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DON MEYER: "A coach must have an overriding purpose in life and it must be bigger than winning and losing. Develop a program so that even when you lose you win. Be respected for doing the right thing."This is critically important but is hard for young coaches to understand. When many first get into coaching, it's about winning and losing, drawing up plays and getting to talk to the media. I have been fortunate in my life to work for some special people who had already figured out the importance of have a program of purpose.
At Marshall, I worked for Judy Southard. Her program stood for education. Never mind that she won five straight Southern Conference regular season titles and that she is the winningest coach in Marshall history, she made sure her players always knew that basketball was a means for gaining an education. In Judy's office, she had a "Wall of Fame." Now obviously, to win as many championships as she had, Judy have a lot of good basketball players that passed through her program. But the only way you made the "Wall of Fame" was to graduate. When I left Judy's program, she had been coaching at Marshall for more than a decade and not one four-year senior had failed to graduate.
Joining Dale Brown's staff at LSU you instantly knew that his program was about more than winning. He would constantly remind us that basketball was simply a tool for us to use to reach out and effect as many as possible. We played games in New Orleans on an annual basis with the proceeds going to the homeless. We never made a road trip that we didn't stop at the children's ward of a hospital. A book could be written on all the causes that Coach Brown championed as a coach. Now understand Coach Brown went to two Final Fours and is the second winningest coach in the history of the Southeastern Conference but the masses that love and respect him do so for all that he did off the basketball court and that's how they viewed the Tiger program. By the way, the "retired" Coach Brown is still hard at work, working for others.
I then went to work for Sue Gunter. Sue wrote much of the history of the women's game. She was an All-American player that won a national championship. She is the winningest coach in the history of Stephen F. Austin and LSU. She was the Olympic assistant coach in 1976 and the head Olympic coach in 1980. But for Coach Gunter, the overriding purpose of our program was how you treated people. She always spoke to our staff and to our team about it. It meant so much to her that this was what her program would represent. To this day it is hard to find anyone that came into contact with Coach Gunter that doesn't hold her near to heart.
