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Freshman year of college, one of my coaches was out with family friends or whatever. Somebody said my name and kind of stuttered it or mumbled it. He was like, 'What'd you say? Mr. Biscuit?' instead of Mitchell Trubisky. It kind of stuck that week of practice, and that's what all the boys started calling me.
I totally can relate to guys going in for job interviews, and not having a tie, not having a white shirt, and that type of thing to wear. That's why I think as coaches we can do things to help. We have plenty, we as NBA coaches and players are all very blessed to be in a profession so that we can provide for.
In management, everything is different. If you look at successful coaches, they always need time to kickstart something. Arrigo Sacchi - when he started the revolution at Milan, he was almost on the brink of being sacked, but then he won, and people started believing in the system; he had more time to breathe.
Coach Wilks really embraces that growth mindset and trying to learn and grow every day so he's a good fundamental teacher. He understands the passing game which is important when you coach as a defensive coordinator and also as a secondary coach like he has, so he's one of the top-notch coaches in our business.
I started singing about three years ago, I entered a local singing competition called Stratford Idol. The other people in the competition had been taking singing lessons and had vocal coaches. I wasn't taking it too seriously at the time, I would just sing around the house. I was only 12 and I got second place.
Coach Blatt's been great! He comes with a worldly dynamic and I think that's what our game has been lacking. He's coached and played all over the world, so his perspective on the game of basketball is kind of different from most traditional NBA coaches. But at the same time, it makes it interesting and exciting.
You know there are so many people that have touched your life both on the ice and within your career in the NHL whether it be owners, GM's, coaches, players, trainers, all the way down. And that doesn't even account for all of the people that you encountered outside of the game that you met along this trip, too.
There aren't many woman coaches in general, and I actually think it's good to have a male coach. Guys and girls have different mentalities. Girls are so stressed about everything. Guys take everything much more lightly. That's great, and it's something we have to learn from. I think one woman on a team is enough!
The big question on everyone's mind is, 'Did Tim Donaghy fix games?' The answer is no. I didn't need to fix them. I usually knew which team was going to win based on which referees had been assigned to the game, their personalities, and the relationships they had with the players and coaches of the teams involved.
There are conferences every year where all the major coaches get together, and they talk about the issues in wrestling, what's going to happen. There's a major governing body, U.S.A. Wrestling, which oversees a lot of the issues. The organization is there in wrestling to make a very well-balanced, organized system.
I took a lot of pride, honestly, in hiring these young guys, that not only to become future head coaches, but I wanted young guys that could help me - guys that can coach, guys that could study, guys that loved it, that would do it for nothing. That's how I got into coaching with the 49ers when John McVay hired me.
In men's sports, people criticize coaches and managers all the time, call out teammates, too, and it's not that huge of a deal. Often, the guy speaking out is even lauded for having the courage to tell the truth. When it happens in women's sports, though, it always seems to be viewed as a nasty, claws-out cat fight.
Some coaches prefer players who will just do whatever he tells them to. It's like, if you're at school with a load of 10-year-old boys and you tell them to jump, everyone will start to jump. But the intelligent boy will ask, 'Why should I jump? Why?' That can be difficult for a lot of coaches, and I understand that.
I quit comics in 1988 and trained as a bus driver. I used to drive those big Greyhound coaches out of New York Port Authority and down to Princeton, New Jersey. It was, hands down, the best job I ever had, and I profoundly regret having left it. I kept that job the entire time I was on staff at DC Comics in the '90s.
One of the first coaches I worked with on the national team told me that I was too skinny, too puny, and had no natural acceleration. He said I'd be better off looking for another facet of sport to follow. That was a really, really bad moment. For a long time, I felt as if my dad was the only one who had faith in me.
When I got fired from coaching, I started coaching high school because my son played. I realized real quick that high school football is in trouble. There's no budget. A lot of kids have got to pay to play, and every year, coaches are getting out of the profession. Kids aren't playing like they used to. It bothers me.
I respect Bielsa a lot. For me, he is a special coach. I think the best coaches in the world work in different things, and a lot of coaches, we cannot train like Bielsa. It's difficult to train like Bielsa. But every coach can learn from different coaches. But with Bielsa, I think all coaches learn something from him.
I've got a lot of respect for a handful of coaches, and there's a lot of great stuff put out there on film. So, I always want to stay up to speed on those current trends and figure out if you can steal something that fits your players and your system. I'm certainly not afraid to steal from some of these great coaches.
There's this myth that there's no loyalty in football. Well, there's tremendous loyalty and emotion and respect that go into the coaches and players you've gone into battle with. But as an owner, you have to make the decisions that are the right ones for the organization, that are the right ones that will help you win.
People think that coaches are always right, but it's difficult to teach a runner how to run, because every runner is different. You have to have an understanding of how to assist what that runner has, so they know how to assist what you have without taking away your special ability, because you're not like anybody else.
In the NBA, you're taking a bunch of different talents, and you're managing them. You have to give them a system; you have to give them a belief. That's why coaches like Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich are so great: because they gave the team confidence in the system and in their ability to execute night in and night out.
I think it's no accident that a number of coaches and personnel guys have come out of William and Mary. To me, it's a credit to the type of program Coach Laycock runs. There are set rules, there is clarity when it comes to expectations. You're expected to go to class and be a student-athlete. There are no cutting corners.
When I started training to fight, it was more out of boredom than anything. I was looking for more things to do. I started with boxing, and my coaches told me I had a lot of potential and that I should consider making it a career. I was like, 'Whatever.' I was just 15 at the time, and I never imagined something like that.
