Errors in managing athletic (and other) performances

1

The Coach

The man poked his head in and looked around the door. He had knocked but the person inside the office had not answered.

“What do you want?” said the annoyed voice of the person inside the office.

That voice came from a man who was sitting at his desk going over some papers. What he said was a question but the way he said it was a demand.

He was Coach McCloskey and he was a busy man, a successful man, a man who did not suffer fools lightly. Or much of anybody else for that matter.

The office Coach McCloskey sat in was small by top 1A standards. It was big enough for what needed to be done in it and and big enough to house the successful, busy, no-suffering fools coach that worked in it. But it wasn't anything spectacular, anything that befitted a man of Coach McCloskey's caliber compared to other schools.

The décor was what might be called Bauhaus institutional. Left to itself without any kind of attention paid to it, it would have easily decayed into old military drab chic. As it was, the cinder block walls were painted and clean, though the whiteness of it could be overpowering at times especially when the late afternoon sun shone into the room from the large picture window with the nice campus view. But the coach rarely noticed it. If he did, he'd just close the shades.

There was nothing much on those front and side walls, a picture here and there and some scattered paintings. These were tasteful and even interesting but a little on the sparse side as a percentage of the total square footage.

Around the desk where the coach sat, though, it was a different matter. There were pictures of family with the coach in them and pictures of vacations to exotic locations, again with the coach in them. And there were pictures of players including some signed with best wishes from some of them decked out in the jerseys of professional football teams.

These filled the walls, back of the desk and on either side for a few feet.

The desk was executive oak as well as the credenza and they both met on one side in a computer niche that contained one of those revered devices with two larges screens.

There were other touches added here and there—nothing overpowering—that showed someone with some decorative sense had had a say in what went into that around desk space.

In fact that was true. Someone with some decorative sense did have a say. It was the third Mrs. Coach McCloskey.

All in all it was cozy in that part of the office. The rest of it was just okay, nothing much to brag about. But it was the way the coach liked it. He bragged about his success and about his teams and about all the awards they had won together. He didn't need to brag in his office space.

And besides, too Wall Street a space would just get in the way. He couldn't think of any advantage it gave him meeting with prospective players in such an executive suite with expensive furnishings (even though the school would have, at least at one point, put it together for him) that a walk past the trophy case wouldn't do better. He was a coach and that other stuff seemed kind of vanity stoking—a sign of weakness to him. Besides, he'd rather have the difference show up in his paycheck, which it long since had.

“You are Coach McCloskey, right?” said the man still looking in.

“Yes,” said the coach who had set down his papers and was staring hostilely at the man.

“And?”

“And I'm supposed to see you.”

The man didn't wait for the coach to tell him to come in. He pushed through the door, crossed to one of the chairs sitting in front of the desk and sat down.

It happened so fast and so surprised the coach, who had never had his office invaded like this before, that he didn't have a chance to stop him.

No one ever did this kind of thing to Coach McCloskey.

“Wo, wo, wait!” said the coach. “Who said you could just come in here like this?”

“Yes,” said the visitor with a hint of apology in his voice, “I know this is somewhat of a surprise but I thought we ought to just get on with things. So I came over.”

“Look, whoever you are, I don't know you and I don't know what business you think you might have here but no one just barges into my office like this!

“How'd you get past my secretary?”

“Well,” said the man, “there was no one at the desk to announce me and what I have is urgent so I just took the liberty of inviting myself in.”

McCloskey leaned over to a speaker near his phone and pushed the button.

“Karen!” he said. “Karen! KAREN!”

No one answered.

“Where is that woman!” said the coach.

The coach started to get up but then looked down at his watch.

He clicked his tongue.

“Lunch!” he said as if that explained something.

He looked back at the man with a very hard look on his face as he sat back down.

“Well, you've got about ten seconds to give me a good reason for this,” he said, “or I'm just liable to bodily chuck your carcass back out of this office.”

