For Management Ideas, Look to the… Sidelines?

Author: Ric Cengeri

For those who follow football, we’re getting to the time of year when our concentration turns to getting to the Super Bowl, the national championship or your state’s high school championship. And for our Canadian readers, the Grey Cup!

Well the coaches who guide your favorite teams, in order to be successful, must be excellent managers. And their management styles come in all forms. Maybe, just maybe we can learn something from them.

Let’s start with the recently departed John Gagliardi, who retired in 2012 after coaching for 64 seasons, 60 of them at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He led the Johnnies to four national championships and was the first active coach elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

His secret? In a profile by the Associated Press, it noted that the winningest coach in college football history had a laid-back approach. “His policy was not to cut any players from the roster and not to hold practices longer than 90 minutes. Gagliardi said in a 2003 interview, ‘We get the right guys. The ones that don’t need any rules. We just hope they can play football.'”

Taking that approach a little further was Ronald Ortmayer, who coached for 43 seasons, 41 of them at the University of La Verne in California. According to a New York Times profile in 1987, he had no coaches’ meetings, no playbook and no game planes, and practice was optional. His emphasis was on fun, but he was still able to craft a 182-193-8 record and was named to the NAIA Hall of Fame.

“Ortmayer set aside one practice every year to have watermelon races. After the races, it’s chow time.” Also worth noting, the famous coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, allowed his linemen to play quarterback and running back each Friday in preparation for their games in a successful effort to lighten the mood.

These methods might not work for everyone, but keep them in mind if you need to find a new way to reach your team.