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Michael
May 21, 2012, 10:27:48 AM5/21/12
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Got a question I have been thinking about...
I've been at my curren job for 15 years... My direct superior is the
companies V.P. He began his carrer in sales... He was a very hard
working and successful sales Exec. I dont mind taking any sort of
direction or advice from man that played the game and played it well.
It is a great source of harmony for me.
My first sales job out of college was selling advertising space for a
very well known publication. I did that for four years. My manager
was a pettle little bitch that never spent a day in her life selling
anything. She owed her manager's position to a relationship to a
person high up in the organiztion. I was a great performer there, but
my little bitch of a manger still insisted on squeezing my plumbs as
well as squeezing the plums of other sales people.
My question is this... I see a lot of NFL HC's and especially postion
coaches that had very little in the way of their own playing carrer.
If Mike Ditka is your coach and he tells you to work harder or play
like a hard ass or stop bitching, you better fukin listen. He did it
himself and he is a HOF player.
BUT... What if you are a probowl offensive lineman and your position
coach is a 5" 9" dude that played in HS and did not even have a
college career ??? Would an NFL player be able to have true respect
for such a coach ??? I FUCKIN hated it when my little bitch manager so
much as opened her trap cause she never spent a day in her life in the
trenches of the business world.
Do NFL players have a lack of respect for a coach that never did it at
a high level but insists that they do "this and that" ????
I've been at my curren job for 15 years... My direct superior is the
companies V.P. He began his carrer in sales... He was a very hard
working and successful sales Exec. I dont mind taking any sort of
direction or advice from man that played the game and played it well.
It is a great source of harmony for me.
My first sales job out of college was selling advertising space for a
very well known publication. I did that for four years. My manager
was a pettle little bitch that never spent a day in her life selling
anything. She owed her manager's position to a relationship to a
person high up in the organiztion. I was a great performer there, but
my little bitch of a manger still insisted on squeezing my plumbs as
well as squeezing the plums of other sales people.
My question is this... I see a lot of NFL HC's and especially postion
coaches that had very little in the way of their own playing carrer.
If Mike Ditka is your coach and he tells you to work harder or play
like a hard ass or stop bitching, you better fukin listen. He did it
himself and he is a HOF player.
BUT... What if you are a probowl offensive lineman and your position
coach is a 5" 9" dude that played in HS and did not even have a
college career ??? Would an NFL player be able to have true respect
for such a coach ??? I FUCKIN hated it when my little bitch manager so
much as opened her trap cause she never spent a day in her life in the
trenches of the business world.
Do NFL players have a lack of respect for a coach that never did it at
a high level but insists that they do "this and that" ????
Papa Carl
May 21, 2012, 12:55:25 PM5/21/12
to
"Michael" wrote in message
news:d2d6134b-5eeb-4bfd...@8g2000vbu.googlegroups.com...
pre-requisite for a coaching job, I fear you will eliminate a lot of very
bright guys, good coaches, who had good football careers in places their
size allowed them to play. That will make the game even more static, narrow
down the good old boys coaching club, recycle more of the same old same old
and I think eventually kill the game. One of the best players and coaches I
even knew did all of his playing in college in the division that is now
referred to as "Sprint"...it limits players to 172 pounds. And, it is a
varsity sport played at more than a few schools. I've been fortunate enough
in the past to watch some of this several years at Princeton and Penn...you
can view an NFL films video of this here,
http://www.princetonsprintfootball.com/ , and you will not that George Allen
played in this college division when it limited the weight to 151 pounds.
Even without this...a lot of great players and coaches have come along and
are still out there who will never possess some of the physical attributes
to be able to play NFL brand football. To not respect their athletic
ability, their work ethic, their toughness and their brains is flat out
stupidity. But...I can see it happening, that is the nature of how they
play the game today in the NFL. And I think it is to the detriment of the
overall development of the quality of the play. Now...your issues with a
former boss are really totally different....you described how she got the
job...that has nothing to do with the correlation you are making to non-NFL
players being able to coach at that level. You are talking about a very
poorly run business with shaky ethics. Hmmmm, that could happen in the NFL
too...a guy knows somebody, is the son of somebody and gets a job he really
doesn't deserve and would never have gotten except for connections. Isn't
that how this country really works now? And, to the detriment of the
progress of things?
Grinch
May 21, 2012, 4:08:31 PM5/21/12
to
did Singletary work out?
