Quotes & Sayings About Sports Coaches

No matter how you total success in the coaching profession it all comes down to a single factor - talent. There may be a hundred great coaches of whom you have never heard in basketball, football, or any sport who will probably never receive the acclaim they deserve simply because they have not been blessed with the talent. Although not every coach can win consistently with talent, no coach can win without it. — John Wooden

There are only two kinds of coaches - those who have been fired, and those who will be fired. — Ken Loeffler

Conservative coaches have one thing in common; they are unemployed. — Chuck Knox

At the high school level, the coaches get these kids in revenue-driven sports and take them away from baseball. There's so much pressure on these kids to even play spring football. We need to get the African-American players back in the game, which I think would make it not only a better game, but more exciting and entertaining for everyone. — Pat Gillick

Now tell me this. What would you consider the greatest spectator sport in the country today? Would you say it was baseball, basketball, football? ... It's politics. That's right, politics. Millions and millions of people following it every day in the newspapers, over the TV and the radio. Now mind you, they wouldn't get mixed up in this themselves for all the tea in China, but they know the names and numbers of all the players. And what they can't tell the coaches about strategy. Oh, you should see some of the letters I get. — Frank Nugent

The two keys to success as a sportswriter are: 1) A blind willingness to believe anything you're told by the coaches, flacks, hustlers and other "official spokesmen" for the team-owners who provide the free booze ... and: 2) A Roget's Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph.
Even a sports editor, for instance, might notice something wrong with a lead that said: "The precision-jack-hammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Washington Redskins today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint-precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer-jack stomps around both ends ... — Hunter S. Thompson

Athletes are born winners, there not born loosers, and the sooner you understand this, the faster you can take on a winning attitude and become sucessful in life. — Charles R. Sledge Jr.

I got cast playing the best baseball player anybody's ever seen. I don't know how to play any sport, including baseball, but I trained really hard. They had these great coaches, and they started saying, "Wow, you have some like really untapped athletic ability." — Geena Davis

I could sum it up in one thing: A guy has to be what he is. He's got to coach and have a philosophy based on his own personality. You see too many coaches trying to imitate other coaches, trying to be someone else. It's all right to emulate the qualities of good coaches but I don't think you should imitate. You've got to be yourself. — LaVell Edwards

I've always believed that the desire must come from within, not as a result of being driven by coaches or parents. — Dawn Fraser

The common belief that coaches must be abusive to be successful is a myth. Research shows that if you find a task fun, you'll perform better. If more coaches took ... a Golden Rule approach to coaching, treating their players the way they themselves would like to be treated, fewer athletes would drop out of sports in their teens, and more athletes at every level would be happier and more satisfied. — Ralph Nader

Politicians and sports coaches both need to be smart enough to master the game, but dumb enough to think it matters. — David Mitchell

I was so afraid to make mistakes and get reprimanded by my coaches that the joy of the sport started slipping away. — Dominique Moceanu

My dad was a sports writer when I was younger and then he became just a general columnist. But I grew up with him literally getting into brawls with football coaches. — Amy Klobuchar

I never thought of what I was doing as a way to sell the NFL. I was making movies about a sport that I loved, about players and coaches that I respected. I wanted to convey my love of the game through film. And most artists convey their love through art. And my art and my love was expressed through film. — Steve Sabol

I don't have any ideas; my coaches have them. I just pass the ideas on and referee the arguments. — Bear Bryant

Coach may have been the greatest innovator the sport has ever had. — Ken Morrow

There's never been a finer man in American sports than John Wooden, or a finer coach. — Rick Reilly

The one thing that has gotten worse for sports media is access. We hardly get to see, talk to and most of all get to know the players and coaches anymore. — J. A. Adande

My job is to teach them to believe they could perform better than they realize. Great coaches teach athletes to go beyond the barriers. — John Roderick

The country is full of good coaches. What it takes to win is a bunch of interested players. — Don Coryell

In recent generations, women's sports have been a blessing. Some of us can remember the bad old days in the '50s, when we would discover in casual schoolyard play that a girl could outrun most of us or hold her own in basketball or hit a softball - but there were no teams, no coaches, for girls. — George Vecsey

