The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

How was Spurrier on motivation?  

I think he was a great CFB coach.  His record against UGA in games where UGA had clearly better talent is probably 8-3 or something.

In no order:

recruiting
organizational skills
culture
motivation
game day planning and adjustments

The first three can't change over night, but can change in a couple of years or so.

football is a team sport- a fully developed mechanism of different components with different jobs moving in differing ways and being managed by someone in a position to see the entire effort.  the 'team' aspect is what draws me to the game unlike other major sports.  

the whole thing i think most casual observers miss about the game is the competition isn't but 50% at worst against your opponent.  if a team plays like a team and executes to perfection every single time, they are hard to stop.  they'll win a few games.  

the comment made "beat them with your players; beat them with mine" is a nice concept, but i think the application is misdirected.  i think saying that to the media gave it life it wasn't intended for- if it was said to a group of coaches, i think they interpret it differently- and i think Urban Meyer later said something that indicates he interpreted the comment as it was intended:  Meyer said "the better prepared team usually wins"(paraphrased). Then "a good coach can beat you with his players or your players"(again, paraphrased), to me read: 'a good coach understands the requirement for playing the game, knowing the components, and knowing his opponents and their opponents' and meant: that coach is better prepared, and to the point he knows 'your' team as well as 'you' do, making the two paraphrases mean about the same thing.  it's grown a life all of it's own since it was said a long time ago... and i know i heard bobby bowden say it, but don't know if that is where it started. (in that form, anyway)

the tuna is the only pro coach who could handle LT.  he knew how to make connection with players and did so, and he challenged LT in such a way that LT responded- likely knowing exactly what Tuna was doing, but... playing along for the competition of it.... Ol' half sleeves in NE demands assimilation and full purchase into the vision.  He couldn't be having LT problems... i offer this as two drastically different approaches to gain same ends.  Parcells was a person-manager who engaged the individual team components to convince them to play his way, where bellechic sells players on an idea and demands everyone's efforts to realize or maintain that idea.  one gets quicker results, one is more sustainable.  

Gundy has players that want to play for him.  he can bring great players in based on his style than any other.. he'll ride those players like borrowed mules during prep, but those players know beyond doubt Gundy has their backs... obviously i don't know, but i wager gundy is like:  "good job- now you have the fundamentals of the scheme, now.. you wanna have some fun with it?"  and the players respond... Saban, on the other hand "DO IT LIKE THIS... THE PROCESS... PUSH YOURSELF HARDER... YOU WANT TO BE A CHAMPION?  YOU MUST EARN IT"...  both of these tactics work.  one player will emerge on the other end saying "man, i loved playing the game for that man" and the other will emerge wearing a puff in the chest knowing they were part of something that transcended just a game boys play- they can take lessons learned elsewhere- both those players can, but their outlooks are quite different.  

i reckon i'm drawn to this conversation as it involves developing people- which means reaching people- and making them something they aren't- and the means used.  it's at least 33% psychology and 33% method and 33% something else that is hard to nail down.  

Btw, Belichek was the D.C. under Parcells with LT there.

Was it Bum Phillips that said about a great coach - he can beat yours with his and beat his with yours - ?

Not a lot of guys that's true for.  90s Spurrier, sure.  Saban.  I wouldn't say that about Fulmer or Miles or Stallings...just the really elite.  Meyer, probably.  Richt?  Probably not.  

It's mostly an attitude thing - you can have "let's play our best and we'll win" vs "let's win the game, and if you don't play your best, I'll find someone who will" kind of thing.  Not in a mean way, necessarily, just matter-of-fact.  It's the difference between being a dick and being a motivator.

