Screaming Shame: Why old-school coaches who yell and berate are growing extinct, for good reason.

 NOTE: The next couple Behind the Clipboards are going to vary from the usual Q&A format because I feel the topic of coaching styles and methods deserves some in-depth examination after a few recent events triggered my interest in digging into the issue.

   Most sports fans are familiar with the firing of Rutgers’ men’s basketball coach Mike Rice, as the videos of him swearing at his players and throwing balls at them were widely distributed last spring. Less well known was the recent firing of Georgetown women’s coach Keith Brown after tapes of his verbal abuse of his players became available. (For details, plus the recording, visit the online version of this column at SportStarsOnline.com.)

   The lineage of this kind of coaching style, of course, goes way back. The fiery, demanding coach who inspired his charges to rise above his constant criticism and learn to “be a man” goes back, at least, to ancient Sparta and the cruel, if not vicious, discipline that made the Spartans one of the greatest fighting forces in the ancient world.

   Vince Lombardi exemplified this style in the early ’60s, and Bobby Knight carried on the tradition in basketball — and speaking of basketball, I’m going to stick to that sport for my examples, though I certainly could expand the topic to all sports.

   Author Malcom Gladwell approached the same topic from another angle in his 2009 New Yorker article, “How David Beat Goliath,” and that’s a modern update of theme that drives this method of leadership — which is that winning is all that matters.

   Gladwell’s article discusses the success of a girls’ youth club team in the South Bay. The coach, Vivek Ranadive, now owns the Sacramento Kings, but he didn’t know that much about basketball when he took over his daughter’s team. He realized his players weren’t as skilled as their opponents, but were much more athletic.

   The obvious solution? Use his superior athletes to erase the superior skill of the opponents by pressing, trapping and forcing young basketball players (around age 12) to make decisions under pressure while being harassed by taller, stronger and quicker girls. Naturally, it worked very well, but Ranadive — and Gladwell — were confused, if not upset, because of the criticism they received from other teams. After all, Ranadive’s teams won, didn’t they? And isn’t that what it’s all about?

   In a word, no. That isn’t what it’s all about. Ranadive didn’t teach his team about basketball; he didn’t increase the skill level of his players so that they could move to play in high school; he didn’t help the opposition develop either, as since they couldn’t break the pressure, they couldn’t play basketball. They just were overwhelmed by superior athletes, and their skills were rendered irrelevant.

   So how important is winning?

   Rice and Brown would say it’s important enough that they felt verbally abusing their players to get them to play at a high level was the best way to go. And it is true that some players will respond to this kind of negative reinforcement, and in the short run, teams will improve.

   The question, though, is how important — at what point does the drive to win collide with the use of negativity, humiliation and what many would call abuse? And when that collision occurs, what’s more important?

   Those who believe driving performance with a kind of abuse is fine, because performance is the most important thing. Or, to put it another way, treating a player, an individual, simply a chess piece to be pushed forward in whatever manner possible is fine as long it improves the team’s chances of winning. Unfortunately, that is precisely the kind of logic that also pushes football players back on the field with concussions — they are not really worth treating as independent human beings with feelings and values, but rather pieces that can be sacrificed, in whole or in part, for the greater good of winning.

Clay Kallam is an assistant athletic director and girls varsity basketball coach at Bentley High in Lafayette. To submit a question for Behind the Clipboard, email Coach Kallam at [email protected]