One of my favorite coaches of all time is the legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi. His story is told in one of the best coaching biographies ever written, David Maraniss’s When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi. I admire many things about Coach Lombardi; his passion, his commitment to family, his faith in the power of both sport and God to bring out the best in people were all keys to Lombardi’s coaching philosophy.
Yet, the thing I admire most about Vince Lombardi is that he didn’t suggest for a second he had discovered a new way to coach. He never pretended his success resulted from a mysterious or complicated method. My favorite quote of Coach Lombardi’s isn’t his most famous (winning isn’t everything…), the quote I liked best is when he said, “Some people try to find things in this game that don’t exist, but football is only two things—blocking and tackling”.
I believe Coach Lombardi’s greatness was in his ability to focus himself, his assistant coaches, and his players on what was most obvious. Hammering day in and day out on such old and simple themes as tackling and blocking, Coach Lombardi brought the Green Bay Packers to three straight NFL championships and five league titles in seven years. Many people forget that before Coach Lombardi took over as head coach of the Packers their record was a paltry 1-10. He came to Green Bay and immediately saw what was obviously missing, the basics. His only goal in those early years was to bring a simplified, hard-nosed, and evidence-based approach to the team. Essentially, do what has always worked, and do it better than everyone else.
Cries to reinvent coaching, and claims that we must discard old models are made by every new generation of sport guru (Cushion, Armour, & Jones, 2006). Yet, the fundamentals of any sport aren’t that complicated. Most of what is hyped as new is really the same old wine in a fancy bottle. A big reason every generation of coaches thinks that its solutions to both on-field and off-field problems are new is because they thinks the challenges they face are novel issues. Coaches can’t bring themselves to believe that coaches of the past faced remarkable similar problems, found frustration and satisfaction in similar sources, and ultimately came up with similar solutions.
I am not arguing that today’s coaches don’t work in a different environment. The technological revolution, the media, administrative duties, drugs and alcohol, sport specialization, and the pressure to win are just a few of the issues today’s coaches must face. However, the fundamentals of most sports and what it means to be a good coach have changed a lot less than most people want to admit. Good coaches see the fundamentals in an obvious way. They evaluate the progress of their athletes toward mastery in an evidence-based manner (Gillimore & Tharp, 2004). Great coaches see, really see, what is right in front of them.
The lesson we should all learn from one of the greatest coaches of all time is as simple as the man himself. Fundamentals drive any sport. Great coaches understand this, and truly work to keep the fundamentals of their sport in sharp focus at all times. Great coaches evaluate their athletes using an evidence-based method. They measure what is truly important and they measure it as accurately as possible. It is true that the old, often simple, and proven ideas about coaching and how to play sport may be dull, but are still your best hope… if you want to be a great coach.
Maraniss, D. (1999). When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi. Simon & Schuster.
Cushion, C.J., Armour, K.M., & Jones, R.L. (2006). Locating the Coaching Process in Practice: Models “for” and “of” Coaching. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 11(1), 83-99.
Gillimore, R. & Tharp, R. (2004). What a Coach Can Teach a Teacher, 1975-2004: Reflections and Reanalysis of John Wooden’s Teaching Practices.
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