Coaches We’ve Loved, Loathed and Died For
On Intimidation vs. Inspiration
The best coaches will inspire you.
Anyone can intimidate, yell, threaten and insult you, but only the great coaches make you love them so much you’d run through a steel wall for them. You never want to disappoint them. You play for them as if your life depended on it.
We think of the great Vince Lombardi as the stern disciplinarian, which he was. But it was much more than intimidation that made him such a great coach and so loved and respected by his players. During football skull sessions my junior year in high school I was inspired by Jerry Kramer’s classic book, Instant Replay, about his two-a-days with Lombardi and the season of the Packers first Super Bowl victory. All of the players feared Lombardi, feared his wrath and tirades, but what they feared most was letting this great man with a monumental heart down. They loved him because he inspired them as much as he scared them; they loved him for his wisdom and courage, and because he cared so much about them and the game of football.
He was a masterful psychologist who taught men how to overcome their fears and limitations with insights such as “Fatigue makes cowards of us all,” a deeply spiritual man who put together a band of brothers who would go to the ends of the earth to win for him.
I had a special coach named Hartness going into my own two-a-days the summer I read Instant Replay. He’d won the state championship the year before with gifted players, but what made him a winner was that rare quality of making you want to win for him no matter what, never wanting to let him down. He inspired you with his spirit and love of the game in practices. While he was tough and demanding, he made you happy to be on the field with him, made “playing football” exactly that, a joy to be doing. He joked and laughed with you, gave nicknames to his players, got excited when anyone made a good play, block, run, and let you know it; he put his heart out there, and you couldn’t help but love the man. He didn’t have to yell when you weren’t cutting it, or beat you over the head with it, though he would sometimes—but the look on his face said it all.
I played defensive tackle that year and it was one of my best. I was on fire, getting sacks, blocking passes, tearing it up, and every time I looked to the sidelines and saw Coach Hartness it was like my own father was standing there—I didn’t want to let this man down. We didn’t win the state that year, but we had a winning season, rallied to beat leviathan teams we were picked to lose to, and relished every second of it.
Coach Hartness retired that year. And then came Coach Mo.
In practice I’d feel his crazy eyes on me in scrimmages, and was never sure when a football would come screaming in and bean the hell out of me before he’d fly into my face yelling, “Ronnie Smith, where were you supposed to be on that play!” Mo was a burly, crazy as hell line coach, and it seemed at times I was the only player he was watching. He seemed to think bullying and threatening made you play better, but I've never responded well to that kind of condescension. You could hear him from the stands shouting my name above the crowds, bands, and PA, haranguing and chewing me out from the sidelines as if there was nobody else on the field. He was obsessed with me, it seemed, and I was giving everything I had in spite of him.
In one of our first games I lost 17 pounds of water weight, which seems impossible. We were playing some real bruisers on a sweltering, muggy September night, and Mo wouldn't let me come out of the game. I desperately needed a breather, a minute or two here and there, a sip of water, probably needed oxygen, but he wouldn't give me a minute’s rest. The two platoon offense and defense would jog on and off the field, and I would stay on. I kept asking for a break, and my teammates would bring me some chewing out message from the sidelines: “Coach says to get your ass moving.”
At the end of the game, which we lost, I’m lying deliriously in the corner and Mo’s stalking around the locker room with his big lecture, and says, “Tonight I saw the worst performance by an interior lineman I've ever seen in my coaching career. And that person is….” and he comes over to me with this big leering crazy smirk and sticks his finger right down in my face, “Ronnie Smith!”
I was literally hallucinating, and for a minute thought I was dreaming. To begin with that was total crap. I couldn't believe this idiot. I’d lost my father two years earlier, and maybe he was trying to be him, but he was doing a lousy job of it. He was not even giving me credit for nearly killing myself out there. It was just stupid and counterproductive. He’d overworked me, bled me dry, mismanaged the hell out of me, then was kicking me when I was down. If I were playing so damn poorly, why didn’t he pull me out? I hated the loud mouthed, uninspiring son of a bitch. Maybe he thought it was tough love, or that he was going to shame me into being superman, but he just didn't know how to coach.
Near the end of the season I accidentally overheard him talking to a college coach on the phone one day outside his office when he didn't know I was there. I heard him telling them I had everything they were looking for in an interior linemen and they wouldn't be sorry if they recruited me. Praising my work ethic and character, speed and determination, inflating my size slightly, selling me like I was his own son. I was touched by it. He’d meant well, believed in me, but to my mind didn't know how to bring the best out of his players.
The next year I’m in two-a-day practices in July at Florida State, and up steps this unknown young defensive coach named Bill Parcells.
I’d expected some ball busters, but when Parcells got in my face snarling, threatening, chewing me a new one with that army drill sergeant kind of spiel, I was almost laughing. “Oh come on, not you again! Just coach me, goddamnit, don’t play this cliche Great Intimidator! I want to be here, you don’t have to do this threatening thing to motivate me! I’m a grown damn man, just teach me something and encourage me!”