Lombardi, Walsh, Belichick never played in the NFL, earned a whole lot
of respect.
I thinks it's how good the coach is that earns the respect.
If your first petite little bitch boss with no field experience who
got her job by nepotism was brilliant and dedicated to the job, was
the best manager you ever had and rocketed your career to the top,
while your later boss with tons of field experience was a
my-way-or-the-highway asshole who's "way" was out-of-date 10 years ago
and so made you miserable while sinking your career, your feelings
about them would probably be reversed.
It might be more meaningful to ask: how important is NFL playing
experience to making a good NFL coach of the kind that earns the
players' respect?
Clearly it's not essential, as per the guys above.
But it also probably helps, especially when the coach first gets a job
in the NFL, because the NFL culture is a whole different world.
E.g.: When Lombardi got his first NFL job with the Giants his first
training camp was a disaster. He acted the high school coach/West
Point assistant martinet, and the players ridiculed him -- and worse,
ignored him. It reached a head one day when the players decided
practice was done and started leaving the field, Lombardi said "We're
not done! Come back!!", and they just left.
Lombardi then went to Charlie Connerly, the QB, and Frank Gifford and
said "I need you guys to help me. What am I doing wrong?"
They gave him an earful about how NFL players aren't kids and you have
to treat them differently. Then they arranged a series of evening
poker games in which Lombardi played as one of the guys with the rest
of the O players, during which they all talked about "stuff" including
football, with Lombardi listening instead of lecturing. From that the
players and Lombardi got to see each other as human beings, and
Lombardi changed not only the way he treated them but also his
playbook in light of what the players wanted and believed would work.
IOW, Lombardi *learned*. This is just one example. Bart Starr tells a
good number of stories about how with the Packers at critical
junctures Lombardi would listen to the players or other people who
knew what they were talking about and change his ways accordingly, to
become a better coach.
Lombardi had no NFL experience but succeeded because he admitted his
problems and mistakes, sought advice from others, listened to it, gave
criticism aimed at him a fair hearing and admitted when it was right
-- even when it came from subordinates ... so he learned quickly and
got better and better.
IMHO these traits are a big contributor to success in any field,
whatever one's background coming into it. Lack of them is a big
handicap, whatever one's background.
Of course this is all appears very different from Lombardi's
super-macho rep -- but being a "tough guy" doesn't mean you should be
incapable of listening and learning, must be arrogant and stupid about
it.
"Tough guys" HCs who *do* believe they already know it all from having
great personal success on the NFL playing field -- and so don't listen
to anyone or learn anything -- have crashed-and-burned in a list
running from Singletary back to van Brocklin and beyond.
Bottom line: IMHO being a good coach is what earns the players'
respect, and being a bad one earns the opposite. Having NFL
experience/lacking it helps/hurts a little bit at first. But before
long the quality of the coach will out.
MZ
May 21, 2012, 5:37:09 PM5/21/12
to
I think it's a really good question, and one I definitely don't have
an answer to. Obviously, first-hand experience is useful in most
fields, but evidently not the NFL. So does that mean that there's not
much overlap between coaching and playing? Or is this yet another
cultural thing (like Carl's good ol' boys club explanation)?
What I find even more strange -- and maybe is support for the first
hypothesis -- is that young ex-players often become position coaches
at positions they didn't play. You see a lot of ex- OL coaching
defense, and vice versa. I always found it odd that (until recently)
Pepper Johnson was the DL coach and not the LB coach of the Pats.
an answer to. Obviously, first-hand experience is useful in most
fields, but evidently not the NFL. So does that mean that there's not
much overlap between coaching and playing? Or is this yet another
cultural thing (like Carl's good ol' boys club explanation)?
What I find even more strange -- and maybe is support for the first
hypothesis -- is that young ex-players often become position coaches
at positions they didn't play. You see a lot of ex- OL coaching
defense, and vice versa. I always found it odd that (until recently)
Pepper Johnson was the DL coach and not the LB coach of the Pats.
Papa Carl
May 21, 2012, 7:58:21 PM5/21/12
to
"MZ" wrote in message
news:1ce8f99f-a096-440e...@s5g2000vbc.googlegroups.com...
I really think I get this one Mark. I played on both sides of the ball in
college at different times. Then I went to my first coaching job and wound
up as an O line coach. I did play a lot of O line too.