Saban doesn't go in that list, by his own admission.  He told the Alabama AD when he was hired flat out "You can outcoach me, but nobody will out-recruit me."  He wins because he has better players than everyone else.  Any time we see Alabama come up on a team in their ballpark with a good QB, those are the games they either lose or win in a toss-up.  It rarely ever happens because there are no teams on par with them, very few in the ballpark, and of the ballpark teams, only a few of them have a really good QB capable of overcoming the difference.  And of those teams, very few of them are going to play Alabama.  
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you since you later went on to talk about how Saban has the most talented teams.  And I'm definitely not saying he's inferior in the X's and O's department in some way.  Just that he's no better than the average guy out there.  There's nothing complicated about Alabama, they're just more talented than you.  The closest they got to "creative" or "guru" in the schematic department was Lane Kiffin, and that's 3 out of Saban's 10+ years there.  
I don't know that Meyer belongs in that category either.  He brought an offense that was a bit innovative to the SEC at the time, but that's not exactly something rarely seen.  He's never been an OC, so I'm not sure where his "offensive genius" moniker comes from.  There's always been a marked difference in Meyer's offenses from coordinator to coordinator.  I'd put Mullen in that group before Meyer.  MSU doesn't recruit any better than they ever have under him, but he's winning at a better clip than his predecessors because he's got the gift of finding a weakness and attacking it.  Spurrier for sure goes at or near the top of that list.  You could mostly say the same thing about his tenure at South Carolina as Mullen at MSU.  

Good point, I guess I'm thinking more about more talented programs like UF and Tenn and LSU.  Imagine LSU for example is 8-4 or 7-5 this season, gets Wonder Coach from somewhere, and how much better are they in Year Two?

Some of this is random chance of course.  I think UGA had a decent team last year with a very bad OL.  The OL this year has shored up somehow and the team is better.  Of course, they were 10-3 when Richt was fired (or about to be after the bowl win) and sitting on some talent.

A great coach who takes over a 4-8 program will get poached if he shows promise before they get to 11-1.

Mike, while Saban doesn't make it his goal, he may be selling himself short.  

But yeah, Saban's style of running a program is like a boxing match with no weigh-ins.  Saban bulks up as heavy as he can, and then he just leans on you.  No sweet science, no magical combos to stun you, just thud, thud, thud until you give way.

He coaches that way because he can.  If he was at a South Carolina, I believe he'd do things very differently (because he'd have to, in order to win).

But yeah, at Bama, he has no desire to beat his with yours, because he's set it up so that it'd be impossible. 

Mike, while Saban doesn't make it his goal, he may be selling himself short.  

But yeah, Saban's style of running a program is like a boxing match with no weigh-ins.  Saban bulks up as heavy as he can, and then he just leans on you.  No sweet science, no magical combos to stun you, just thud, thud, thud until you give way.

He coaches that way because he can.  If he was at a South Carolina, I believe he'd do things very differently (because he'd have to, in order to win).

But yeah, at Bama, he has no desire to beat his with yours, because he's set it up so that it'd be impossible.

I don't think he's bad at it by any means.  I just don't see where he distinguishes himself from other coaches.  I think he'd have done better at Michigan State if he could do things differently and get more out of less than most.  The primary reason he cited for taking the LSU job was researching how many players in the NFL came from Louisiana.  DiNardo had instituted "building a fence around the state" and he thought he could build and capitalize on that.  Which he did.  
DiNardo left him a team of over 20 future NFL players, but still Saban took a few years to get going while he really stocked the pantry to what we think of as LSU now.  Some of that is changing the culture....LSU was used to losing for a decade and that had to be changed.  But considering some of the players on those early teams, I think he'd have done better there as well if he were markedly better than the average guy at X's and O's.  
Then at Alabama, in the games they lose or get played close, especially with us since it we play every year and they seem to consider us their biggest consistent threat, you'd think he'd drum something up to not wind up in close scrapes or losses if he could.  The fact he doesn't tells me Alabama is pretty much what you see, they're not sitting on other aspects they can pull out if they need to.  
There may be counter-examples I'm not thinking of that give evidence against my opinion.  What I do manage to think of makes me think Saban is great at establishing culture, is the greatest recruiter of all time, and is married to a program that spends a massive amount of $ to get results (srsly...their football team budget is more than our entire Athletic Dept. budget, no kidding, and they have an obscene amount of ghost coaches and consultants), but that he's not a X's and O's wizard along the lines of Spurrier and some others.