I wasn’t crazy about Parcells at the time, but what I was really sick of was that over-the-top bravura in coaches without the heart. Of leaning on pure fear and intimidation to get the job done. I’d been dealing with that military bearing since I was eight years old and was used to it, but sometimes it seemed that’s all there was. Yelling, bullying, playing the hard-assed taskmaster. I wanted coaches I could look up to and respect and give a damn about. When I saw later what he was able to do with the New York Giants, winning two Super Bowls in ‘87 and ‘91, I thought, “Okay, I get it.” Whatever he did as a head coach worked. He had heart, all right. He was tough on his players but able to inspire them too. He praised as well as he criticized. He’s the kind of no nonsense, smart and blistering coach that can turn anything around.
When I was seven years old my father took me to a Georgia Tech football homecoming bonfire the night before a big rivalry game. My dad had played center for the legendary Bobby Dodd at Tech in the 40's, and in the early 60's Dodd was still inspiring winning, exciting teams. As I looked straight up at this big, cagey Tennessee gentleman wearing a brimmed hat men wore at the time, I remember his face against the sky with the bonfire flickering against it, and said, “I’m going to play at Georgia Tech one day,” and he grinned down at me and said, “Good for you, son, I’ll bet you’ll be as good as your dad here was.”
Dodd was an extraordinary player at Tennessee, a tall, lean All American quarterback, kicker and punter who won games with his savvy and wiles, his competitive spirit and skills. At Tech he reminded me of an underdog southern Civil War general, a Stonewall Jackson, out-numbered but out-flanking his opponents, out-smarting them, turning whatever he lacked into strengths, making the game a joy and his players look up to and admire him. He always said building character in young men was more important than winning, but he nearly always won. And no one in the game was more shrewd or cunning.
His practices were short, my father said, an hour and fifteen, with emphasis on execution, spirit, quickness, working hard and fast and using every second, crisp, sharp, and expecting a hundred per cent hustle. Then he’d send the boys to the showers so they could hit the books in this tough engineering school where you couldn't afford to drop your pencil because you’d be too far behind to catch up. My father loved the man and respected him, even when Dodd refused to let him play in the Tech-Notre Dame game because my father had been drinking and out after curfew. It was heart-breaking, but my dad knew the rules. And Coach Dodd was there to build men of character.
After my father died I’d go to Georgia Tech games and see the old Southern General on the sidelines in his long overcoat and hat, and wished I’d played for him. Just seeing his tall noble figure standing there inspired me like no one else except Bobby Bowden later. They were humble men you loved, who spoke the truth, were gracious, savvy and wise, who wouldn’t cut you any slack, but made you want to fight and sacrifice and outright die for them on the football field. They were men with big hearts. If they concentrated on character it was because character was greatness in an athlete. It was the steel girder and beam in your soul that allowed you to achieve incomparable things, to never give up, to work harder and reach higher than you knew you could achieve.
I had many other coaches in my younger years, many good ones, but the most important one was my father, Harry Raymond Smith. He didn’t coach formally, but from my earliest years he coached me personally, and made me aware of the beauty of this game. He inspired a love of playing and competing. He would say, always set your goals higher than you expect to land, as if you were shooting at a distant target, because you’ll probably fall a little below that. He had that spirit of doing it for the pure unadulterated joy of it, challenging yourself to great feats, accomplishments, and not sitting back waiting for them to come to you.
“There are go-getter’s in life, and come-get-me’s,” he’d say to me. “Which one do you want to be?” Don’t be afraid to try the impossible, because that’s where the rarefied air is, that’s when you’ll do things that others will never try. “No guts, no glory” as they said in the Air Force, where he’d been a P-51 Mustang pilot, interrupting his time at Tech during World War II and finishing college after the war. That spirit of reaching higher I owe to him.
Intimidation has its place in sports, there has to be a measure of pushing and driving.
But intimidation alone is not enough. When a coach shows you how much he loves the game and cares about his players, and lives and breathes it, he can make you feel the same love, for the sport and for himself, and that is the greatest power in sports and life itself.
The best coaches excite you and light a fire of inspiration under you. If they’re doing that, then the criticism and chewing out they give you occasionally carries an entirely different weight and meaning, and are then an essential part of what motivates you. You respect them so much that you never want to disappoint them, you always want to break your neck for them, you can’t bear the thought of them losing, and you’ll play with more abandon for them than you ever would for the sheer and one dimensional intimidators. When a coach you love and respect gets upset at you, you’ll conquer and overcome any obstacle for them, because you know their vulnerable heart is in it, and yours is right in there with them.
Respect, encouragement, and love are the most powerful tools in coaching. And all of the great ones have and give it.
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Ron Clinton Smith is a film actor, seen on “True Detective,” “Hidden Figures,” “Just Mercy,” and a writer of stories, songs, poetry, screenplays, and the novel Creature Storms.
