[Husker] DB coach

[Duane Feldman]

At risk of not having any backup data, I am guessing that coaching stardom is largely independent of playing stardom.

Let's guestimate for a minute that one of 60 or so Heisman winners went on to win an NCAA or NFL national championship (can you say Steve Spurrier???).  Now if you group other players into the "all other category" you probably get something out seomthing less than 1% who go on to become NCAA or NFL champs as coach.  Dr. Tom was an NAIA AA (IIRC) at Hastings College and went on to win at the next level, so you could say he was successful at all levels (NE Player of the Year in both High School and College and now BCOE (Best Coach on Earth).  Bo was all-conference for OSU, was he an AA?  Bob Devaney played at Alma (MI) College.  Frank Solich did some good things as the World's Smallest Fullback.  Bill C played QB at a smaller Illinois college.

Flip it the other way, how many NCAA FB coaches DIDN'T play college FB?  Mangino comes to mind, but he wsa offered a scholarship and didn't take advantage of it.  Probably others over time, but I'm guessing the percentage of non-players who have won MNC is very small or even non-existant.

Define "success" at the player level but broader than Heisman, and I'll bet that the percentage of successful coaches that come out of that group is higher than the remaining "unsuccessful" players.  While the numbers are small, I'll bet money that "the traits of successful people" shifts the percentages in favor of successful players but it is VERY FAR from a predictor.  We are looking at a small percentage who succeed at the upper levels in any case.  And Bob, if only 1-4% of a group is successful, it is easy to pick examples of failure.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.  Anybody know where we can find supportive data?

Duane Feldman


----- Original Message ----
From: Baseballguy <baseballguy at neb.rr.com>
To: Husker List <husker at tssi.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 8, 2007 11:06:55 AM
Subject: Re: [Husker] DB coach


    Most of     the time a great player doesn't become a great coach.  We could all name
    situation after situation where this is/was true.  One that always pops
    into my mind is Ted Williams, one of the greatest hitters, arguably the
    greatest, in baseball history.  As great a hitter and ballplayer this guy
    was he wasn't a very good manager and/or hitting coach.  He had the
    knowledge and the how to but he couldn't communicate it nor did he have
    the patience.  Another example is Tommie Frazier, arguably the greatest
    QB in NU history.  He failed miserably as a coach.  The main rap on
    Frazier was his lack of communication skills and he was impatient as he
    felt like everything should be done to the level in which he did it among
    some other things if I understand correctly.  That is usually the concern
    with a coach/manager which was a star is their communication,
    expectations of their players, and the ability to empathize with and
    understand a player who is less than a star.  There are always exceptions
    to every rule but largely great players don't make great
    coaches/managers.  The thing I have also noticed is most stars have no
    desire to get into the coaching game anyway.


Bob Beach



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