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As we reach the end of this series of posts about legendary coaches from the special feature on the We Are Marshall DVD, we’re ready to learn from one of the greatest leaders/coaches in sports history, John Wooden. “… never cease trying to be the best you can be.” (Wooden)

On teaching …

A coach is nothing but a teacher. You’re just teaching a different subject than, say, English, which I taught for many years. But you’re still teaching, you still follow the laws of learning, work with people under your supervision, just as you do in any other position where you’re in charge, so to speak.

On talent …

I think all of those who reach–in the coaching profession, that reach the status where they seem to be considered among the better, it’s because they all had extraordinary talent. You don’t do it without talent. Not everyone does it with talent, but no one does it without talent.

On gentleness …

Abraham Lincoln said, ‘There’s nothing stronger than gentleness.’ And I believe that. [...] It’s like leading and driving. I think the gentle person leads, I think the driver, it’s like being more in front with a banner than being behind with a whip.

On legacy …

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.

On getting prepared …

Cervantes said, ‘The journey is better than the end.’ I consider the journey–I equate that with practices. The end is the games. And I do believe that is important. It is the — getting prepared is the most important thing and that is the journey.

On being the best you can be …

Never try to be better than somebody else. You have no control over that. And that’s something my father gave me years before when I was in grade school: ‘Never try to be better than somebody else. Just learn from them, and never cease trying to be the best you can be. That’s under your control and the other isn’t.’

Great words from a great coach. Be sure to check out my earlier posts on Jack Lengyel, Bobby Bowden, Pat Summit, Lute Olson, and George Horton.

And for more info on the movie this special feature came from , see the We are Marshall page at imdb.com as well as the review we wrote of the movie.

We’re nearing the end of this series of posts about legendary coaches from the special feature on the We Are Marshall DVD. See my (Randy) earlier posts on Jack Lengyel, Bobby Bowden, Pat Summit, and Lute Olson.

“… it’s the quality of time that we spend.” (Horton)

Of all the coaches featured, I was the least familiar with George Horton, manager of the California State Titans baseball team. While I didn’t transcribe a lot of his words, I did enjoy listening to him talk about his experiences as a leader of his team.

On quality time …

If I had to say what is my philosophy, we think the difference in Cal State Fullerton baseball, and all the others that are out there, is not the time that we spend, it’s the quality of time that we spend. And doing everything. And I think you could say that in every endeavor that you take in into your life.

To learn more about the movie, see the We are Marshall page at imdb.com. Also, see our review of the movie.

I‘ve (Randy) been posting quotes from the legendary coaches special feature on the We Are Marshall DVD. So far, I’ve covered Jack Lengyel, Bobby Bowden, and Pat Summit.

Lute Olson has some great quotes as well. “If you’re going to be good, you’re gonna have to be dedicated.” (Olson)

On motivation …

If you’re gonna coach, you have to make them better than they think they can be. And that’s not easy. That’s gonna take a lot of pushing and shoving, and, you know, some tough times.

On hard work …

In the current time, people are always looking for that quick fix, okay? You know, ‘I want this, but I don’t wanna have to spend the time and put the effort in to accomplish this.’ And that’s the great thing about athletics, that’s not possible. If you’re going to be good, you’re gonna have to be dedicated. The game is a game of fundamentals. There’s no way for someone to develop fundamentals other than through drill work and concentration on what they’re doing.

On adversity …

I think dealing with adversity, how you deal with it, is going to have a big effect on what you can accomplish during the course of your life.

On the value of living every day …

There have been so many situations that have happened in my lifetime, where, all of a sudden, someone that you would not think would be facing death is gone, like that. How can anyone think that death is gonna come at the time when I expect it to come? It’s not. Live every day. I’ve heard it too many times, ‘I wish I had …’ Okay, so if you wish you had, start doing it right now.

See the We are Marshall page at imdb.com. Also, see our review of the movie.

We’re in the middle of a series of posts with quotes from the We Are Marshall DVD, specifically the legendary coaches special feature. So far, we’ve posted quotes by Jack Lengyel and Bobby Bowden.

Next up, Pat Summit, who has had an incredible coaching career, coaching women’s basketball at the University of Tennessee. Pat Summit made a couple great statements. “You want to win … you gotta roll up your sleeves, and you gotta work.” (Summit)

On initiative and hard work …

What I think we have to do as coaches is, we have to be ready to say, ‘This is not going to be easy. You want to win, and you want to win a national championship, then you have to understand, you gotta roll up your sleeves, and you gotta work. And no one else can do that for you. You must do it for yourself. And kids coming in today, it is, it’s about instant gratification. Well, it’s not happening. You make it happen.

On fear of failure …

Sometimes people are–they hesitate to go for what they want for fear of failure. I’ve never been afraid of failing. I’ve always focused on the end result.

