This statement evinces fond memories of an NBA coach precariously clinging to Alonzo Mourning’s leg during a brawl…good times.
Ken Shipp coached the NY Jets as an interim coach in 1975. As far I can see, he didn’t play college FB.
Right. But it would be hard to imagine a coach who has never played the sport at least recreationally, i. e. played basketball in the driveway.
That’s not “playing basketball”, that’s “tossing a few balls”, at least in Spain. It’s practice, not the game. The guy I mentioned in my previous post cannot play soccer at all: no practice, no nothing.
And you’ve taken “playing in the driveway” and equated it with “played organized ball in high school”. This thread is really weird.
I understand that. But he never had the option of playing soccer because he is physically impaired.
On the other hand, why would an able-bodied individual develop an interest in, say, basketball and become an outstanding coach if he never at least touched a basketball? But you’re right, “tossing a few balls” is essentially the same as “has never played”.
I didn’t want to try a definition of “never played” which is too convoluted.
Let’s try this example: I never held a Lacrosse racket in my hand, I have never watched a Lacrosse match and I don’t know one bit about the sport. Therefore, I’m not a Lacrosse player.
I never played soccer in an organized competition, but I do know how to handle a soccer ball, I know the rules and I watch soccer games all the time. But that doesn’t make me a soccer player either, however, there is a difference in my attitudes towards Lacrosse and towards soccer.
Jeff Van Gundy started at point guard for Nazareth, and Stan played for SUNY Brockport for his dad. They were both high school superstars. Contrary to astorian’s (it seems to me entirely unsubstantiated) comment that it shouldn’t be rare, it’s pretty much unheard of for a professional coach to not have been at the very least a serious college player.
Every single current MLB manager played professionally at some level. 21 out of the 30 NBA HC’s played professionally.
Football is the sport where astorian’s argument makes the strongest case, where 18 of the 32 HC’s never played professionally, and one that did - Mike Smith - only played for one season in the CFL.
In the NBA, you do have Eddie Gottleib, who coached the Philadelpha Warriors in the 1950s. Gottleib evidently didn’t play basketball at all. He organized one of the first pro barnstorming teams, the Philadelpha Sphas* and joined the NBA when it came along.
*An acronym for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, who bought the team their first uniforms.
Former Chiefs HC, and current Steelers OC, Todd Haley never played organized football. Al Davis, AFAICT, never played organized football. Bruce Pearl never played college basketball. Some sites say Joe Gibbs didn’t play college or professional football. The wiki seems to say he did, but I guess people disagree about that.
Here’s one: NFL placekicking coach Doug Blevins has not *walked *since he was 3, due to cerebral palsy.
2 examples:
Lawrence Frank, head coach of the Detroit Pistons was a student manager only at IU for the General and didn’t make his hs team; although he did play on a CYO team and in a community league.
I was also going to say Tom Crean, head coach of IU, since he didn’t play in college but apparently he played in hs.
Well, it’s surprising because it’s simply not very common, for one thing. Aside from Ken Hitchcock, how many NHL coaches didn’t play at least high level minor hockey, if not NHL or lower pro hockey? I can’t think of any. John Tortorella played in the ACHL, Paul McLean scored 324 goals in the NHL, Kirk Muller was a wonderful NHL player, Alain Vigneault had a cup of coffee with the Blues - almost any coach I pick at random was a pro. A very few coaches didn’t get out of top junior (like Barry Trotz) but that’s a LOT of high level hockey just to make it there.
Baseball? Same thing. NFL? Most coaches played NCAA ball at least.
It’s incredibly difficult to learn how to manage or coach if you don’t play. How do you know the feel of a locker room, the way to manage and inspire players, if you were not once yourself a player? And how do you command the respect of professional athletes if you didn’t play? Carlos Tosca, mentioned upthread, DID get shit from some of his players for never having played pro ball.
Where never-played guys have success, quite often is in the front office, as the general managers and architects of teams. I can cite dozens of examples. But the field manager/coach benefits enormously from knowing the locker room and the dynamics of a team from the inside.
According to IMDB Al played (or tried to play) football at Syracuse. Got cut from the team.
Outside of the locker room aspect, isn’t a coach (and his staff) supposed to have some kind of worthwhile input into game technique? How do you get the most out of your players if you’ve never played, never experienced what happens on the field/court/ice? Having reasonably high level playing experience must give a coach a wealth of knowledge to draw from in his coaching job.
Since it’s demonstrable that there is no correlation between athletic prowess and the ability to coach, it’s silly to argue that you can’t coach unless you’ve been a player.
It’s far more likely that a player gets to know the right people and makes the right connections to be thought of for a coaching job. Who you know is much more important than what you know when hiring coaches (hence certain coaches are rehired despite being fired from other teams, and when a team is hiring, there are always those with previous top-level experience in the mix).
Someone who signs on as an assistant student coach in college, and who moves on to assistant coaching and finally coaching jobs can certainly develop the ability to coach at the top level. The problem is breaking through the barrier. If you are a player, you get to meet and befriend people who hire coaches. If you’ve been coaching at a non-pro level, the jump to pros is very hard to do when you don’t know anyone in the pros. Not to mention that college coaching is far different than pro coaching, since a key element – recruiting players – is not necessary in the pros.
There’s no correlation between being a great athlete and being a great coach. However, never actually playing the sport on a serious basis makes it less likely that you will have the intimate knowledge of the sport necessary to be a good coach. Can you really correct someone’s fundamentals if you’ve never played? Perhaps, but I think it would be much more difficult for a non-player than someone who has played at a high level (even just Div 1 college)
I remember reading an article in Football Digest back in the late 1970s, talking about the poor track record of former NFL quarterbacks as head coaches in the NFL. The article focused on Bart Starr (Hall of Fame QB for the Packers, who was just embarking on what proved to be a disappointing tenure as head coach of the Pack), but also discussed guys like Norm Van Brocklin (losing record as coach of the Vikings and Falcons) and Sammy Baugh (just under a .500 record with Titans and Oilers in the early days of the AFL). More recently, Steve Spurrier, who was a middling NFL quarterback, went from being a top college coach, to a losing NFL coach with the Redskins.
One would think that a good QB would have the tools to be a good NFL head coach, but there doesn’t appear to yet be a case in the NFL where a man has been good at both.
Here’s a random thought: It might actually be more feasible to be the coach of a professional team than of a college team if you haven’t played the game yourself on a high level:
Athletes who join a professional team are top of the heap anyway and they are already very complete players when it comes to the basics. For instance these young pros don’t need to be shown how to swing a baseball bat. The coach can then concentrate on tactical and strategical aspects of the game.