Quotes on Coaching
If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes real good, you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games.
Bear Bryant
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Good coaching may be defined as the development of character, personality and habits of players, plus the teaching of fundamentals and team play.
Claire Bee
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If you do anything in any way, whenever or wherever, that I think is detrimental to the good of this basketball team, to the school, or to yourself, I'll handle it as I see fit.
Bobby Knight
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A coach should never be afraid to ask questions of anyone he could learn from.
Bobby Knight
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A quick way for any player to make himself better is to think about what he himself doesn't like to play against.
Bobby Knight
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From a coaching standpoint, the greatest fear I've ever had - and it doesn't take a Final Four to bring it out - is that in some way I might not have prepared my team as well as I could have.
Bobby Knight
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To be as good as it can be, a team has to buy into what you as the coach are doing. They have to feel you're a part of them and they're a part of you.
Bobby Knight
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Players who know how to play have to be able to come to you with a suggestion.
Bobby Knight
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I've always had an ass-to-the-brain theory - when a player's ass gets put on the bench, a message goes straight to the brain saying, "Get me off of here."
Bobby Knight
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I've never felt my job was to win basketball games - rather, that the essence of my job as a coach was to do everything I could to give my players the background necessary to succeed in life.
Bobby Knight
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The eight greatest words ever put together in the English language: America, America, God shed His grace on thee...
Bobby Knight
A part of that grace is a responsibility I believe each of us has: to make sure we provide those who follow us with the same opportunities you and I were given by those who preceded us. That's uppermost among all that I've tried to do as a coach - I and thousands of other coaches and teachers that kids across this country have been fortunate enough to have at some point in their lives.
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One of the greatest motivating things that a coach has is the bench. They all love to play, all of them. You sit them on the bench, and they come around pretty good.
John Wooden
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The general feeling is, if you don't treat everyone the same you're showing partiality. To me, that's when you show the most partiality, when you treat everyone the same. You must give each individual the treatment that you feel he earns and deserves, recognizing at all times that you're imperfect and you're going to be incorrect oftentimes in your judgment.
John Wooden
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You can't run a popularity contest and be successful.
Ara Parseghian
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In game adjustments are the most overrated thing in coaching.
Bobby Knight
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You start developing a championship attitude by, first of all, telling kids that they are really good and that they have the potential to become better.
Mike Krzyzewski
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If you see players who hate practice, their coach isn't doing a very good job.
Bill Walsh
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The absolute bottom line in coaching is organization and preparing for practice.
Bill Walsh
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A common mistake among those who work in sport is spending a disproportional amount of time on "x's and o's" as compared to time spent learning about people.
Mike Krzyzewski
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I don't look at myself as a basketball coach. I look at myself as a leader who happens to coach basketball.
Mike Krzyzewski
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Don't ever ask a player to do something he doesn't have the ability to do. He'll just question your ability as a coach, not his as an athlete.
Lou Holtz
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It always amazes me that spectators want to coach, coaches want to officiate, and officials just want to watch the game.
Lou Holtz
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I do not judge success based on championships; rather, I judge it on how close we came to realizing our potential.
John Wooden
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Define success for those under your leadership as total commitment and effort to the team's welfare. Then show it yourself with your own effort and performance. Most of those you lead will do the same. Those who don't should be encouraged to look for a new team.
John Wooden
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When you punish your people for making a mistake or falling short of a goal, you create an environment of extreme caution, even fearfulness. In sports it's similar to playing "not to lose" - a formula that often brings on defeat.
John Wooden
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You must truly care about the lives and welfare of your team members, and demonstrate it with concern and support within a disciplined environment.
John Wooden
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Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
Vince Lombardi
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When your expectations are not real high - and that's a sad way to be - losing becomes a habit for a lot of players and coaches.
Steve Spurrier
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I think every coach in America would benefit from coaching at a school that's the underdog most of the time.
Steve Spurrier
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To me what's important is making the best use of the time you have with your players, not the time when the coaches are by themselves coming up with schemes and watching film on the other guy. It's what you can teach your players to do that counts. That's the most important part of coaching.
Steve Spurrier
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When I was a young coach I used to say, "Treat everybody alike." That's bull. Treat everybody fairly.
Bear Bryant
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Sure, being hungry could be a great motivator, but coaching is a lot more fun if you don't have to do it for a living.
Bear Bryant
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Good teams become great ones when the members trust each other enough to surrender the "me" for the "we."
Phil Jackson
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When people ask me now if I miss coaching UCLA basketball games, the national championships, the attention, the trophies, and everything that goes with them, I tell them this: I miss the practices.
John Wooden
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Purposely being irate - in order to accomplish something - can be more effective in sports than approaching it with a rational or seemingly rational approach.
Bill Parcells
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I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game.
Bear Bryant
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The ability to help the people around me self-actualize their goals underlines the single aspect of my abilities and the label that I value most—teacher.
Bill Walsh
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[C]onsistent motivation usually comes from a consuming desire to be able to perform at your best under pressure, namely, the pressure produced by tough competition. If a player needed me to light a fire under him by turning the other team into a demon, he was lacking something I couldn't give him.
Bill Walsh
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Calculated risks are part of what you do, but the idea that something completely crazy will work just because it's completely crazy is completely crazy.
Bill Walsh
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If you don't give young men a good and useful group to belong to, they will create a bad group to belong to. But one way or another, they're going to create a group, and they're going to find something, an adversary, where they can demonstrate their prowess and their unity.
Sebastian Junger
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All athletes talk about hard work; they all talk about “grindin'.†Commercials celebrate the guy who always does more, never stops, pours sweat, and keeps on working. It's a cliché and it's meaningless; in sports, hard work is assumed, and results are what matter. Can you work efficiently, productively, in a way that hones your performance and gives you an advantage?
Idan Ravin
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