If you looked at Coach McCloskey, examined him from head to foot, you'd see that he was mostly on the verge of going to seed. There were some soft lumps where muscle had likely once been. But there was still enough of the old athlete in there, in a fair assessment of the total man, notwithstanding the lumps, that it looked as if he could go a long way toward making good on that promise.

He tapped the desk top waiting impatiently for a good answer.

“My name is Sawyer Collins. You can call me Sawyer.

“At your service.”

Collins smiled and leaned forward with his hand extended across half the desk. It was within reaching distance of the coach but the coach did not reach for it. He did not even lean forward to attempt to reach for it. What he did do was to sit back in his high backed executive chair and get a very impressive scowl on his face.

“Okay, Mr. Sawyer Collins. I'm a very busy man and you just come in here and plop down on my chair right there without so much as a by-your-leave and I'm supposed to get some kind of thrill up my leg for that or some inkling of who you are and what this is about from your name?

“You haven't answered my question and your ten seconds are over.”

The coach started to get up.

“Well, okay,” said Collins with a smile. “I just hadn't gotten to that part yet. Just wanted to get the preliminaries out of the way first.

“I'm here because of that little incident that happened in the game this past Saturday.”

“What little incident?” said the coach still on his way up.

Collins raised his hand flattened out, extended it so that it was perpendicular to the floor and made a kind of jerked, waving motion with it, as if slapping the air.

To some neutral observer, on seeing that hand movement, it would have been extremely ambiguous at best and would most likely have conveyed no meaning whatsoever to him, but the coach, the very successful coach, the busy coach, the coach who did not suffer fools lightly, seemed to get meaning from it. What was more, though that motion seemed to be neutral in every way and couldn't have objectively been construed as any kind of a hostile shot at him, for whatever reason, with the coach at that moment, it looked like it hit some kind of a bullseye.

The coach's eyes went wide, his face became distorted—screwed up, was probably more accurate—as he slowly sat back down, all the while exhaling a long, used up breath of air. When he had settled back into the chair, he seemed to recover himself somewhat. He rolled his eyes and threw his hands up.

“That was just a misunderstanding,” he said. “What we had was simply a failure to communicate, that's all!”

“You slapped Williams.”

“Slapped? No, not slapped. It was more like a love tap! I love these players; they know I do. Sometimes I just give them a little love tap! That's all there was to that! Maybe there was some tough love wound up in it a little bit—these guys sometimes make the stupidest mistakes, and this one was a big one—cost us the game—but it's all about the love in the end.”

“It didn't look like one tap to me, coach. It was a couple of openhanded, heavy slaps that you swung out to make, right and left.

“It looked more like a one-two punch.”

“Nah, it was nothing like that!” said the coach leaning forward and quickly wiping the words Collins had just spoken from the air they had been spilled out into with his hand. “It was just a tap. He had his helmet on and I just wanted to put a punctuation mark on what I had told him. That's all!”

“You looked quite upset. Your face was red and it looked to me like the veins were sticking out on your neck—”

“No, no! That wasn't it at all! I told him what I told him. That's it.

“Maybe there was some heat in it somewhere but that was to emphasize my points. And then I just punctuated it with a little love tap.

“He had his helmet on anyway; how could I hurt him! Maybe jiggle his brains a little bit and put them back where they should have been in the first place. But nothing serious.

“The fact is that it hurt me more than it hurt him!

“But it was love. It was all about the love.”

“I don't know about that,” said Collins. “It looked pretty hard to me when I was shown the film. The president and the chancellor said it was lucky the incident wasn't caught on the network's cameras—doubly lucky because, with the stadiums as empty as they are, the camera people are looking for just about anything they can find in the downtime to make the game more interesting.

“And Covid-19 meant that the network didn't have as many people roving the sidelines as they normally do, which was a good thing. And they didn't have the numbers of people and spotters they normally do in the booth for the same reason. It looks like nobody in the booth saw it, either.

“The stands were quite empty, too, mostly. But not a peep from anywhere about it—at least as far as we know at this moment.

“You can thank Covid-19 for that.”

Collins chuckled at this thinking it was funny for some reason but the coach just scowled deeper furrows into his face.