And, in that first job they were using an offense very similar to what I was
used to. But...after a lot of O coaching work I got a chance to move to
Defense and Linbebackers...it was really cool because I knew all the stuff
they were trying to work on to confuse the D...I'd spent a few years going
to all kinds of clinics and such working on that stuff and knew a few
offenses inside and out..that made it really easy to move to the other side.
Then I had to do a lot of learning and ask for help to get up to speed on a
lot of the technique stuff, but even a lot of that came by logic knowing
what the O was trying to do. I think it only makes sense to work on both
sides of the ball to get really good and appreciate the game.
I think there are some amazing coaches in high school and small college. My
point is that far too often it becomes who someone knows or how they can get
connected to get a good coaching job and not how good they are. And I think
the reality is some not so good coaches get good jobs based on who they are
or who they know, and it may happen more often than in other professions.
You are right, it is a very good question. When I moved to working in
behavioral healthcare I went to work in the trenches, taking a job in a
crisis center first. I worked two jobs in the same large hospital system.
Oddly enough a lot of my coaching helped a lot, being able to deal with
stress and make adjustments on the fly was a huge advantage. After a time I
got a really good position in a good hospital system...even there some of
what Michael is talking about caused problems. There were great doctors and
therapists, clinicians...but some of the guys running the show were strictly
business and financial people who flat out did not understand the product
they were selling. It became a huge problem and they made some very dumb
mistakes that wound up closing services and losing money...and I'm convinced
it could all have been avoided if the "top managers" had understood the
product and the nature of the business better. They never paid their dues
in the trenches and could easily get had by slick guys working for the
insurance companies promising to direct clients to them etc. My take now is
that there was always too much "get as much as you can now" attitudes and
not enough building a lasting success attitude. Doesn't that seem to be a
huge problem today?
Grinch
May 21, 2012, 9:28:21 PM5/21/12
to
On Mon, 21 May 2012 14:37:09 -0700 (PDT), MZ <for...@mdz.no-ip.org>
wrote:
In baseball a lot of good pitching coaches have been catchers, guys
who worked with a lot of different pitchers, studied how to get the
most out of them. That makes sense.
OTOH, I don't know of any hitting coaches who were pitchers.
Across pro sports, most coaches who were former players were pretty
medicore as players.
Maybe that's because marginal players have to work harder and study
the game more. I'm not sure it helps a lot to hire Bob Gibson as a
pitching coach and have him tell your pitchers, "Just throw like I
did, and if he crowds the plate put one in his ear."
But maybe it's only because there are far more mediocre players than
great ones, so that's just how the odds work out.
Can anyone think of any great players who also went down as great
coaches, in any pro sport? I'm sure there must be some, but right
now I'm drawing a blank trying to think of them.
Ted Williams had a pretty good rep as a manager, but he didn't stick
with it, decided to go fishing instead.
Maybe that's another reason why great players seldom make top coaches
-- most teams are pretty mediocre, both player-wise and
organization-wise, and even if you are one of the few great players to
have the aptitude to be a good coach, after a career as a "great" who
needs the frustration of trying to coach up mediocrity when you can be
having a good time as a celebrity doing something else?
wrote:
who worked with a lot of different pitchers, studied how to get the
most out of them. That makes sense.
OTOH, I don't know of any hitting coaches who were pitchers.
Across pro sports, most coaches who were former players were pretty
medicore as players.
Maybe that's because marginal players have to work harder and study
the game more. I'm not sure it helps a lot to hire Bob Gibson as a
pitching coach and have him tell your pitchers, "Just throw like I
did, and if he crowds the plate put one in his ear."
But maybe it's only because there are far more mediocre players than
great ones, so that's just how the odds work out.
Can anyone think of any great players who also went down as great
coaches, in any pro sport? I'm sure there must be some, but right
now I'm drawing a blank trying to think of them.
Ted Williams had a pretty good rep as a manager, but he didn't stick
with it, decided to go fishing instead.
Maybe that's another reason why great players seldom make top coaches
-- most teams are pretty mediocre, both player-wise and
organization-wise, and even if you are one of the few great players to
have the aptitude to be a good coach, after a career as a "great" who
needs the frustration of trying to coach up mediocrity when you can be
having a good time as a celebrity doing something else?
