THE GREAT COACH

THE GREAT, MENTOR ,CREDIBLE, TRUSTWORTHY COACH

Football Coach Blanton Collier was a Great, Mentor, Credible, Trustworthy Coach.

He recruited Football Student-Athletes, men of character and stressed academics at the University of Kentucky.

How is it that he continues to have the best Kentucky football record against Tennessee of all coaches including Bear Bryant?

How was it that Coach Collier had so many assistant who were disciples and all star, successful coaches?

How was it then that Coach Collier was removed as head coach after the 1961 season? That was a very perplexing question.

People Magazine February 04, 1974 “University of Kentucky football fans were unhappy with Coach Blanton Collier in 1959, and they wrote a lot of letters complaining and asking that he and his incompetent aides be gone. The staff was gone by 1961.”

“Of the eight coaches, exactly eight went on to success in pro football, five of them becoming NFL head coaches. Ther were Ed Rutledge, an NFL scout; Howie Schnellenberger, head coach at Baltimore; Ermal Allen, assistant coach at Dallas; Collier, who succeeded Paul Brown at Cleveland and won an NFL championship; Don Shula, of whom you may have heard; John North, head coach of New Orleans; Bob Cummings, his assistant; and Bill Arnsparger, who is taking over the New York Giants. Another Collier assistant, Chuck Knox, was on the staff in 1961 but not in 1959. He was just named Coach of the Year following his first season with the Los Angeles Rams. Fired anybody else lately, Kentucky?”

Coach Bear Bryant claimed that he preferred the “lesser” player as compared to the student athlete that his perennial rival Coach Bobby Dodd of Georgia Tech preferred.
Coaches Bryant and Dodd had that discussion. Bryant, who described himself as a field coach rather than an x and o coach, believed he was more successful motivating the “lesser” player to win football games. The lesser player feared returning to the cotton fields in the early days of Bryant’s career and would do anything to stay and play football.

In Georgia Tech Sports, October 22, 2004 article by Bill Curry -
“We were coached by our own living legend, “The Gray Fox”, Bobby Dodd. He and Coach Bryant were longtime friends, and the Alabama coach was fond of saying, ‘When I look across the field on game day I would rather see anybody other than that damn Dodd. He can beat you with his brain.”

“Coach Dodd was a General Bob Neyland disciple and understood the wisdom of ball security, field position, and error-free football better than anyone else in his era. He also made public reference to the fact that he wanted his boys to have fun playing football and refused to allow us to scrimmage during the season. Rival coaches found this appalling and said so. In that era football was supposed to be a daily gutcheck, not fun.”

On the other hand, the daily gutcheck was playing and practicing out of fear. Not playing for the love of the game. Playing out of Fear is playing in response to threats and dangers. Fear is connected to pain. Fear is a survival mechanism. Fear results because of a specific, strong, negative stimulus from interaction with their coaches and their sports participation environment. Fear is the key to abusive coaches:

Propaganda. Abusive Coaches threaten:

Fear of returning to poverty
Fear of the Coach
Fear of God,
Fear of being called a “quitter”
Fear of disappointing father, family, and community,
Fear disappointing the high school coach and school,
Fear of becoming shunned and ostracized in hometown
Fear of the unknown.

By Mark Story / Herald-Leader Sports Columnist, Nov 23, 2008

“I came to work for the Lexington newspaper in 1990. In that time, I’ve never seen a UK win against UT on a football field. It’s now 23 games since anyone has seen Kentucky beat Tennessee at football. Yet for a stretch of the 1950s, Adolph Rupp’s basketball Cats went a tidy 15-0 against the Orange……

During the same period, UK football — with Blanton Collier coaching Kentucky for all but one of its victories — went 5-2-1 against the Vols. “It was amazing,” says Kay Collier-McLaughlin, the middle of Blanton and Mary Forman Collier’s three daughters. “Beating Tennessee meant so much to Kentuckians. “The energy before those games and at those games and after those games, it was incredible.” Commercial flights to Mars seem more likely than another prolonged period of Kentucky football dominance over the Rocky Toppers……

So I asked Collier-McLaughlin, who wrote a biography of her father, Football’s Gentle Giant: The Blanton Collier Story, what she remembered from her Dad’s days as a Big Orange killer. “The Beer Barrel exchange used to be an amazing thing,” she said of the symbol that used to go annually to the UK-UT winner. “After we’d won several years in a row, Tennessee got frustrated and would try to steal it.

“So, the week of the game, the job of the UK freshmen was to guard the Beer Barrel.” To put in perspective how unique in Kentucky football history was Blanton Collier’s hold over Tennessee, consider:

■ In his tenure at Kentucky, Bear Bryant went 1-5-2 against Tennessee. Collier, Bryant’s successor, went 5-2-1.
■ Since UK axed Collier after the 1961 season, Kentucky has only beaten Tennessee in football six times.

After Lexington, Collier went on to coach the Cleveland Browns to the 1964 NFL championship. Browns fans remember Collier’s tenure as a golden age of Browns football.

