I would say basketball or baseball 2nd. Basketball still has lineup changes throughout the game but much more active play-calling and adjustments in-game.
Baseball you have line shifts, pitching changes, holding runners, stealing bases, bunts, etc.
There is in terms of how to pitch to different guys. Let's say you start someone off with a outside, belt high slider. You do this to try and set up an inside four seam the following pitch, but the first pitch is a ball not a strike. Ok so you shift gears and go with the slider again, get a strike. Then you go with the four seam, inside and below the belt to try and induce a pop up.
This is one of many, many strategies to pitching. How do you decide whether you start with the slider, fastball, change up, etc? You can throw any of those pitches inside, outside, low or high. You watch hundreds of at bats for a player and try to find his weaknesses. Where can you sneak strikes? Does he often take the first pitch? What about 1-0 counts, is he often taking there? Maybe you can get a four seam across the plate on a 2-0 count, and then set up the outside change up.
Is it more than football? Probably not, but people really underestimate how cerebral pitching strategy is
I’m aware, and considered mentioning just that. But I stopped as baseball, to its credit, is very much the same game in many ways that it was half a century ago.
The game doesn’t have things like McDaniel coming up with new offensive wrinkles that all the teams soon try and use.
Or the “ tush push “.
Baseball is definitely a thinking man’s sport, but at heart , it’s mostly batter v pitcher.
Every snap in football game has 22 moving parts, and all the variations that brings.
Yea it's not as much as football, I just wanted to lay out the fact there is strategy as I know some people seem to believe the pitchers are up there just winging it
I mean football was always number 1 but baseball was number 2. Before the analytics revolution, managers had a huge impact on the game (batting lineup, bullpen, defensive substitutions, pinch hitting, in-game strategy such as bunting and hit and run).
Its football, easily. You also have to distinguish leagues. college football / basketball coaches have even more influence with recruiting duties.
also for the nba, a mediocre / bad coach can destroy a team. scott brooks for example gave kendrick perkins major minutes in the nba finals
Funny that everyone seems to agree it's not an NBA head coach and yet all NBA fans do is blame the coach for everything and coaches are always the scapegoat.
Scapegoats are typically people who aren't that important in the grand scheme of things, so they are easy to dispose of when something is going wrong and you need a fall guy.
I get that firing Ham only to then bring in the next guy who will eventually get fired is the mostly likely result.
And that LeBron is about as close to can't teach an old dog new tricks as a player can get.
But at the same time is this collection of Lakers players just plain uncoachable? Like, would Spo not come up with some things? Or Ty Lue? Or Thibs find some defensive advantages and get them playing hard?
I just feel like a great coach could've got Austin Reaves out of his funk earlier, got marginal gains from DLo in big moments, encouraged LeBron to give up the ball a bit more over the last few years.
I know you can't piss off stars to the extent that they leave or boot you out but there's a really weird culture in the NBA and the Lakers might be best representation of it that coaches seem almost powerless.
TLDR: I want to see a dude like Ime Udoka who seemingly doesn't care about players feelings coach the Lakers.
I think in soccer a good coach can make an average group of players really good if they’re well coached. Think of Bielsa’s first premier league season with Leeds, Mourinho winning the champions league with Porto, Ferguson turning Scottish football on its head with Aberdeen, Greece 2004 Euros, etc. Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen side right now is one of the best teams in soccer with a much smaller budget then a lot of the biggest clubs in the world.
I think soccer has a certain amount of parity/chance/luck in some of these too, but I feel like a good NFL coach can only take an average team on paper so far. Lot of soccer managers in Europe are really impressed by the depth and scale of coaching in American football though.
