Amazing work uncovering abusive coaches

Coaching is all about getting people to do things they wouldn’t do if someone wasn’t making them do it.
Very few people are going to work hard enough to be successful at a high level without someone holding their feet to the fire. If a coach is always nice and positive and encouraging, he’s probably going to fail miserably. The way Bob Knight coached is not the way I’d like to be treated but it worked.
That said, I’d like to think a coach can be effective without acting like Ike Turner.

 

When you hear of abusive football and basketball coaches, it's easy to think the sport contributes to the lunacy. They're under such pressure to win and avoid losing a series of million-dollar paychecks, etc. But the more you hear about coaches who do this without a big payday of potential payday attached, you realize it's about the people and their remarkable internal insecurities. Their hatred of losing and their inability to prevent it from infecting their behavior is something that transcends fame and fortune.

 

It's a new day. People aren't taking that shit from anyone anymore.

 

I see your point and guys like Knight have been successful. But Bill Walsh said the worst coach was the stupid sadist. For every Knight there are a lot of stupid sadists out there.

 

I have the book that SI writer Austin Murphy wrote about the season he spent with D-III football coach John Gagliardi, who ran an informal program for 50+ years.

One story Murphy told was of Walsh, when he coached at Stanford, saw an assistant coach screaming at the players. Walsh went over, and admonished the assistant, telling him to stop screaming and to start coaching.

 

What a bunch of nonsense. I've seen enough youth football coaches to know the most effective way to get kids to block other kids is by yelling "BLOCK SOMEONE!" as loud as possible.

 

Scott Reid has done a lot of great reporting on abuses in the aquatics world.

 

I was on the staff with him since the late '90s until I retired. He is a fantastic investigative reporter. Really works the track, gymnastics, swimming, etc. beats -- the ones that seem to have the most abuse issues.

 

When’s Junction Boys on again?

 

Florida just got rid of women's baskeball and women's soccer coaches who were the spawns of hell.