after an internal investigation into his coaching practices. Parents said Merona players were asked a series of questions regarding Racioppe's coaching style, including questions about running as a form of punishment, whether players received adequate hydration, and if or how often the coach used profanity or grabbed their face masks. The investigation prompted an outpouring of support during a subsequent school board meeting from parents, boosters and players.

John Fiore, is the head football coach for Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey. His Montclair Mounties are four-time state champions, and in 2013 Fiore was named New York Jets High School Coach of the Year.

Fiore, a contemporary of Racioppe, at one point considered himself similarly "old-school" in his approach to coaching. But gradually, he changed his approach. His practices as an 18-year-coaching veteran looking nothing like his rookie coaching days at Spotswood High. "My kids from Spotswood watch me coach. They'll tell every one of these guys I've turned soft," Fiore says.

In a class called "Coaching Principles and Problems," John McCarthy, adjunct professor at Montclair State University, encourages his coaches-in-training to think of themselves as teachers. "Would you curse at a kid in your Spanish class?" he asks. "Would you hit a [student] in your Spanish class or your math class? Of course you wouldn't."

While Fiore admits that he doesn't feel as supported as he used to, he and Professor McCarthy both recognize that coaches must adapt to the standards of the communities they serve. "Here's what I tell my kids," McCarthy says. "Everything in life is subject to change, so why should coaching be any different?"

Preaching angles: Leaders must learn from each other, repentance is the natural outgrowth of continual introspection and accountability, kindness is just as powerful a motivator as fear.