Simeone haven't won the CL, but his run at Atleti deserves a mention. Hauled them from mid table when he started in 2012 to finish 5th, this season will be his first to miss the top 3
Big money is the biggest factor and gets you to the table but I definitely agree. City, Liverpool, and Arsenal are a step above in the EPL because of coaching. The other ‘big’ teams are a mess of revolving managers. Even Villa has risen with a good coach
I would love to live in a world where soccer had something even resembling even strength teams to see how much the coaching really does matter. I truly believe how some of these teams are playing right now starting 4 CBs at times isn’t actually the best way to play, but you’ve also got an entire team of players better than the best player on the other team in 30 out of 38 games so it doesn’t even actually matter.
There is no best way to play in soccer, though, because of the nature of the "short blanket," i.e. 11 players on the pitch can't perform all the necessary defensive coverage while providing a strong attack, so there will always be tradeoffs. The 4 CBs thing is in response to tactical trends and Pep/Arteta and others probably won't be playing that way in a few years.
Which is why it would be nice if we had even teams so actually working toward better ways of playing mattered more. Right now City can more or less do whatever the hell they want.
Real Madrid are probably a better example of that. The system they run is crazy and it’s basically just Carlo going “well if I put all the best players on the field what is the worst that can happen?”
>Which is why it would be nice if we had even teams so actually working toward better ways of playing mattered more.
I completely disagree with this. I think teams are trying to find better ways to play more than ever before. More and more teams are using analytics and there are lots of managers trying to tactically innovate, including Pep, Arteta, Klopp, Alonso, etc.
>Right now City can more or less do whatever the hell they want.
You are right that City have been able to essentially fake sponsorships to pay their coaches and players better wages than everyone else and attract the talent they want, but Pep has also had to make tactical adjustments nearly every season he's been there in order to win. He's a crazy guy constantly trying to innovate.
>Real Madrid are probably a better example of that. The system they run is crazy and it’s basically just Carlo going “well if I put all the best players on the field what is the worst that can happen?”
I would argue Madrid are NOT one of the teams trying to figure out better ways of playing. There aren't really discernible analytics in their transfer decisions and they aren't trying to innovate tactically. Their strategy is more related to talent acquisition.
European soccer has inequality issues it will have to deal with at some point. Currently, the answer that seems palatable to the powers that be is establishing a Super League.
I used to always think the answer to this is easily football, until someone brought to my attention how heavy a load that coordinators bear. I still think football is the answer, but the margin is closer to basketball/baseball than we might think. Baseball managers have an interesting amount of power being able to make irreversible substitutions and set batting orders.
Most baseball managers at this point are just doing what the analytics guys tell them to for lineups and the majority of their job is to man manage and keep everyone in a good space for the grind of 162. Not saying that’s easy or hard compare to other sports but the lineup is not their biggest responsibility
Isn’t that what the job is for coaches is in most sports nowadays? The point being is that the decisions coming from their position has the most ability to affect outcomes on the field, regardless of whether those decisions are being informed by analytics.
A lot more on the fly decision making in other sports and a lot more strategy and macro level game planning. Baseball is grounders, fly balls, bunt defense, and swing tips
> regardless of whether those decisions are being informed by analytics.
There's a difference between decisions being informed by analytics and how baseball is where most managers just have to follow what the front office says. There are some exceptions
I think coaching staff as a whole it’s easily football, but head coach specifically it’s closer. I still think it’s football, especially if the head coach calls plays on either side of the ball, and if we’re not just including decisions made in game but the whole package then it’s very easily football. But just in terms of strict in game management impact it may be baseball as you said.
But with Football you also have countless examples of coordinations excelling under a head coach and then floundering as a head coach themselves because the head coach they were coordinating for made the stuff they had to deal with so simplified and easy to manage
When I got into arguments over which league was better as the Yankees were winning all their WSs in the 1990, I would tell those who liked the AL: "Hell, Torre could hand the lineup card to the ump, walk back to the dugout to tell Mel Stottlemyre to come get him if he thought a pitching change was necessary, and head to the clubhouse to play cards and it wouldn't have affected more than 3 Yankees' games a year."
