Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Cleaning Coaching

First Mangino, the National coach of the year in 2007, and now Leach, who received a tongue bath in the NYT Magazine from Michael Lewis in 2005. (There are budding allegations of similar mistreatment from recently retired Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione on the internets as well).

One can only hope this is the beginning of a minor revolt against shitty coaching -- and not just on the college level, but on all levels. If you have some time, read some of the stories over at Deadspin's Asshole Coach Digest. It's really quite amazing, albeit completely unsurprising. There are some extremely poor coaches out there and not a small number of them succeed despite themselves.

I'd expect more firings for abuse in the near future. Good coaches will pull their teams aside and make sure they're all on the same page with respect to injuies, while players will feel encouraged to speak out against the bad coaches who routinely abuse the unspeakably disproportionate power they have as university officials. There are some great football coaches out there who teach a lot more than football. Unfortunately, there may always be a surplus awful coaches who should never be allowed anywhere near the gridiron.

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