I had no ambition to be a football coach. I wanted to be a spy for MI5 or MI6.
If the coach is good, I don’t think a psychologist is needed.
I would be a very demanding coach. I wouldn’t yell and scream, but I want players that want what I want. And that’s why I couldn’t coach, ’cause I know how hard it is and I know how hard I want you to play. But everyone’s not going to do what I want.
One of the things that first attracted me to chess is that it brings you into contact with intelligent, civilized people – men of the stature of Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, who was my part-time coach.
The batting coach does his job. He tells them the basic faults and helps them improve their technique. But if the batsman is in form then he has to carry that form.
If I were a young coach today, I would be extremely careful in selecting assistants.
I have the best agent, manager, publicist, acting coach, and lawyer. Without them, I wouldn’t have the opportunities that I’ve had.
We should tell our kids to just have fun, participate and not get bent on winning or losing. But every coach, when they say that, they say it tongue in cheek, ‘Don’t worry about winning’: If you win I’ll get you ice cream, but if you lose I’m going to pout in the car.
I have great respect for Greg Knapp, who was my quarterbacks coach in Denver for three years. He taught me so much about playing quarterback in the NFL and made me a better football player.
Steve Fisher did not like me at all. I was hyper-critical of him. I didn’t think he was much of a coach. He just kind of rolled the ball out there and I was pretty outspoken about that. Steve Fisher and I didn’t get along at all.
The coach’s job is to get the best players and get them to play together.
I’d rather be involved and somebody say, ‘Hey, coach, here’s what I need you to do. Go down to the D-League and work with guys’… I want the D-League coach to learn how to be a head coach.
Players alone don’t win championships. It takes an entire organization. Someone has to acquire the players. Someone has to coach them. Someone has to generate revenue to pay them. But at the end of the day, the players are the ones who put their minds and bodies on the line to win.
The players fire the coach, and as long as I’m on the same wavelength with them, I can coach as long as I want to.
I love working with Coach O’Brien, Coach Godsey, and they are terrific football coaches.
I am not a coach for the tackles, so I do not train them.
I would love to be a coach, mentor, or a batting consultant. I would love to commentate in Hindi, as most people who watch the game are more comfortable with Hindi in India rather than English.
You notice it with any organization that’s had a lot of success: you will start to reach thinking, ‘That’s the player, that’s the method, that’s the mechanism, that’s the coach, that’s the thing that’s going to put us over the top.’
I was not a very good football player. My coach hated me – I don’t know why, I guess it’s probably because I wasn’t very talented.
I spend around two and half hours on the track every day running and another 2 hours in the weight room lifting weights with my strength coach.
I had other offers, but Mourinho is Mourinho. It’s exciting to work with him, he is the best coach in the world and I want to work with him for a long time.
According to me, there couldn’t be a better choice for India’s coach than Anil Kumble.
My dad was my swim coach growing up, and I tried to get kicked out of practice every day. I was a little devil kid.
That’s a strong sign of a good coach, to let an assistant participate. It shows his confidence in the coach’s ability not to have to dominate everything.
I’ve always been my own hitting coach.
Players are saying, ‘I don’t have to have a coach who has only played a little bit. Instead, I can have somebody who won something’.
It’s important for the coach when you arrive to understand the players and to understand every single player’s strength and their weakness.
When I say I played with the greatest, let’s not forget I also played for the greatest coach of all time.
I feel like I’ve been very blessed to have some great mentors through the years, starting with Don James, who was my college coach, who really inspired me to want to be a coach, which is not something that I really had in mind.
When I was 6 or 7, my gymnastics coach looked at my quads and told the other coach to come over and see my quads. They were big then and still are. But I’ve kind of embraced it through the years.
I take class at the Groundlings, and my personal coach is Lesley Kahn.
I went to L.A. and got an acting coach for one day. Then I went in to audition and I smashed it. You have to take risks, and one thing I know about people: your presence is everything.
Every day, you learn something. That’s the same as assistant coach and the same as a head coach. You should continue to learn. You watch so much basketball, you should see something somewhere from somebody different all the time.
And when I went to Houston, they had a conditioning coach by the name of Gene Coleman. And that was the first time I had gone to an organization that had a program with a weight room and designed specifically for pitchers.
We had a rule-breaker at Mainz – the club manager Christian Heidel, who had the courage to make me a Bundesliga coach.
The King’s son, who was told that a great princess, whom nobody knew, was come, ran out to receive her. He gave her his hand as she alighted from the coach, and led her into the hall where the company were assembled.
I’m a humble kid. I grew up with Filathlitikos. There were some people in Filathlitikos that taught to me how to stay humble. It was coach Tzivas that never allowed me to get carried away. That’s who I am.
You know, a lot of those angry sort of Southern man characters that I’ve been doing are based on different people I might’ve had as, like, a soccer coach or as a teacher.
Those that coach 10 years that take a year off are three times better coaches… in year 11.
My children see me being coach enough. I gotta make sure they see me being dad.
If you’re a coach, and you don’t have trust with players, you’ve got no chance, and your credibility is zero. And that’s why it’s so important to tell them the truth. If you have something that you’re upset about, tell them the truth. If they’re doing something wrong, tell them the truth.
I wanted to become a college coach. I got game films of all the good college coaches – Pete Newell at California, Eddie Donovan with St. Bonaventure, Ken Loeffler at LaSalle.
I’m not good at interviews, I’m not good at dancing, I’m not good at looking like I’m having fun. I never will be, I don’t think. Unless I go to a life coach.
Coach’s voice will never leave my head as long as I live.
Our coach was absolutely out of his head. He must have read Bear Bryant’s book. We had 78 players out. The first day 35 quit. Twenty quit the second day. We ended with 17 players. It was depressing.
Championship teams are built on being prepared, playing unselfishly and being held accountable, and that’s how I expect to coach this basketball team. I am truly excited about this next phase of my basketball career.
If you win a Super Bowl before you’re fired, you’re a genius, and everyone listens to you. But a coach is just a guy whose best class in grammar school was recess and whose best class in high school was P.E. I never thought I was anything but a guy whose best class was P.E.
I will never coach again. I don’t want to, but I wouldn’t even if I did.
The bigger, stronger, faster and meaner my players are, the better I coach.
Watching soccer is my main hobby, really. I’m no tactician or coach, but I enjoy watching the free flow of it, the different styles, and the histories behind clubs. Like Barcelona vs. Madrid – it’s not just a soccer game; it’s a geopolitical struggle. There are great storylines and no commercials.
I enjoyed coaching so much that I just have to stay with it. Don Coryell – I love him, and I think he was a great coach – but I hear he’s going to build a house on some island. He’s going to divorce himself from football, and that’s a mystery to me.
I had a few brief, brief interactions with Coach K. Mainly us beating them in the NCAA Tournament back in 2012.
I had a coach that was not a great player, but he taught with kids and juniors so that by the time he was 50 he was great. He helped me make the top 5 in the world and yet he wasn’t a great player himself.
I did interviews with tennis greats, like James Blake and John Isner. I also interviewed tennis pros who aren’t well – known but who made all the same sacrifices but had just a little spark of a professional career and are now still orbiting the sport, either as a teaching pro or a coach.
I think it’s easy for directors to stay fresh more than actors, especially once an actor becomes a star. It’s hard for Russell Crowe to walk down a street or take a subway. I can fly coach.
As a player, I can tell them they don’t want to rush to become a coach, because there is a lot that goes on. This is all something new to me. You can talk to a lot of the coaches… and they can tell you. Until you go through it, then you can understand what it’s all about.
Teams usually take on the personality of the coach.