He remains the last head football coach at Kentucky to leave the school with a winning record (41-36-3). Collier died in 1983. Those who believe in karma see UK’s continuing futility against Tennessee as payback for dismissing the only coach in modern times who could consistently beat the hated Volunteers. “People have said that to me over and over and over again,” says Collier-McLaughlin.

The great all-pro running back Jimmy Brown of the Cleveland Browns said of Coach Blanton Collier, ” I was prepared for his football genius……but I wasn’t prepared for his humanity”.

A Great Coach must be a Credible Mentor Coach as well as knowing the sport he or she coaches. Getting athletes to play for a coach involves the Trust factor. Players Trust a Great Mentor Coach.

Athletes rely on Coaches to frame their game play, so that the athletes will not suffer undue injury and harm. They count on the Coach to teach them the right way to perform and correct techniques during the game and practice and the correct way to manage their conduct and behavior. The Great Coach prepares the athletes for pressures from inside and outside the program on the more advanced school level.

Coaches are in special professional positions and in a category of their own. They are in positions of power over young and adult, vulnerable players. They influence the players everywhere, both in and out of the playing environment.

Coaches must win games while developing athletes’ characters. After a period of time, Coaches who do not succeed at both, are not tolerated. Sometimes in desperation to succeed they commit crimes against players, the school and society. These Coach dementors who maltreat the Athletes are the exception, not the rule. There are many Great Coaches in the United States, who do not get the credit they deserve.

Coach dementors are the result sometimes of pressure to win. Few parent coaches would recommend their own children to coaches who employ emotional and physical punishment as a means to winning.

Lombardi said “winning isn’t everything … its the only thing”. Few would accept coach dementors as the means to that end. Winning-at-all-costs is the modus operandi of some Coaches and schools. Many of their players are abused. Some Schools turn a blind eye to abusive Coaches. Winning is not the “only thing” when players are abused.

The purpose of sports should be to assist the growth of athletes, expand their knowledge and develop their potential. Sports is not about just producing athletes but building young men and women into our leaders of tomorrow. Unethical, dishonest, immoral behavior should not be tolerated for the sake of winning sports competitions. The dictum is often misrepresented.

Sport builds good character……only when good characters are coaching the sport.
Coaches can dramatically influence the lives of athletes. The Coach must be a mentor, leader and role model. Great Coaches teach their athletes the values of life and living. A Great Coach can mentor a player into a star, role model and a hero for many generations.

A mentor is a more experienced person who is an expert in the sport. The Coach will become a trusted friend, counselor, and teacher of the less experienced athlete. Great Coaches prepare a players athletic career, academics, education and employment opportunity. The Coach is a senior who is wise, influential, trusted and the players’ supporter.

The Mentor Coach is a teacher, guide, counselor, sponsor, advisor, and role model. The player learns athletic skills and knowledge about the game. The Coach develops a lasting open relationship with the player by listening to and being attentive to the players’ concerns and needs.

The Coach motivates the player with encouragement and support. Frequent positive feedback during practice and games builds the players’ self-esteem and boosts his or her morale.

A sense of accomplishment results. Athletes who are always in the dog house with the Coach will not be successful. Positive, constructive feedback, will reinforce behavior and result in the growth of the player and the team.

If you look and concentrate, then you will see. Blanton Collier said if you don’t know where you are going you will never get there. As a UK quarterback, we had a drill in which we practiced our eye movements as part of the timing of the “West Coast Offense” which Coach Collier has been credited.

Athletes goals should be within reach, foreseeable and attainable. The Coach Mentor will show the player where he or she is going.

As a role model, the Coach Mentor is a living example of the conduct and athletic knowledge, as demonstrated. The Coach Mentor for the Athlete is supportive, encouraging and patient. The Great Coach is respected by the players and his coaching peers.

A Coach Mentor is genuinely interested in the players, has the best interest of the player at heart and has good people skills with players, colleagues and even the media. As an effective teacher and motivator the Great Coach will inspire the players to greatness.

The core of coaching is trust. Trust is achieved from the Coaches’ honesty, integrity, knowledge of the game, guidance, inspiration and motivation. Nothing can be accomplished without trust. Lack of trust breeds fear, uncertainty and doubt. Relationships and teams are torn apart from lack of trust. The more the trust the more the victories.

Athletes will run through the proverbial brick wall when they trust their Coach Mentor. When Coaches talk about toughening-up their team and athletes, they must realize that trust by players of the Coach is as tough as it gets and the result of earned concern for the Athletes, not abuse. Coach Mentors should be the schools’ Coach search objective. Players, parents and society should beware the Coach Dementor and insist on better.

As the result of an ideal Coach Mentor, the player will take pride in his team and his Coaches. The Athlete will understand his mission and role as a player and become a better team player and a better role model and mentor in society. Victories will be certain.

Another Great Mentor Coach, Bill Arnsparger, former assistant to Collier at UK, in his book Arnsparger’s Coaching Defensive Football said that Coach Blanton Collier taught him a famous, great quote

” you can accomplish a lot of things if you don’t care who gets the credit”.