Coaching Priorities Quotes

Duke recruits the best basketball players. They don't recruit dunkers or highlight makers. They recruit good basketball players.

They fire coaches before players.

In fact, one of the conversations I had with Jason Garrett, you know, sometimes X's and O's get so complicated, and a coach gets so into that that he forgets the most important thing is players win ballgames. Make sure that the players are properly equipped and motivated to do their jobs.

Coaches will say that it's not important for their team to run more, and they prefer to make games the right way. I want to make games only the right way and run 10 km more.

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that's for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn't play golf.

Coaches are well aware, especially at quarterback, that it's not the system but the player who comes first.

Us coaches love to have as many players available as possible.

We probably spend more time talking about individual players in our coaching sessions than anything else.

A good football coach needs a patient wife, a loyal dog and a great quarterback - but not necessarily in that order.

I used to say, as an assistant, I would go in and close my door for three hours after practice and just watch film. Now it seems like I'm in a meeting and then another and then another for three hours that have nothing to do with basketball. It's just different.

Once the World Cup preparations begin there will hardly be an opportunity to do so, since we'll have to put all our energy into the team. We coaches have a list of priorities and dealing with the media isn't in the top five.

I don't know if I'm different from everybody else, but there's really only two things to me that are really, really important - recruiting good players in the program and developing those players once they get here.

I have a lot of admiration for those who build tactical systems, but I always thought the most important thing a good coach must do is build the team around the characteristics of his players.

Obviously I get paid to score and create chances, and that's what I have to do. But just at the same time, I have to be able to be responsible defensively, good on face-offs, all the little things that coaches love and that win games.