Seeing that the humor of it did not find any correspondence in the coach, Collins cleared his throat and went on.

“They haven't talked to William's parents yet. They think they might have been at the game but they're trying to get a hold of them now to see if they can smooth things over with them—if that turns out to be necessary.

“But they did get the whole thing on film from the athletic department cameras. That was the film I saw.”

“Where'd they get them from?”

“They got them from Jack Daws.”

The coach grimaced. Jack Daws was the interim AD and he just rolled over every time the chancellor breathed. He could expect no support from that direction, for one, because Daws had no spine. For two, he was a fawning little puppy who was only interested in what advanced him and his interests.

He clucked his tongue and resumed his defense.

“It was just a misunderstanding,” he said leaning back in his chair and raising his eyes to the ceiling. What was up there that he might look at or that would care to listen to him was not apparent. But there must have been something there that needed convincing because he now made his case in that direction.

“I talked to Chet after the game. I told him, quote 'I love you, man' and he said, quote 'I love you, too, coach' and it was all fine. I think maybe I'd of rather he'd given me an 'I love you, man' back than what I got but it was all fine. Things are back the way they should be, the way they were before.

“It's all fine.”

The coach waved his hand to emphasize that point and looked back down from the ceiling at Collins.

Evidently, whatever was up in the ceiling must have taken his point. He seemed more confident at that moment.

“Well,” said Collins, “the president and the chancellor think there's a problem. They think it's fortunate that it hasn't gone public but who knows, maybe it still will. What with all this sensitivity to how people are treated these days and all the hashtags and people who aren't liked very well getting taken down for—what is it? Issues of insensitivity?—they thought that there needed to be an intervention of some kind to pinch this thing off quickly.

“Are you liked very well coach?”

Collins said this and it sounded impertinent to the coach but his tone was really one of helpfulness.

The coach responded to this by trying to get something out. But it came out as a kind of rumbled nonsense.

“But, anyway, that's why I'm here,” said Collins, ignoring the coach. “They've given you a second chance. And I'm here to help you take advantage of it.”

The phrase “second chance” was a shock to the coach. He had never heard anything about this. Why he, a successful and busy man, a man who didn't suffer fools lightly, would need to be given a second chance for anything was beyond him. And to have it communicated to him by this, this, whatever he was was just beyond belief.

He was at a loss for words over this and over everything else that had happened since that man had come in. But he succeeded, after a few aborted attempts, in getting a few out anyway.

“Why didn't they call me to tell me this?”

“Well, they both remember some, um, discussions, shall we say, that they have had with you in the recent past. They don't feel like you were as supportive of their position as they would have liked and that it wouldn't be particularly useful to attempt anything like that now not in the mood they're both in. They feel like any run-in with you will just end up provoking them and then they'll just get upset and they'd do something in the heat of the moment they couldn't back down from and it would be a mess they don't need.

“You know the drill.”

The coach didn't really know what drill Collins was talking about but there was something in him somewhere that thought it might be a good idea for him to maybe figure it out.

“It's the middle of the season,” continued Collins, “and they think it wouldn't be in the best interests of the team for anything to be done that was rash what with the crazy, messed up season, the Covid stuff, and all the rest. They don't want the team demoralized by any of it.

“You know.

“So they just sent me over and said that you should clear your schedule to meet with me. I came right over.”

“That's it?”

“That's it,” said Collins with a smile.

There had been a number of those smiles since that man had come in and the coach was thinking that he didn't particularly like that particular smile or any of the ones that had preceded it. He would have thrown him out of the office just for that smile alone on any other day but he felt he was caught at the moment and couldn't think of a way out of it right then.

“I can show you the letter authorizing me, if you'd like,” said Collins, helpfully.

He reach into his suit pocket, pulled a folded sheet of paper out and handed it across the desk.

McClosky grabbed it, unfolded it, and looked at it.

“You'll recognize the signatures, I'm sure.”

The coach did.

He gave the paper back.

“So you're supposed to help me?” he said, rallying at this for some reason.

Collins nodded.

“With what?”

