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| Yes | 74% | 153 votes | Total: 208 votes | |
| No | 26% | 55 votes |
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Add to FavoritesA frequent subject of debate in the sports world is how much responsibility a coach should bear when his or her team loses. There's no denying that the coach is usually the scapegoat when a team under-performs. When someone loses their job, the coach is typically the first to go.
But is this justified? Is it the coach's fault if his team doesn't hustle or play as a team or listen to his advice? Is it fair to blame the coach for the team's shortcomings?
I'd say, in most cases, it is. To draw an analogy, the coach is like a general drawing up plans and sending his troops into battle. A team without a plan or strategy is likely doomed to fail. The coach is the Commander in Chief of the squad. It's his job to know more about the enemy (other team), strategize, develop a plan, and see to it that each and every one of his foot soldiers understands the plan and knows how to execute it.
As well, if a team is losing, it's the responsibility of the coach to adjust the game plan and develop a new one. If a player is not performing up to his or her abilities, it is the coach's job to get that player back on track. Great coaches know how to do this. Decent coaches will have more difficulty in this area. A coach must also maintain control over his team. Morale is a huge part of success in sports. If a team loses morale, they will likely lose games. The coach needs to know how to keep morale up, even when the team is losing.
Of course, all this is true for some sports more than other. Football, for example, requires a great deal more logistical organization than, say, baseball or soccer. This is not meant to diminish the job of the baseball manager, especially given the complexities inherent in baseball, but rather illustrate that some sports could barely function without a leader calling plays and executing strategies.
So to place at least some responsibility on the coach seems to make sense to me. Granted, the quality of their players may be sub par. But then the coach must adjust the game plan, and figure out how to get the most out of sub par players. Joe Girardi proved this two years ago when he took a team of rookies with a collective payroll smaller than some individual players, and almost coached them into the playoffs. (The irony, of course, is that he lost his job that year. But that was for personal issues with the team's owner.) Coaches can make or break teams, so it's fair that they take responsibility for how their team performs.
Learn more about this author, Sean Curtis.
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No
If you loose a game, If it doesn't hurt, there's something wrong. Especially a football game. That goes for the team and the coach. All year, they work as hard as they can, and EVERY team works too hard to loose, they deserve to win. But things that should happen don't always go accordingly. Teams loose.
All losses are taken hardly because you got beat. The other coach was superior in the game. The coaches work as hard as they can to show kids to become the best athletes they can possibly be, but it depends on the effort and intensity of the players.
Wins and looses are exactly how they make you feel. And no one has any right to comment on that. Coaches deserve respect for all the effort they give, for all the film they watch, all the plays they make, and all the time they give.
I had a coach that had a rough life in general. His first wife died, and kept him from becoming a professional baseball player, and his second wife obviously didn't know it wasn't okay to sleep with the neighbors; but I'll spare you his life story. I was never the best player, and the coach never really payed attention to me especially; But he taught me something, he taught us all something; how to overcome adversity.
Reading the title of this article, honestly, made me a little pissed. Every day I wanted to quit, every single day. It was so hard. But then he would tell me how proud he was of us, and that kept me going. NO TEAM deserves a loss. I know this because my league championship for football was tonight, and we lost by a bad call by the ref. We didn't get that last touchdown in a distance I can measure with my right hand. My team just stood there, watching the red and black jump up and down and yell. They won. We lost. Tonight they celebrated in our house.
I'm probably never going to touch a football for the rest of my life, and thats how I had to end it. The 5 months of my life, were I busted myself every single day, ended up like this. We were all quiet. In the huddle at the end zone, the coach let us know how proud he was of us. You will never have any idea what that meant to me. YOU WILL NEVER HAVE ANY IDEA.
There are people who coach football, and then there are football coaches. Rarely, will you get a coach that cares, and is proud of everything you do. I got the change to meet one in my life. And if I ever hear criticism from anyone for what our coach did, and what he gave, I'm going to hit them right in the mouth.
Learn more about this author, Brandon Wofford.
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