Hey Coach! You're Out!

The most influential and important person on any sports team is the head coach. The coach is the one responsible for motivating the team and setting them on the track to success. Every coach in any sport has a system and it is their responsibility to make sure that the players buy into the system. If a team constantly is changing their head coach it leaves no time for the players to buy into the system. The result is chaos and chaos leads to losing.

There is a very disturbing trend that is sweeping across both professional and Collegiate sports alike. That trend is the firing of head coaches during the middle of the season. There are a few reasons that I have a problem with this. First off, at the beginning of the season ownership is making a commitment to its players that there will be order in the locker room. Players are completely habitual. They prefer to stay in the same hotels everywhere they travel, they room with the same person on every road trip, and most even eat the same pre-game meal before every game. By firing the coach you are disrupting the order in the locker room. Players expect to see the same coach at prectice everyday and getting rid of a coach half way through the season can be problamatic.

Next, by firing the head coach half way through the season you begin to place doubt in the player's minds. They begin to ask themselves well if he can go I might be next. Professional athletes are already under an enormous amount of stress to preform at a top level and putting doubt in their minds to whether or not they will be on the team the next day can hinder their performance.

Last, firing head coaches mid-season on he college level is completely unacceptable. In college the prioryity for a program is to develop their athletes into better men. Winning should come second. By firing a head coach you are bringing in a totally different philosophy, and this can hurt a player's development as a human being.