My favorite football coach passed away, here are 10 things I learned from him.
1. Swing your sward
The title of his book, and the way he lived his life. You need to make your move, be aggressive, and go after it. 2. Be the best at your job
Stop worrying about everyone else. If you are the best at your job, and the person next to you is the same, the team wins. 3. Win one game a week
Can't win the game from last week, can't win the game next week. Live in the present, focus on what is right in front of you. 4. Be the most excited to play.
Funny how it works. If you are the most excited to play, to work, to parent, to read, to exercise, to cook. Whatever it is. If you are the most excited it raises your performance and the performance of those around you. 5. Be yourself x10
Be yourself. Do it your way. Don't hold back. No filter. If it doesn't make other happy, who cares, it made you happy. 6. First principals thinking
The old rule in football was run the ball. Or at least run half the time and pass half the time.
Leach looked at it differently and said, no, the idea is to get the player the ball in space so they can take it up field. It doesn't matter how you get them the ball. And so he tossed it around more than anyone in the history of the game.
And it worked. Because he focused on the end goal and was open to new ideas on how to get there.
7. It’s all interrelated
Watch any Leach press conference, and he will answer football questions with a story about fishing. He'll answer recruiting questions with an story about weddings. He was all over the map, but it was all into related. His players all have class except a tail over and over again. I think those stories worked. 8. Keep it simple
In an era of football with playlists as long as your arm, Leach went to battle with a play sheet the size of a cocktail napkin. Just a handful of concepts, frameworks, keep it simple, run it to perfection. That's what wins. 9. Embrace a better way
Coach was one of the first to go away from a physical playbook and move it to video. Most of his players were visual learners, so he figured I might as well show them visually how the thing works. Watch the play in action. Point out the concepts for each player and what they were in charge of.10. The world has enough scoreboard watchers
Focus on doing the thing without the interference and influence of what others will think, how they will view it, how it adds up. Those are questions better left for others. Do the thing.
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