Every NBA arena has six cameras in the ceiling. The question is what does the software do with video feeds? How to surface that in a set of analytics? There are some "playbooks," but in most sports these days what you really want to share out with coaches and players is a set of video that lets you visualize what's going on and what's the best way to do things. — Steve Ballmer

Baseball is the only sport that lets the managers and coaches go out onto the field and rant and rave — Durwood Merrill

Coaches must be flexible, for then they won't get bent out of shape. — John Kessel

No athletic director holds office longer than two losing football coaches. — Robert Zuppke

I learn teaching from teachers. I learn golf from golfers. I learn winning from coaches. — Harvey Penick

The indoor game is much more of a team game, having to work effectively with a group of 15 to 20 people, striving to improve every day, every drill, even every contact. The beach game is much more of an individual game within a team sport, much less about organized practices with coaches and much more about just playing the game. — Karch Kiraly

The only reason these kids keep score in these games is for the parents and coaches satisfaction. Who cares? They're 10 years old. — Peter Jacobsen

If you give me anything less than your best, you're not only cheating yourself. your coaches, your teamates, everybody in Green Bay, and everything pro football stands for. Your also cheating the Maker who gave you the talent. — Vince Lombardi

Most coaches study the films when they lose. I study them when we win -to see if I can figure out what I did right — Bear Bryant

Every name looks fashionable when it's etched in silver. (Stanley Cup) — Bruce Boudreau

A junior high sports bus was, in the same vein as some fancier modes of passenger transport - limousines, private jets, coaches, whatever - a place where the important people, the king and queen, sat in the back. — A.D. Aliwat

Nobody wanted me. Scouts told me to go to school, to forget baseball. Coaches said, 'You're never going to make it.' I appreciated their honesty, because I think when someone tells you something you may not like, you have to use that as fuel for motivation. — Mike Piazza

Youth sports could not exist without millions of volunteers and modestly paid coaches who teach our children how to skate and catch and dribble and also how to get along with others. — George Vecsey

Coaches and headmasters praise sport as a preparation for the great game of life, but this is absurd. Nothing could be more different from life. For one thing sports, unlike life, are played according to rules. Indeed, the rules are the sport: life may behave bizarrely and still be life, but if the runner circles the bases clockwise it's no longer baseball. — Barbara Holland

It's the old story. You might be able to fool your coaches, or your teammates, or your opponents. But, you can never fool yourself in anything. I believe that the more critical you are of your own performance- the higher standards you have-the better you become at what you do. — Don Maynard

Coaches and players at the start must think their way through problems where a more experienced person would react out of habit and memory. One must not gain this experience, however, without being careful of empty redundancy. Do not fall into the error of the artist who boasts of 20 years of experience at his craft while, in fact, all he has had is one year - 20 times. — John Kessel

I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism. — Frank Deford

Growing up as an athlete, I started skating very young. My parents didn't know anything about the sport, so they went with the flow. I had two great coaches who gave great advice and gave guidelines for my parents. My parents let the coaches dictate what was going on on the ice. — Kristi Yamaguchi

Always have a plan and believe in it. I tell my coaches not to compromise. Nothing good happens by accident. — Chuck Knox

You're going to have injuries, danger and glory in every sport. What makes football unique is that every person on that team needs to count on everybody else. It's the ultimate team game and you have to depend on your coaches, you have to depend on your support staff, you have to depend on your teammates. — Tim Tebow

Coaches need to have the ability of tact - to teach the team to rub out mistakes rather than to rub them in. — John Kessel

To implement a new sport aside your tradition takes time. You definitely need a strategy for the entire country. You need highly qualified coaches for all regions that work with the same concept. — Berti Vogts

If we, as coaches, aren't teachers, we are nothing — John Wooden

I love football. I love the aesthetics of football. I love the athleticism of football. I love the movement of the players, the antics of the coaches. I love the dynamism of the fans. I love their passion for their badge and the colour of their team and their country. I love the noise and the buzz and the electricity in the stadium. I love the songs. I love the way the ball moves and then it flows and the way a teams fortune rises and falls through a game and through a season. But what I love about football is that it brings people together across religious divides, geographic divides, political divides. I love the fact that for ninety minutes in a rectangular piece of grass, people can forget hopefully, whatever might be going on in their life, and rejoice in this communal celebration of humanity. The biggest diverse, invasive or pervasive culture that human kinds knows is football and I love the fact that at the altar of football human kind can come worship and celebrate. — Andy Harper