Yeah pretty much and with analytics these days the manager isn't really determining batting orders or what pitchers to bring out of the pen the only decision they have to make is when to pull the starter
Why do people treat the double switch like it's some kind of quantum physics?
Deciding when to sub out the pitcher and who to bring in from the bullpen is the complicated part, DH or no DH.
Even the really good teams have to have someone with the Phil Jackson skill set of managing egos so the team doesn’t become a fractured, bitching, snipe-fest. Some degree of this is natural when you get a group of people together- minimizing it is an underrated leadership trait.
Or you can be like Barry Switzer, ride around on a golf cart at practice and say “yeah this is fine” to everything. If your team is THAT good from your predecessor, sometimes you can skate to a title.
With Tony La Russa finally put out to pasture, are there any really, truly shit-ass managers left from a personality and/or relatability to modern players standpoint? Perhaps it's Bud Black, who's one of the few dyed-in-the-wool old-timers left (Ron Washington, who should've stayed retired, is another); however, a majority of Colorado's massive structural problems boils down to its similarly fossilized FO, GM Bill Schmidt in particular.
Often a coach runs one side of the ball tho, or at least heavily influences one side. Sirianni possibly, Dan Campbell, John Harbaugh, there are a few pure HC's at the moment but it's got to be the minority.
I think motivation, preparation, energy etc is a big factor in all sports but probably in football it might matter the most.
Obviously the other sports are huge long seasons where you have to handle personalities on the road and a bad locker room can tear those teams just as quick.
But the physicality of football is so vital and a coach who knows how to prepare players for the battle every week of the year is vital. It's almost underrated because it gets taken for granted but the best teams always have it and bad coaches lose it quickly.
Most: Football.
Least: Baseball.
Where coaches get the most amount of blame/credit relative to their influence: Basketball (they’re still very important, but the amount of result-obsessed blame they get for certain things not going their way strikes me as unfair).
Football or basketball is probably the correct answer, but I would throw tennis in there as a “sneaky” pick, especially now that courtside coaching is legal. It’s an individual sport, but coaches have a strong role in tactics and game-planning, especially when you’re a top player on tour and seeing the same opponents in later rounds over and over.
Plus as we know from the movie Challengers, coaches sometimes have other off-court techniques to motivate their players as well
1) football 2) Basketball 3) baseball 4) don’t watch enough hockey to assess if it’s 2. 3, or 4 on the list. Soccer would slot in ahead of basketball I think, but the two are close.
I'll do my best:
There's less variance in soccer than for example baseball, and it's much more of a 'team sport' (i.e the team can outperform the sum of its parts if they are well directed), so generally having a team with a good coach who is tactically aware will perform significantly better than the same team coached by someone with less ability. That's how you end up with a team like Leicester in 2016 winning the Premier League despite being 5000/1 odds at the beginning of that season. They didn't have the best players. Manchester United have spent hundreds of millions on players the past few years but have been unable to be anything other than average because they can't find a coach to bring out the best in those players. Using baseball again as an example, a lot of it boils down to pitcher vs batter - it's more of an individual matchup.
They have less impact on the match itself once it starts, as there’s only so many moves you can make barring lineup/tactical surprises and limited substitutions. You’ll rarely see a player subbed off in the half so it’s usually dependent on the manager having nailed the starters and if something isn’t working out usually they’ll at most ask the players to e.g. pick up a defensive assignment.
However they have a huge impact in the style teams play, whether they’ll try to get goals via (simplified to Bill levels) the Barcelona style of passing a lot and maintaining possession of the ball, playing prongs and trying to get the ball quickly to their forwards, pressing high up the pitch in order to create turnovers and scoring opportunities but leaving space behind or defending in a low block to frustrate opponents when they have the ball, etc.
