You Don’t Need to Play to Coach

To some it might seem odd to teach something that you aren’t very good at yourself. Could you imagine your college English professor never having written a college-level essay before? Neither can we. So that’s why sometimes it is hard to grasp the concept that there are a lot of college basketball coaches out there who have never played Division-I NCAA basketball before. Most any coach has at least played high school ball, but some, such as Mark Few of Gonzaga and Bruce Pearl of Tennessee, never played in college. As you can tell, both of those men have done quite well for themselves as college coaches. And as Andy Katz points out, there have been plenty of good college players who stunk as coaches.

I suppose, to some extent, being a basketball coach is more about strategy and knowing how to do something (as opposed to actually being able to do it). For instance, that first analogy I used with the professor was a little but off, because being able to teach at the college level requires that you were able to do those things to earn your doctorate. Unless you were some rare case, you had to come up through academia. With coaching, there are no such PhD. requirements. Furthermore, only a select few people have the physical characteristics to play basketball. Having a 6-9 frame is a big part of playing basketball at an elite level, but being so genetically lucky is not required of professorship.

To get NCAA basketball tickets go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on October 3, 2007 - Post a comment