Kelvin Sampson Quotes

My goal early in becoming a head coach so young was to find out if I could do it. I just wanted to see if I could be a good head coach and then start learning from head coaching.

You never know, I might get back into coaching someday.

I've cut my teeth as a coach with some great head coaches and some great co-workers and I have been very lucky to have learned a lot of football from all of the above.

Experience shows that those people who were selected to be a head coach in the NFL met with more success if they had had head-coaching experience.

Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.

It's better to have done because then you know what the player is going through and you understand the pressure, but then on the other hand I know a lot of people that were good players but not good coaches, and vice versa.

As a player, I can tell them they don't want to rush to become a coach, because there is a lot that goes on. This is all something new to me. You can talk to a lot of the coaches... and they can tell you. Until you go through it, then you can understand what it's all about.

My job as a coach is to make good decisions. It's not to go out there and block or tackle.

To me, personally, my development to become a head coach will be much better working for Coach Saban than necessarily going somewhere else because you learn every day that you're in there.

I'd rather be involved and somebody say, 'Hey, coach, here's what I need you to do. Go down to the D-League and work with guys'... I want the D-League coach to learn how to be a head coach.

I think there is a lot of experiences you have in coaching, and if you learn from the experiences as you go through them, whether it's as a coordinator or position coach, a quality-control coach, a head coach, whatever it might be, and you learn from those mistakes you make.

I've been following some of the coaches, trying to get a little bit more experience, because coaching is very different from being a player.

I've been the captain of a Premier League club, and I've coached some of the best players in the world.

I want to be a better head coach than my father.

I think I'm a pretty good coach, but there are a lot of good coaches, a lot of young coaches.

The burdens of being a head coach are different from being an assistant. If I had been an assistant coach for awhile, then become a head coach, I probably would have lasted longer.

I mean, Mike Riley is an idiot, but I can't do anything to change that. He wasn't supposed to be a head coach in the NFL.

I was a 52-year-old coach. But people don't realize I had 25 years as a head coach. Most coaches my age only had a few years as head coach. I had six years at Miami of Ohio, eight years at Northwestern, 11 at Notre Dame.

It's amazing how much better coaches we become when you have really good players.

Really, all coaches are accustomed to coaching... normal players.

I think it's hard for one coach to do all the formats all the time, and there are a limited number of coaches who have done the hard yards already. You can have head and assistant coaches for each squad.

The basketball experience that I have, you can use in different areas, but coaching itself, you have to go out there and learn on the fly.

I coached Brandin Knight at Pitt, who was unbelievable, and also Carl Krauser.

For me, I think you can coach guys in martial artsm, and wrestling can be one aspect of it, but I have no desire to be an NCAA wrestling coach again. It was one of the worst coaching jobs I have ever had.

I always felt like, one of the niches is if you can recruit the SEC, you can be a head coach in the SEC.