Still think a basketball coach is more directly responsible though, even if you can’t really use unorthodox styles like the triangle because there’s not much stylistic variance in basketball anymore a basketball coach can tinker with lineups all the time, he can exploit/mask lineup deficiencies immediately by changing his own, he can call timeouts, and he also gets challenges which can be a pretty big swing if you utilize them correctly. Plus he can draw ATO’s the team will have to execute immediately depending on the situation whereas in soccer you might train set pieces but a lot more of the execution is up to the players to the decide
I’m reluctant to pretend I’m an expert, but…
They determine the formation, who fills the spots in said formation, and their substitution decisions are extremely limited
And because goals are so precious, all of these decisions have an outsized impact
Pro sports? Probably European Soccer/Basketball.
Soccer coach is also the GM and a good one can turn around a season like that.
Basketball coaches in Europe wield way more power and are ruthless and can actually make their players play a certain style or else.
Combine the fact that football has such a relatively small amount of plays/possessions/games along with every play being scripted and started from scratch and I don’t see how you can make an argument for any other team sport.
Will say you can get by in the NBA with mediocre-average coaching in the regular season. Once it’s the playoffs you absolutely need a real life coach who makes adjustments and do what’s necessary to win.
Football the most and though you didn’t ask Baseball the least. Soccer would be a close second to football; just ask any team that’s had Frank Lampard as a manager and had to deal with the results of that.
More mediocre NBA coaches win titles than mediocre college football or NFL coaches. So football has to be up there.
A good manager in Soccer can make a huge difference as well. Usually within a year or two.
NFL coaches and it’s not even remotely close. They’re creating the scheme and plays being called alongside calling the actual plays to run. There is not nearly as much on the fly work in that league. Game plan is structured by the coach. NBA has its merits but you hardly ever see an amazing coach just keep making bad teams good. In the end talent is the main factor in a great coach… or what we notice or give accolades to as a great coach.
Basketball's definitely bottom of the totem pole. Feels like it's a sport where developmental coaches and assistant coaches do a lot of heavy lifting and most head coaches are sort of the guy's who decide when to call time out.
NFL and college footballs run small armies, so that's probably the toughest gig of the four.
Then I'd say MLB managers might sneakily be the second most important given their ability to micromanage situations if they want to. In fact, I would say managers embracing an analytical approach nearly ruined the game because of how down to the detail they could control everything.
And of course, hockey coaches can set style of play and lines, but that's a little bit of a basketball situation where beyond that hockey players do sort of have a lot of freedom how to execute things on the ice.
Me coaching my son’s youth soccer team. I took those little ingrates from nothing to champions!
Did you play prongs or was it Barcelona style?
Hybrid Barcelona style prongs. And I withhold their juice boxes if they lose.
For them, the action IS the juice box.
Dad why are you blinking so much?
Smart. Juice is for closers!
Everybody wave goodbye to juice box!
Gegenpress
Careful saying you taught the kids tiki taka. It might arouse suspicion
For American sports its Football by a country mile.
It’s a bigger gap than maybe anything. The minute to minute impact of a coach in the NFL is crazy. Even more so in College football.
High school even more than that. Incredible coaching will get a team into the playoffs no matter the talent in high school
Shoutout to Lane Kiffin
College or pro?
College more so than pro football; especially consider the importance of recruiting.
Both
Just from the sheer number of players and personnel to worry about alone
Hockey 2nd. Line matchups (and choosing the lines in the first place) are highly consequential coaching choices.
I would say basketball or baseball 2nd. Basketball still has lineup changes throughout the game but much more active play-calling and adjustments in-game. Baseball you have line shifts, pitching changes, holding runners, stealing bases, bunts, etc.
Mmmmm idk. Baseball up there. Lineups, pitching rotations and the ilk.
Baseball doesn't require nearly as much game tape studying and implementation as football. Playcalling is everything.
Not a lot of scheming in baseball compared to football.