I didn't know it yet, but he would become one of our high school's super-athletes. There were hints of athletic (and, presumably, sexual) prowess there. For one, boys as ridiculously Abercrombie- esque good-looking as he was are always sports stars throughout high school. It is a rule, a self- fulfilling prophecy. It seems as if, sometime during elementary school, coaches make note of the little boys with the most classic bone structure and the best height projections and kidnap them, training them under cover of night. Not all of them will make it in college ball (that's what people call it, right?) because by the time they're all seniors, many of them will have been riding more on the sportsman-like nature of their faces than their actual abilities. But until that day, coaches will keep putting them on the field in the most prominent and visually appealing positions because they just kind of look like that's where they should be. At least I'm pretty sure that is what's going on. — Katie Heaney

He already knew he could coach. All you had to do was look at each of your players and ask yourself: What story does this guy wish someone would tell him about himself? And then you told the guy that story. — Chad Harbach

We coaches have to learn how to deal with that: How do I get to each one best - with a talk, with video analysis? And what sort of tone? We need our own coaches for that. The sports psychologist coaches me too. — Jurgen Klinsmann

I don't understand these new coaches who don't drink. What do they do when they get beat? — Abe Lemons

I've swum for my country, I've swum for my coaches and my schools and my teams. I decided this time I was going to swim for myself. — Janet Evans

For reasons that baffle me still, my high school sports coaches put me in the first division of the rugby, cricket, and soccer teams. — Hamish Bowles

I didn't get a ton of interest from colleges in baseball and football, but I was outstanding in track and had the sense that this would be my meal ticket ... Track was a sport where I saw immediate improvement, and I had a lot of good support behind me ... and the coaches had a lot of experience and pushed me in that direction for sure. — Dan O'Brien

Never underestimate your players; they can do it with enough game-like practice. Coaches must put more emphasis in practice and in life on making student-athletes aware of what they could or can do, rather than what they couldn't or presently can't do. The focus must be on solutions, not problems; what is wanted, not what is feared. — John Kessel

We have to move the meter in sports in Africa, especially basketball. With the growth of the NBA globally, we have to figure out more ways to develop facilities, coaching, leagues, and youth development in Africa. The talent is incredible. Especially physically. How do we get the youth to start playing at an early age just like in soccer? The future is bright. We now have an NBA office in Africa, we have legends and Hall of Famers, we have African assistant coaches, front office members, and some prominent African players over the last 10 years. So we must plan well for the next 10. — Masai Ujiri

What I loved about bike racing was that it was not a mainstream sport. My heroes were self-made. There were no coaches, no training centers, and only a handful of sponsors. Training rides were not totally devoted to bike talk. I got to know a lot of riders this way, not just as good sprinters or good climbers, but as people who had ideas different from mine, jobs different from mine, and dreams different from mine. — Steve Tesich

Too many coaches have too big a mouth and not big enough ears. — John Kessel

Coaches should realize that the only way to conquer drudgery is by getting through it as efficiently as they can. A dull job slackly done becomes twice as dull, whereas a dull job performed as efficiently as possible becomes half as dull. Effort appears to be the main art of living. — Harold Nicolson

I think sometimes when it comes to sports, and especially relationships between players and coaches, that people lose track, lose a sense of reality. — Ricky Williams

I happened to be in a position in Superior where I could play three sports, and when I came to Minnesota, I had the understanding they would allow me to play three sports. Kids now don't have the same amount of time. You have coaches that think baseball is 10 months a year. Hockey is 11 or 12 months a year. — Bud Grant

The trouble with most coaches is that they start with the assumption that everybody is a turd. And that ain't right. — Bum Phillips

Coaches try to beat each other from the ears up. — George Allen

My husband is so confident that when he watches sports on television, he thinks that if he concentrates he can help his team. If the team is in trouble, he coaches the players from our living room, and if they're really in trouble, I have to get off the phone in case they call him. — Rita Rudner

One thing with me, and every goal I've had - - in the sport of swimming, my mother didn't know my goals. The only person that knew my goals were my coaches. — Michael Phelps