Coaching Authority Quotes

The world is not kind to whistleblowers - a term of art with particular resonance in football, the most hierarchical and repressive of organized sports, a world of 'systems' and 'programs' and scripted plays, where reading a medical report requires a security clearance, and practice fields are patrolled like Guantanamo Bay.

Am I going to be good enough, because I don't have head-coaching experience outside of high school football? I've been around a lot of great head coaches in my career, but you begin to doubt. And, for me, it was the doubt of, 'Are the players going to believe me?'

There's some things assistant coaches aren't ready to do. They're not the head coach.

The fans, with all due respect, they don't affect the decisions I would make as a coach.

If I'm going to coach the players, I want some say on who they're going to be.

I never thought that shoes would be the reason that you recruit players, but it's a factor. I think we need to get the shoe companies out of the lives of the athletes. I think we need to get it back to where parents and coaches have more of a say than peripheral people, but that's easier said than done.

There is no free speech in football. Information is parsed by monosyllabic head coaches, who dictate who gets to speak to whom and when.

It's hard when your father's the coach. Sometimes you don't know where one leaves off and the other begins.

The mentor thing is overblown to me. I'm going to coach the player. I'm not going to have another player coach the player. They can be friends but when it comes to what I want him to do on the football field, that's my call, not another player's call.

I think players of the national team are not entitled to make an opinion about who is making the team and who is not. At least in my days it was like that.

If I played basketball, and you played with me, and all of a sudden you become my head coach, there isn't anything you can tell me, dude. Because your years in the league were just as long as mine. Why are you coaching me? That's one of the things that I hate.