Why you should buy one of my coaching books as a gift for a football or baseball player or parent of a player
Posted by John T. Reed on
I have written ten books on football and baseball coaching. Some who buy them are not coaches, but are just PARENTS of players or FANS of the sport.
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I think another group should read those books: PLAYERS and PARENTS who want to help their player. My son Dan played football from age 8 to age 22 ending as a tailback in the Ivy League. A month after he graduated from Columbia, he started helping me coach our neighborhood Monte Vista High School freshman team.
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About a month into that coaching, he observed that he would have been a much better PLAYER had he coached during his playing career. I asked former 49er and Cal head coach Tom Holmoe if he agreed with Dan. He did, citing his own experience helping Bill Walsh coach Stanford after Bill left the NFL and while Tom was still playing for the Niners.
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Coaches’ sons tend to be much better players in many cases. (Other coaches sons are pains in the ass because they are privileged characters who benefit from a father who protects them.) At Columbia, BEFORE he coached Monte Vista with me, the coaching staff called my son “Coach Reed” because of his understanding of what the coaches were trying to do and why. That came from just his coach’s SON knowledge.
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Also, Dan and I coached in a way that a great many of our players became “coaches’ sons” of sorts when they moved up to the JV and varsity levels. Dan was observing a spring football JV practice in 2004 after our first Monte Vista freshman team moved up. A JV coach explained something incorrectly. Dan did not say anything. But one of our players from the previous Fall asked the JV coach, “Who’s got contain on that play, coach.” He knew from our coaching that SOMEONE had to have it and no one seemed to.
.
After a couple days of spring JV practice, the JV head coach came to us raving, “My God, Jack, your players are like our last year players after three games! They know how to practice. They know how to watch film. And we’re only three days into spring ball.”
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Bottom line: I think reading one or more of my football or baseball coaching books would make not only coaches much better, but also PLAYERS who want to be smart, better players and their PARENTS who want to help them be better players. I can almost guarantee such player will astonish their coaches at times. “Jackson, how the heck did you know that? We did not teach that yet.” I also would be surprised if your player who reads my book is not called “coach” only half-jokingly by his future coaches.
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One proviso, when what my book says conflicts with what your child’s coach says, you have to do what your coach says, or find a new team. Don’t be too quick to change teams or schools. Doing that for purely athletic reasons is often prohibited by league rules.
.
Tis the season for gift giving. If you know a player or a player’s parent, they might find one of my books about their sport extremely helpful—maybe making the difference between making the team and not making it, between starting or sitting the bench, between starting and being a league all-star, between getting into a mediocre college or a good one (my son got into Columbia, Dartmouth and Yale because of football as well as most of the Little Ivies), between ending his career at the high school level and playing college ball, and between stopping after college and going to the NFL.
.
.
I think another group should read those books: PLAYERS and PARENTS who want to help their player. My son Dan played football from age 8 to age 22 ending as a tailback in the Ivy League. A month after he graduated from Columbia, he started helping me coach our neighborhood Monte Vista High School freshman team.
.
About a month into that coaching, he observed that he would have been a much better PLAYER had he coached during his playing career. I asked former 49er and Cal head coach Tom Holmoe if he agreed with Dan. He did, citing his own experience helping Bill Walsh coach Stanford after Bill left the NFL and while Tom was still playing for the Niners.
.
Coaches’ sons tend to be much better players in many cases. (Other coaches sons are pains in the ass because they are privileged characters who benefit from a father who protects them.) At Columbia, BEFORE he coached Monte Vista with me, the coaching staff called my son “Coach Reed” because of his understanding of what the coaches were trying to do and why. That came from just his coach’s SON knowledge.
.
Also, Dan and I coached in a way that a great many of our players became “coaches’ sons” of sorts when they moved up to the JV and varsity levels. Dan was observing a spring football JV practice in 2004 after our first Monte Vista freshman team moved up. A JV coach explained something incorrectly. Dan did not say anything. But one of our players from the previous Fall asked the JV coach, “Who’s got contain on that play, coach.” He knew from our coaching that SOMEONE had to have it and no one seemed to.
.
After a couple days of spring JV practice, the JV head coach came to us raving, “My God, Jack, your players are like our last year players after three games! They know how to practice. They know how to watch film. And we’re only three days into spring ball.”
.
Bottom line: I think reading one or more of my football or baseball coaching books would make not only coaches much better, but also PLAYERS who want to be smart, better players and their PARENTS who want to help them be better players. I can almost guarantee such player will astonish their coaches at times. “Jackson, how the heck did you know that? We did not teach that yet.” I also would be surprised if your player who reads my book is not called “coach” only half-jokingly by his future coaches.
.
One proviso, when what my book says conflicts with what your child’s coach says, you have to do what your coach says, or find a new team. Don’t be too quick to change teams or schools. Doing that for purely athletic reasons is often prohibited by league rules.
.
Tis the season for gift giving. If you know a player or a player’s parent, they might find one of my books about their sport extremely helpful—maybe making the difference between making the team and not making it, between starting or sitting the bench, between starting and being a league all-star, between getting into a mediocre college or a good one (my son got into Columbia, Dartmouth and Yale because of football as well as most of the Little Ivies), between ending his career at the high school level and playing college ball, and between stopping after college and going to the NFL.
.
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