1 min read
Short Life Spans
Is it just me or do a lot more coaches jobs seem to be on the line this year. I’ve heard as many as 10 NFL coaches are on the hot seat and could be out by seasons end. In college football who knows how many coaches will be out the door. Do we as a society put too much emphasis on winning? Are we so crazy about perfection that we demand it from coaches and politicians but very few others in our lives, including ourselves? Just asking.
Follow Me
Dear Mr. Litton,
I (slightly) disagree with your short life spand of a coach. Take the recent firing of Hawkins as an example. How many years was he with the team before he was fired? How many years did he fail to get the team going in the right direction. Outside of interim coaches it is rare that a coach gets fired after one season. Now granted I don’t think we’ll ever see coaches with the career length of a Landry with Dallas in the pro’s or Paterno at Penn State again but coaches for the most part are given at least a few seasons to show if their teams are making progress.
On a side note I want to share one final Marx Brother-ism. You’ve had me thinking about them all week and you might find this one funny. Chico Marx was being interviewed and was asked if Harpo could really talk. Chico replied,”Oh yeah, Harpo can talk. If you want proof go golfing with him sometime and if he misses a put about yea long (holds his hands about 3 feet apart) the BELIEVE ME you will definatly hear him talk.”
All the best
Louis
Good Morning from Omaha,
You pose a good question about head coaches and their life span. In Hawkins you have a good example. He was given a pretty good team and asked to build on it. He came from a program that from the outside looked very good. As coach, you get all the glory or in failure, all the blame.
So the story goes with Hawkins after 5 years.Some say they waited to long to pull the trigger- but in 5 years you should be able to see some evidence of progress and more than just the sputters and fits the CO had shown over the years.
Callahan at NE had his chances. In the end, as the wheels fell off, it appeared that the team lacked direction, wasn’t motivated, and wasn’t being coached very well. Pellini was given the keys to the NE car and the only way it could go was up because they seemingly hit bottom. He has built on the NE tradition and now has I think 3, 9 win seasons and they are working on getting to 10. But the ship seems righted and headed out into the big 10 sea- son, next year.
As i remember Groucho once said he shot an elephant in his pajama’s- how the elephant got in his pajama’s he will never know! (paraphrased).You started this drew!
Strive for excellence, nothing but your best.
Gene
Drew,
I check your site every morning – LOVE IT! I’m a first time writer, but I could not resist. My point is to bad we can’t give our politicians the pink slip when they deserve it like we do so quickly with coaches. Our country would be in a lot better shape if we could get rid of those “losers” quickly.
Jim from Scottsbluff, NE
GO BIG RED!!!!
Excellent cartoon today… I think coaches do seem to be taking more and more of the blame than they should. It’s a job like any other that takes time to learn and excel at and is made extremely difficult by GMs and owners concerned more about profit increases and players who care mostly about the money they’re making instead of working on the fundamentals that it takes to succeed. I think the Mariners are another example of this problem for years now.
With the exception of baseball, all major sports today have salary caps or, in the case of college sports, no (legal) salaries, so coaching and management are the only places where teams can spend freely. There’s only so many Mike Tomlins and Phil Jacksons to go around.