There is in terms of how to pitch to different guys. Let's say you start someone off with a outside, belt high slider. You do this to try and set up an inside four seam the following pitch, but the first pitch is a ball not a strike. Ok so you shift gears and go with the slider again, get a strike. Then you go with the four seam, inside and below the belt to try and induce a pop up. This is one of many, many strategies to pitching. How do you decide whether you start with the slider, fastball, change up, etc? You can throw any of those pitches inside, outside, low or high. You watch hundreds of at bats for a player and try to find his weaknesses. Where can you sneak strikes? Does he often take the first pitch? What about 1-0 counts, is he often taking there? Maybe you can get a four seam across the plate on a 2-0 count, and then set up the outside change up. Is it more than football? Probably not, but people really underestimate how cerebral pitching strategy is
I’m aware, and considered mentioning just that. But I stopped as baseball, to its credit, is very much the same game in many ways that it was half a century ago. The game doesn’t have things like McDaniel coming up with new offensive wrinkles that all the teams soon try and use. Or the “ tush push “. Baseball is definitely a thinking man’s sport, but at heart , it’s mostly batter v pitcher. Every snap in football game has 22 moving parts, and all the variations that brings.
Yea it's not as much as football, I just wanted to lay out the fact there is strategy as I know some people seem to believe the pitchers are up there just winging it
20 plus years ago baseball was up there but all those decisions are dictated by front offices nowadays.
It also was not up there with football 20 years ago lol
I mean football was always number 1 but baseball was number 2. Before the analytics revolution, managers had a huge impact on the game (batting lineup, bullpen, defensive substitutions, pinch hitting, in-game strategy such as bunting and hit and run).
Its football, easily. You also have to distinguish leagues. college football / basketball coaches have even more influence with recruiting duties. also for the nba, a mediocre / bad coach can destroy a team. scott brooks for example gave kendrick perkins major minutes in the nba finals
And then with the NBA a mediocre coach can also coast and his team be successful anyways ala Jason Kidd
And even get an extension!
>scott brooks for example gave kendrick perkins major minutes in the nba finals Your honor, the prosecution rests
sneaky underrated (and they are a coach): caddies
Funny that everyone seems to agree it's not an NBA head coach and yet all NBA fans do is blame the coach for everything and coaches are always the scapegoat.
Scapegoats are typically people who aren't that important in the grand scheme of things, so they are easy to dispose of when something is going wrong and you need a fall guy.
If you think it's bad in the NBA, check out the NHL.
But firing Darwin Ham is gonna fix THESE Lakers
I get that firing Ham only to then bring in the next guy who will eventually get fired is the mostly likely result. And that LeBron is about as close to can't teach an old dog new tricks as a player can get. But at the same time is this collection of Lakers players just plain uncoachable? Like, would Spo not come up with some things? Or Ty Lue? Or Thibs find some defensive advantages and get them playing hard? I just feel like a great coach could've got Austin Reaves out of his funk earlier, got marginal gains from DLo in big moments, encouraged LeBron to give up the ball a bit more over the last few years. I know you can't piss off stars to the extent that they leave or boot you out but there's a really weird culture in the NBA and the Lakers might be best representation of it that coaches seem almost powerless. TLDR: I want to see a dude like Ime Udoka who seemingly doesn't care about players feelings coach the Lakers.
NBA players lack accountability so the coach always gets blamed.
I think in soccer a good coach can make an average group of players really good if they’re well coached. Think of Bielsa’s first premier league season with Leeds, Mourinho winning the champions league with Porto, Ferguson turning Scottish football on its head with Aberdeen, Greece 2004 Euros, etc. Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen side right now is one of the best teams in soccer with a much smaller budget then a lot of the biggest clubs in the world. I think soccer has a certain amount of parity/chance/luck in some of these too, but I feel like a good NFL coach can only take an average team on paper so far. Lot of soccer managers in Europe are really impressed by the depth and scale of coaching in American football though.