Papa Carl
May 21, 2012, 10:01:18 PM5/21/12
to
"Grinch" wrote in message
news:liplr713jvietfb8r...@4ax.com...
Michael
May 22, 2012, 10:19:45 AM5/22/12
to
> played in this college division when it limited the weight to 151 pounds.
> Even without this...a lot of great players and coaches have come along and
> are still out there who will never possess some of the physical attributes
> to be able to play NFL brand football. To not respect their athletic
> ability, their work ethic, their toughness and their brains is flat out
> stupidity. But...I can see it happening, that is the nature of how they
> play the game today in the NFL. And I think it is to the detriment of the
> overall development of the quality of the play. Now...your issues with a
> former boss are really totally different....you described how she got the
> job...that has nothing to do with the correlation you are making to non-NFL
> players being able to coach at that level. You are talking about a very
> poorly run business with shaky ethics. Hmmmm, that could happen in the NFL
> too...a guy knows somebody, is the son of somebody and gets a job he really
> doesn't deserve and would never have gotten except for connections. Isn't
> that how this country really works now? And, to the detriment of the
> progress of things?
Papa... Forget about my old manager being nothing but a piece of ass
> Even without this...a lot of great players and coaches have come along and
> are still out there who will never possess some of the physical attributes
> to be able to play NFL brand football. To not respect their athletic
> ability, their work ethic, their toughness and their brains is flat out
> stupidity. But...I can see it happening, that is the nature of how they
> play the game today in the NFL. And I think it is to the detriment of the
> overall development of the quality of the play. Now...your issues with a
> former boss are really totally different....you described how she got the
> job...that has nothing to do with the correlation you are making to non-NFL
> players being able to coach at that level. You are talking about a very
> poorly run business with shaky ethics. Hmmmm, that could happen in the NFL
> too...a guy knows somebody, is the son of somebody and gets a job he really
> doesn't deserve and would never have gotten except for connections. Isn't
> that how this country really works now? And, to the detriment of the
> progress of things?
for a VP. I was just telling about a personal experience that made me
think about how a Pro 6' 6" 330 lb O-line guy would feel about a
chubby 5' 9" position coach that played HS ball and nothing else...
Imagine Mangold, Brick or Moore getting yelled at and needled by a guy
that would get flattened by Cromartie much less Wilfork ???
I guess you hit the nail on the head answering my question. If that
position coach had a history of developing prospects in to great
players and groups of players into great units, I'd know that little
dude was worth listening to... I'd respect him and do what he told me
to do based on his results with other players.
On the other hand.... There are great players that suck as coaches...
We just saw a HOF LB'er shit-canned last year with the 9'ers. He was
replaced with a marginal NFL player. A QB no less. His team's
defense is a monster.
You got it exactly just right... What matters is what you can do.
People will always respect ability and dedication.
MZ
May 22, 2012, 10:32:55 AM5/22/12
to
And furthermore, it seems to me that there are more ex-pro players in
coaching and management in the other sports than in football. Does
that mean that football requires a different kind of coaching
expertise? Or is it just a result of the pretty extensive college
game in this sport?
coaching and management in the other sports than in football. Does
that mean that football requires a different kind of coaching
expertise? Or is it just a result of the pretty extensive college
game in this sport?
Papa Carl
May 22, 2012, 11:40:27 AM5/22/12
to
"Michael" wrote in message
news:b18c920c-ad76-4eef...@b1g2000vbb.googlegroups.com...
them, and give them the tools they need to succeed.
Papa Carl
May 22, 2012, 12:54:54 PM5/22/12
to
"MZ" wrote in message
news:e2e9df9a-5b20-49f8...@s5g2000vbc.googlegroups.com...
in many ways, physically more than others and emotionally too. Maybe, the
guys who have had the mega success at playing have done it all, had enough,
made their mark and there really is little left for them to do as far as the
game goes. Plus, they can make far more money for doing much less by going
into business or working in media. Some of the others still have that
burning gut feeling to make their mark...get the recognition and be with the
game. Some I think need to continue to be part of that camaraderie and be
connected to something so powerful and so big...so they coach. For most, a
time comes when they know it is enough...but not for all, and that is very
individual. But, I think football coaching can burn you out much quicker
than some other sports can. Not being able to give up "the game" accounts
for some of the reasons some guys hang on in some capacity for ever I think.
And...the college and "good" high school programs can offer a much better
lifestyle for some personality types I think.
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