Coaching and Diplomats: Part 1

I recently read Jerry Tarkanian’s book Runnin'Rebel: Shark Tales of "Extra Benefits," Frank Sinatra, and Winning It All. In my free time I enjoy reading basketball or coaching relate books. Coach Tarkanian, former NCAA champion coach, wrote a brilliant book. After finishing the book I could not help but correlation the similarities between coaches and diplomats.

            Tark’s book is filled with recruiting stories throughout his illustrious career that spanned over three decades. The first similarity is the relationship aspect. Foreign ministers must maintain positive relationship with a wide array of countries on order for their country to succeed economically, militarily, financially, and issues of foreign aid and alliances. As a coach the importance of relationships is vital. You must have a positive relationship with your assistant coaches and staff or many of the behind the scene work; any head coach will tell you he his nothing with out the support of his staff. The next area a coach needs to build a positive relationship with is the athletes. If the coach wants the players to play hard and listen to what he says then a father/son type relationship needs to built. The next area when relationships and coaching go hand in hand is recruiting. This is the most important relationships a coach needs to build whether it is with AAU and High School coaches who can help find players for the coach or the individual recruit himself. “It doesn’t matter how good of a coach you are, if you cannot recruit players you will never be successful” At the end of the day, the livelihood hood of coaches today are rest upon relationships. A coach could fail in all the aspects I stated above but if he has a positive relationship with the athletic director and president, there is a good chance he will keep his job. To find out more about my comparisons between Coaching and Foreign Ministers tune in next week for Part 2.