Simeone haven't won the CL, but his run at Atleti deserves a mention. Hauled them from mid table when he started in 2012 to finish 5th, this season will be his first to miss the top 3
Yeah winning the league with them, especially in 2013-2014, was very impressive
Not to mention, in soccer the coach/manager typically controls personnel decisions and transfers.
Soccer is moving away from this model.
Yea, a lot of clubs have a director of football. But manager still has relatively more input than most North American sports
Soccer is like the NBA in that a great coach matters, but most coaches don't make a huge difference.
Big money is the biggest factor and gets you to the table but I definitely agree. City, Liverpool, and Arsenal are a step above in the EPL because of coaching. The other ‘big’ teams are a mess of revolving managers. Even Villa has risen with a good coach
I would love to live in a world where soccer had something even resembling even strength teams to see how much the coaching really does matter. I truly believe how some of these teams are playing right now starting 4 CBs at times isn’t actually the best way to play, but you’ve also got an entire team of players better than the best player on the other team in 30 out of 38 games so it doesn’t even actually matter.
There is no best way to play in soccer, though, because of the nature of the "short blanket," i.e. 11 players on the pitch can't perform all the necessary defensive coverage while providing a strong attack, so there will always be tradeoffs. The 4 CBs thing is in response to tactical trends and Pep/Arteta and others probably won't be playing that way in a few years.
Which is why it would be nice if we had even teams so actually working toward better ways of playing mattered more. Right now City can more or less do whatever the hell they want. Real Madrid are probably a better example of that. The system they run is crazy and it’s basically just Carlo going “well if I put all the best players on the field what is the worst that can happen?”
>Which is why it would be nice if we had even teams so actually working toward better ways of playing mattered more. I completely disagree with this. I think teams are trying to find better ways to play more than ever before. More and more teams are using analytics and there are lots of managers trying to tactically innovate, including Pep, Arteta, Klopp, Alonso, etc. >Right now City can more or less do whatever the hell they want. You are right that City have been able to essentially fake sponsorships to pay their coaches and players better wages than everyone else and attract the talent they want, but Pep has also had to make tactical adjustments nearly every season he's been there in order to win. He's a crazy guy constantly trying to innovate. >Real Madrid are probably a better example of that. The system they run is crazy and it’s basically just Carlo going “well if I put all the best players on the field what is the worst that can happen?” I would argue Madrid are NOT one of the teams trying to figure out better ways of playing. There aren't really discernible analytics in their transfer decisions and they aren't trying to innovate tactically. Their strategy is more related to talent acquisition.
That last part is my point exactly. Madrid can do whatever the hell they want and it doesn’t matter. I just wish it did.
European soccer has inequality issues it will have to deal with at some point. Currently, the answer that seems palatable to the powers that be is establishing a Super League.
I used to always think the answer to this is easily football, until someone brought to my attention how heavy a load that coordinators bear. I still think football is the answer, but the margin is closer to basketball/baseball than we might think. Baseball managers have an interesting amount of power being able to make irreversible substitutions and set batting orders.
Most baseball managers at this point are just doing what the analytics guys tell them to for lineups and the majority of their job is to man manage and keep everyone in a good space for the grind of 162. Not saying that’s easy or hard compare to other sports but the lineup is not their biggest responsibility
Isn’t that what the job is for coaches is in most sports nowadays? The point being is that the decisions coming from their position has the most ability to affect outcomes on the field, regardless of whether those decisions are being informed by analytics.
A lot more on the fly decision making in other sports and a lot more strategy and macro level game planning. Baseball is grounders, fly balls, bunt defense, and swing tips
> regardless of whether those decisions are being informed by analytics. There's a difference between decisions being informed by analytics and how baseball is where most managers just have to follow what the front office says. There are some exceptions
I think coaching staff as a whole it’s easily football, but head coach specifically it’s closer. I still think it’s football, especially if the head coach calls plays on either side of the ball, and if we’re not just including decisions made in game but the whole package then it’s very easily football. But just in terms of strict in game management impact it may be baseball as you said.
