How to you feel about keeping players happy or players needing to like the coach?
Are competitor’s born or can this be developed within them?
John Wooden: I think it can be developed to a great extent. In my pyramid of success, I have competitive greatness as the very top. You’re not going to be a great competitor unless you’re prepared. You’re not going to be prepared it you don’t work hard and aren’t enthusiastic about what you’re doing. You’re not going to be prepared unless you can function quickly. You’re not going to be prepared unless you are considerate of others. You’re not going to be prepared unless you’re in proper condition. You’re not going to have poise unless you have these other things. So all of these things, I think, work up to making you a competitor.
Ara Parseghian: I think you have to set a stage and a climate for it...I learned two things from Paul Brown. He was a great organizer. He didn’t overwork his teams, and he brought them to peak at the right time. You never felt like you were overworked. You always felt like you were underworked, and you always felt like you were very well prepared.
Anson Dorrance: In our experience at UNC, over the course of their four years, people who haven’t been outwardly competitive, by the end of their four years, become so.
Joe Gibbs: You can say things to great competitors and you can motivate them.
Chuck Noll: I think you can’t survive in the game over a period of time if you’re not a competitor. If you don’t have — I’m talking about a real serious competitor, you’re not going to survive.
Mike Krzyzewski: It’s a team process in building a competitor. Certainly a coach — and I find at Duke one of my primary jobs — is to make our kids tougher...There are certain things I have to do to make sure that our kids get tougher. A kid is not going to become really tough unless he has some competitiveness and some toughness in him already.
