What are coaches allowed to say to players?

I will pay good money if Az and sp will continue responding to each other — and no one else — for an indefinite amount of time.

 

I think there are plenty of workplaces where swearing is absolutely a part of the environment. Newsrooms, obviously, although less so than before, but I think one of the side effects of the financial crisis has been to allow a glimpse of the "Wall Street culture," which likewise features language that you certainly wouldn't use in front of your mother.

And of course, a lot of manual-labor type jobs are that way.

Obviously, there are times when you can't do that kind of thing. In front of the boss, etc. But you could easily argue that those types of coaches don't typically swear in press conferences, are able to moderate their language when necessary in dealing with a ref, etc.

 

As long as I get a cut of it.

 

I'd just like to hear an example of a current coach, who is successful, who does it in a way that people think is acceptable, no swearing, no screaming, just teaching...

John Wooden has been retired for a few (38) years. Dean Smith has been retired for a few (16) as well.

Who are the most successful coaches in college basketball? Coach K, Boeheim, Williams, Self, Donovan, Calipari, Pitino, Izzo... They all yell, scream and swear like lunatics, and I'm guessing all of them say things to their players that most professors could not say to their students...

 

The good coaches know when it's time to swear a blue streak, and when it's time to back off. Presumably, they've also established a level of trust and respect with players so that they know when the coach is cussing them out, there's a good reason for it.

Sometimes I wonder if there are college coaches (and some high school, given the recruiting that goes on there) that overcompensate on the bastard side of their personalities because of their resentment for having to blow smoke up every recruit's ass before they get to campus.

 

Fun to see someone trumpet the piousness of John Wooden, then also rip on a "fiction" that others "cling to."

 

One of the players who I covered in college who is a pretty big NBA star now once told me, "Yeah, he kissed my ass for the year he was recruiting me and then he kicked my ass for four years after I got there."

 

I have no problem with swearing, some kids respond to being "motherfucked". I have no problem with a coach grabbing a jersey or even a very rare light smack on the back of the head if a kid has his dobber down and is not listening (though I understand this stuff will not be tolerated for long). What I have a problem with is the homophobic stuff and I think that there are a bunch of coaching stars that would be in all kinds of trouble if the public heard how they drop these words. My guess is that there are plenty of AD's that are having conversations with coaches asking them to be careful about throwing around these terms.

 

It's also a given that any school that isn't desperate for coverage will close all of its practices.

 

The basic rule is what would a parent get away with. No physical abuse, whether behind closed doors or not. Curses should be kept to adjectives and not nouns.

 

I'm wondering if Stevens and Smart curse?

Cursing and berating is an old school way of doing things, but it can work.

Look at the Lombardi/Kramer dynamic. Kramer gives an interview, and I hope I can find it, where Lombardi has pretty much broken Kramer emotionally, then the great coach starts the positive reinforcement at just the right moment. And it sort of fell into place after that.

 

Was Wooden a screamer? A shover? A shouter of obscenities?

I thought his impieties ran only to the boosters' checkbooks and cash passed under the table.