100% agreed.
I am Canadian and from what I can see there continues to be difficulty in viewing coaching as a profession when talking about any sport that is not considered “mainstream”. So in the U.S. I would imagine that includes football, basketball and baseball to start, with more sports being added at the college level. Here the opportunities in those sports are far less but with hockey added to the top of the list. I would say many of our college coaches, nation wide, have teaching obligations in addition to their PAID coaching position; “PAID” as I also know in the case of Athletics the bulk of most Canadian Inter University (CIS) staff members may receive an honorarium but the work is seen as volunteer.
To take a profession seriously there needs to be an educational background. I know what is required here to attain various levels of certification but I have also had the good fortune to work with a coach who was born, educated and began coaching in another non-North American nation and the hours involved before beginning to coach were many hundred fold. It is only within the last decade or so, for example, that a college degree with a “minor” in coaching has become available.