“Seeing more clearly your relationship with your players and staff and how that can affect the team and your success, fitting means to ends better. Things like that.”

“And what, may I ask, gives you the credentials to help me out—assuming that I need help which I do not accept for one minute, but just for argument's sake?” said the coach trying hard not to notice another big, raging smile staring him right in his face.

“Well, I—”

“You ever coached sports before?”

“No, I—”

“Pop Warner?”

“No.”

“Junior high?”

“No.”

“High school?”

“No.”

“Junior college?”

“Look, coach, I—”

“Any college?

“I'm here to—”

“Ever played any sports?”

“With my kids. That's about it.”

“So the answer is 'no.' You have no coaching experience whatsoever—didn't even play—and yet you are sitting here with a coach, who has one of the best won/loss records in college football, and you're going to help me with player relationships and success?”

“That's right. Sent by the president and the chancellor to do just that.”

The coach didn't hear it come from Collin's mouth but he felt the words in the air:

Second chance.

It was because of the shock he still had from that phrase that he didn't get up and escort that man out of his office at that very moment.

But underneath that shock a great deal of livid was building.

“If you need a label to put on who I am, let's just say that, for our purposes here, I'm an executive coach—”

“You mean,” said the coach throwing his hands up in the air in disgust and looking up again at whatever it was in the ceiling that had given him a decent hearing the first time, “that you're one of those—what's the name?—life coaches?—that you see advertised around. The ones who're supposed to help you smooth out your life?”

The coach wiggled his fingers in the air.

“Life is too hard! Help me! Help me!” he said.

“How do you study for that?” said the coach now down again looking straight at Collins.

There was a sneer on his face overlying the continued and deepening scowl. “Is there a 'life coach' degree? Or is there a college for it like for massage therapy and cosmetology.

“Or is it that if you scratch a life coach you'll find a waiter underneath looking for a better way to make a living.”

He threw his hands into the air again.

“Spare me!”

This was said with an explosion of disgust from the coach's mouth and, though it exploded in the direction of the ceiling—he had looked up again to find whatever he could find up there—its force was directed at Collins.

“That's a life coach and about everybody and his mother offers those services,” said Collins. “Not very useful at all I grant you.

“I'm talking about an executive coach but if I were pressed to tell what it is I actually do, I'd have to say that I help people see reality. I help them see what is before their faces that they should be seeing but because of any number of things that get in the way, they can't see or won't see.”

“For business?” said the coach.

“Business, yes, but I deal with anyone in any institution who needs to make important decisions. I help them see what they should be seeing but don't.”

Collins smiled and Coach McCloskey wanted to punch him.

No love tap.

The coach didn't know what to think of this other than that he had an urge to get pugilistic with the man.

“You want to help me see what's in front of my face, do you? The problem with that is that I win. There's no problem with me or with my program. We win; end of story.

“That alone would speak for itself with any other college president and chancellor.”

“That does speak, yes,” said Collins, “But what it actually says might be something different.”

“What different? Winning is winning. It's the Holy Grail of sports and business, too, I might add. If you're a winner that is success. If you're a loser that isn't. It's failure.

“I win.”

Collins sat forward a little in his seat.

“There's an old story, coach,” he said, now sounding didactic, “about a scientist who was running an experiments on flies.

“One day he caught one that had been flying around his lab and put it in a beaker. He sealed that beaker up with a stopper.

“He waited a moment, then he quickly pulled out the stopper, so that the neck of the beaker was now open, and yelled, 'Fly!'

“The fly flew away.

“He caught that same fly again, put it in the same beaker, stopped it up, then quickly unstopped it and yelled, 'Fly!'

“And the fly flew away.

“He caught the fly again, but this time, he pulled the wings off before he put it back in the beaker. He then stopped it up, quickly unstopped it and yelled, 'Fly!'

“This time, the fly didn't fly away.

“He stopped it again, unstopped it and yelled, 'Fly!' but the fly still didn't fly away.

“The scientist then put away the equipment, went over to his notes and wrote: 'When you pull the wings off a fly, it becomes deaf.'”