I feel like I gotta get out of myself sometimes. I think I'm in my own world sometimes. I don't like to let other people come into my own world. Especially with my teammates, my coaches, I should be doing that. The important people that need to know how I'm feeling. I can do a better job of telling them exactly how I feel.
When I see Mario Gotze, his development does not go in the right direction. He has outstanding qualities, but he has not reached his potential for whatever reason. His charisma is not so good, fellow players, coaches, fans and the media do not feel that he is fighting against his current situation. He's more an introvert player.
Something as simple as transparency is really scalable because it quickly impacts the culture. And the culture is something everyone feels. If upper management is really transparent with everyone, that has this amplifying effect. Then you tend to attract players who operate that way, on the same wavelength, and coaches and fans.
A lot of young coaches who respect the fact I have been doing it a long time, that is often their question: 'Does it get any easier? Can you relax more during the games? Can you take it all a little bit more philosophically and put it more in perspective?' The tragedy is that I have to tell them, 'No. If anything, it gets worse.'
Put it this way, people in my position in the UFC, their coaches couldn't tell them to sweep the mats because some people feel like they're better than that. I'm not one of those people. No matter how I am on camera, people who really know me, who know my soul, know I keep that same energy. So ain't nothing change but the change.
The NBA has made a real issue about really making these superstars the premium that everybody wants to go to. That's their calling card and their marketing tool. But the coaches at the other end of the sphere are trying to make everybody on the team, even nine, 10, 11, 12, just as important, and have a real role that's meaningful.
The biggest thing for me is to be accessible. When a high school coach comes on our campus, they can sit in every position meeting they want to sit in. They can come to every practice. And the comments I've gotten from our high school coaches is how accessible we are to them. That's what you need to do to build those relationships.
The problem for me is we are denying British coaches positions in all divisions now, particularly in the top division and the Championship. We need to do something about that. As a country, as the FA, as the Premier League, we need to protect the position of our own highly qualified coaches who are not even getting an interview now.
Faith is the most important thing in the world to me. It's the greatest strength I've had. It's helped me get through the hard times. You're not going to win every one of your football games. I've always said I'm not going to make football my god. A lot of coaches put so much into coaching football games that they have nothing left.
Traditionally it's been difficult for Africans to play over here, mainly because the African calendar is very different to that in Europe. Most of the coaches over here can't accept that we have to go back home to play at the Nations' Cup for a month while the season is still on over here. That made people reluctant to sign Africans.
I didn't get a ton of interest from colleges in baseball and football, but I was outstanding in track and had the sense that this would be my meal ticket... Track was a sport where I saw immediate improvement, and I had a lot of good support behind me... and the coaches had a lot of experience and pushed me in that direction for sure.
I was blown away when I figured out that none of the great integrative moves that I studied came as a result of starting with a blank sheet of paper - as many innovation coaches suggest. Integrative solutions came directly from mining the existing models for the best of their nuggets. So I never start with a blank sheet of paper anymore.
Unlike most youngsters who have school as their 'second home' where they meet and make friends, for me playtime has been at the Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad. When I am not playing a tournament, my days are spent at the Academy with my coaches, physiotherapists and colleagues, who are like family. We laugh and have so much fun.
I've had a couple of people - prominent coaches - walk into an office, shut the door and say, 'What's it like, not coaching?' They're scared. They're scared not to have that. And I'll tell them, 'You know, it's different. You're not going to replace coaching. But there's some normality that's out there, and that's also kind of refreshing.'
I learnt a lot of things in Holland, as people have great vision there. It improved me as a player and a person. I had very good coaches that wanted to play offensive football and dominate games and be better than their opponent. You also need to play for your team-mates as well as yourself; then, afterwards, you can show your own quality.
I remember when I was 8 years old when I first started playing organized basketball, and the coaches had the kids in single file doing two-line layups and they were struggling to get the ball up there. Me, I'm doing reverse cradle layups with the backhand spins on it, like, jump from the right side and lay it up on the left side backwards.
The book is actually called 'A Mentor Leader, a Different Way to Lead.' It really talks about my experience in the way I tried lead our football team, things that I learned from, basically, the coaches that I played for and my parents about leadership. And it is a little bit different, counter to maybe what society says about great leaders.
You don't want to seem like a whiner, complainer. You don't want to seem like you don't appreciate certain people, certain fans, certain coaches, criticisms. You want to be professional about it. But everybody's got their opinions, from the top to the bottom, and it's their opinion, you respect it. But nobody does our job better than we do.
At the high school level, the coaches get these kids in revenue-driven sports and take them away from baseball. There's so much pressure on these kids to even play spring football. We need to get the African-American players back in the game, which I think would make it not only a better game, but more exciting and entertaining for everyone.
Our job as friends, mentors, parents, and writing coaches is not to write anyone's college essay. That's cheating. Plus, it sends a discouraging message to the teenager that he or she can't be trusted with this important assignment. Trust the student to write the essay, but verify that it gets done. Gentle editing and proofreading are allowed.
In Italy, football is too important. There is more pressure on coaches, teams, directors. Now is not a good moment for football in Italy. The stadiums are not full. There are problems with violence; it's very difficult with the ultras. People don't go to the stadium just to enjoy 90 minutes of football. People go to the stadium to fight, to win.
Honestly, I always told my coaches my whole career - we'll practice two-minute drills in practice, like, once a week and everything - I'm just like, 'Those are my favorite time of football.' I'm out there in total control, just getting everything lined up, getting everybody on the same page, and obviously, usually it's pass after pass after pass.