Fear of failure keeps so many people from making an effort. But that’s the only sure way to ensure failure. You gotta take a risk!

For more on the movie, go to the We are Marshall page at imdb.com. Also, check out our review of the movie.

Continuing with quotes from the Legendary Coaches special feature on the We Are Marshall DVD, next up is Florida State Head Football Coach Bobby Bowden

Of all the coaches featured in this DVD spot, I think I transcribed more of Bobby Bowden’s words than any of the others. There’s some great leadership material here. “You gonna have adversity … But you’ve got to overcome it. You’ve got to fight your way through it.” (Bowden)

On the importance of leadership …

When everything else is equal on a football team and the team you’re playing, it’s usually which team has got the best leadership.

On what leaders do …

People wonder what a head football coach does. Really, he’s the guy that sets the program, tells them how the program is gonna work, how are we gonna do it, and then oversees everybody. He doesn’t coach. He coaches the coaches.

It’s the same for pastors. Pastors cast vision, shape the culture, and then oversee (not to be confused with micromanaging) the work. Pastors can’t “coach” everyone; they coach the coaches (that is, they lead the leaders who lead others). Jesus modeled that with the disciples.

On integrity and being a role model …

There used to be an expression when I first started coming up in coaching. It was this, the coach talking to his players: Don’t do like I do. Do as I say do. Then he’d go out and get drunk. (Laughs) That’s not my philosophy, that’s never been my philosophy. My philosophy has always been, when I coach, don’t ask a boy to do something I wouldn’t do. Anything I tell him to do, it’s something that I hope I would do if a coach told me.

Pastors, too, practice what they preach.

On dealing with failure …

You simply are not gonna win all the time. You’re gonna lose some, you know it? And to me, a coach’s success, somebody says: What do you have to do to be a successful coach? I say, You gotta get over the bad times. If you never had adversity, you ain’t gonna be nothing. You have got to have adversity to build your character and find out how tough you are and find out how good your judgment is. A person who’s wealthy, and born wealthy, and never had to work, and everything is handed to him, I don’t know how they keep from being worthless.

You gonna have adversity, you know? There’s gonna be times where you’ll think you do not more deserve to be a football coach than the man in the moon. But you’ve got to overcome it. You’ve got to fight your way through it. You can’t listen to the outside opinion.

Many of the coaches on the DVD feature discussed failure and adversity. Being able to handle adversity is extremely important in life; it’s essential for leaders!

On love …

When I first started coaching back in the 50s, the approach that coaches took to football, a lot of them back then, was to kill. (Laughs) Kill. Kill. Go out there and kill them. Kill them. You gotta be mean. You gotta be rough, you got to physically whip them, all that. And that was kind of them theme back in those days. But now, then, our approach and I think more coaches’, is love. Love. In other words, if my players love each other, they have brotherly love for each other, then they’ll fight for each other. [...] That’s why I think love is so important. [...] Some coach is gonna go out there and be able to mold his team together as a team better than the others, and he’s gonna win the national championship. If he stays healthy.

Great words on leadership from one of the truly legendary coaches!

As mentioned in the previous We are Marshall movie post, the DVD has a great special feature called Legendary Coaches which includes several great coaches in their own words.

Over the next several days, we’ll post some highlights. First up is Jack Lengyel, head football coach of the Marshall University Thundering Herd from 1971-1974. He was responsible for rebuilding the team after the team’s tragic plane crash in 1970 (the subject of the movie). “It was a team thing.” (Lengyel)

Jack Lengyel’s comments are very similar to what his character said in the movie. Here it is …

And that while we may not have many victories on the scoreboard, our victories will come in the years to come, in other years, and we will share in those victories knowing that we had some small part in building this foundation for this football team. You have to set your goals high, and if we had to go under it, we went under it, if we had to go around it, or if we had to jump over it, we did it. It was a team thing. It was coaches, players, it was our goals. And once you immerse yourself into that particular philosophy and get everybody to buy into that system there’s very little that you can’t accomplish.

We all want to win TODAY. But sometimes our job as leaders is to prepare the team to win TOMORROW. Jack Lengyel understood that and did an amazing job at that task, and getting the whole team to buy into that vision.

We’ve been wanting to watch We are Marshall for a long time but it’s been hard to find a copy of the DVD on the shelf at one of the local video rentals stores. We finally watched it, and it was worth the wait.

We are Marshall is a true story about the rebuilding of Marshall University’s college football team following the plane crash in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia on 11.14.1970 that killed all 75 passengers (including the school’s 37-member team and coaches as well as a number of other community members).

At first it appeared the school would not try to rebuild the football program immediately. However, students, including Nate Ruffin (Anthony Mackie), one the team’s players that wasn’t on the plane due to an injury, convinced school officials to rebuild the program, in a moving scene where students gathered on campus and shouted, “We are Marshall!”

Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) was the coach that was hired to rebuild the football program at Marshall. Lengyel was portrayed as a bit eccentric but was clearly the right person for the job.

In a major turning point, Jack convinced university president, Don Dedmon (David Strathairn), to get the NCAA’s approval to field freshman players. Jack asked President Dedmon, “Now, are you married?” After Dedmon said he was, in fact, married, Jack said, “I am willing to bet that you didn’t propose over the phone” and “I know … she didn’t say yes in a letter. Huh?” Jack went on to say …

You can do it. You’re an outlaw. Pioneer. Gunslinger. This is a whole new game, Doc. [...] There’s a first time for everything, Don. And if we’re gonna survive, this has to be one of those times. And you’re the only man that can do it.

Later, in a scene between Jack and assistant coach, Red Dawson (Matthew Fox), the former team’s only remaining coach who had switched out with someone else just prior to the crash. Jack tries to change Red’s mind about quitting the team.

Just before the plane crash, Red had earlier recalled Coach Tolley’s final words to his team that had just lost on the field. He said, “Winning is everything.” In a scene that took place in a church, where Jack found Red, Jack says, “He was right, you know.” Red asks, “Who was right?” Jack says …

Your boy Tolley. Winning is everything and nothing else matters. I mean, I’ve said that so many times myself I’ve lost count. You know? And it doesn’t matter what sport, and it doesn’t matter what country and coach who’se worth a darn in this business believes those words. Fact. And then I came here. For the first time in my life, [...] maybe for the first time in the history of sports, suddenly, it’s just not true anymore. At least not here, not now. No. You see, Red, it doesn’t matter if we win or if we lose. It’s not even about how we play the game. What matters is that we play the game. That we take the field, that we suit up on Saturdays, and we keep this program alive. We play the game, Red, and I’m telling you, one day, not today, not tomorrow, not this season, probably not next season either, but one day, you and I are gonna wake up and suddenly we’re gonna be like every other team in every other sport where winning is everything and nothing else matters. And when that days comes, well, that’s when we’ll honor them.

And he was right. At the end of the movie, viewers are told that Jack Lengyel resigned as head coach in 1974 with a record of 9 and 33. In fact, Marshall lost more games in the 70s than any other program in the nation. But yet, football remained. In 1984, the Herd had their first winning record in 20 years. They followed it with 8 conference titles, 5 straight bowl wins, and 2 national championships. The Young Thundering Herd proves that sometimes you just gotta play the game!

Just before the team’s first home game after the crash, Jack started a tradition at Marshall, taking the team to the cemetery where team members who died in the crash were buried just before the game. Here’s what Jack says to his team …

This is where we have been. This is how we got here. This is who we are today. I wanna talk about our opponent this afternoon. They’re bigger, faster, stronger, more experienced, and on paper, they’re just better. And they know it, too. But I wanna tell you something that they don’t know. They don’t know your heart. I do. I’ve seen it. You have show it to me. You have shown this coaching staff, your teammates. You have shown yourselves just exactly who you are in here (pounding his chest with fist). Now, when you take that field today, you’ve gotta lay your heart on the line, men. From the souls of your feet, with every ounce of blood you’ve got in your body, lay it on the line until the final whistle blows. And if you do that, if you do that, we cannot lose. We may be behind on the scoreboard at the end of the game, but if you play like that, we cannot be defeated.

It’s great comeback story!

The DVD also has a great 40-minute special feature that alone is worth the rental fee. The spot features legendary coaches, including Jack Lengyel, Bobby Bowden, Pat Summit, Lute Olson, George Horton, and John Wooden in their own words. It’s a leadership seminar! In the coming days, I’ll (Randy) post some quotes and reflections on the words of these great coaches.

Football and leadership — learning leadership from coaches in the NFL.

I have been a football fan since I was about 8 years old when I watched a game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers. From that point on, I was a Cowboys’ fan.

Over the course of the years, however, I have come to enjoy watching football from a leadership perspective. Of course, the Dallas Cowboys had Tom Landry. And living in central PA, this is Pittsburgh Steelers’ country. The Steelers have an incredible leadership tradition with Chuck Noll and Bill Cowher who coached the Steelers for a combined 37 seasons and winning five Super Bowls. Mike Tomlin has some big shoes to fill!

There have been several books written by NFL head coaches. I’ve read a few of them including, Think Like A Champion by Mike Shanahan and Finding a Way to Win by Bill Parcells.

Toward the end of the 2006-2007 season, I began cheering on the Indianapolis Colts. I’ve always liked Peyton Manning, a real class act, and Tony Dungy, a strong Christ-following leader. Dungy has a new book out now called Quiet Strength. I hope to read it sometime.

Who are your favorite leaders in the NFL?