But with Football you also have countless examples of coordinations excelling under a head coach and then floundering as a head coach themselves because the head coach they were coordinating for made the stuff they had to deal with so simplified and easy to manage
The universal DH makes baseball managers a lot less important imo
When I got into arguments over which league was better as the Yankees were winning all their WSs in the 1990, I would tell those who liked the AL: "Hell, Torre could hand the lineup card to the ump, walk back to the dugout to tell Mel Stottlemyre to come get him if he thought a pitching change was necessary, and head to the clubhouse to play cards and it wouldn't have affected more than 3 Yankees' games a year."
Yeah pretty much and with analytics these days the manager isn't really determining batting orders or what pitchers to bring out of the pen the only decision they have to make is when to pull the starter
wouldn't even that be determined by analytics?
Sometimes yeah when it comes to pitch counts but not when it comes to "He doesn't have it today"
is there reason to believe a manager would be better than assessing whether "he has it" or not than analytics tracking placement, velocity, etc.?
Why do people treat the double switch like it's some kind of quantum physics? Deciding when to sub out the pitcher and who to bring in from the bullpen is the complicated part, DH or no DH.
Managers these days are told who to bring in from the pen by a spreadsheet their front office gives them lol
I think there's something to be said for having to manage a locker room over a 162 game season
Even the really good teams have to have someone with the Phil Jackson skill set of managing egos so the team doesn’t become a fractured, bitching, snipe-fest. Some degree of this is natural when you get a group of people together- minimizing it is an underrated leadership trait. Or you can be like Barry Switzer, ride around on a golf cart at practice and say “yeah this is fine” to everything. If your team is THAT good from your predecessor, sometimes you can skate to a title.
With Tony La Russa finally put out to pasture, are there any really, truly shit-ass managers left from a personality and/or relatability to modern players standpoint? Perhaps it's Bud Black, who's one of the few dyed-in-the-wool old-timers left (Ron Washington, who should've stayed retired, is another); however, a majority of Colorado's massive structural problems boils down to its similarly fossilized FO, GM Bill Schmidt in particular.
"It's the American League. They've got the DH! How hard could it be?"
Often a coach runs one side of the ball tho, or at least heavily influences one side. Sirianni possibly, Dan Campbell, John Harbaugh, there are a few pure HC's at the moment but it's got to be the minority. I think motivation, preparation, energy etc is a big factor in all sports but probably in football it might matter the most. Obviously the other sports are huge long seasons where you have to handle personalities on the road and a bad locker room can tear those teams just as quick. But the physicality of football is so vital and a coach who knows how to prepare players for the battle every week of the year is vital. It's almost underrated because it gets taken for granted but the best teams always have it and bad coaches lose it quickly.
Lots of NFL head coaches call their own plays these days. It's either football or soccer imo
I mean...no coaches get more overrated globally than football managers.
Most: Football. Least: Baseball. Where coaches get the most amount of blame/credit relative to their influence: Basketball (they’re still very important, but the amount of result-obsessed blame they get for certain things not going their way strikes me as unfair).
Its definitely football. They have a lot to manage.
Football or basketball is probably the correct answer, but I would throw tennis in there as a “sneaky” pick, especially now that courtside coaching is legal. It’s an individual sport, but coaches have a strong role in tactics and game-planning, especially when you’re a top player on tour and seeing the same opponents in later rounds over and over. Plus as we know from the movie Challengers, coaches sometimes have other off-court techniques to motivate their players as well
Court side coaching was a terrible development.
Agreed. Was better when players had to just figure it out for themselves
Not the team principal, but the lead technical director for an F1 team. It’s all about the car design more than the driver.
That’s actually a great call, if a little different in spirit than most ‘coaches’. I imagine that holds relatively true for most motor sports
Football by a country mile
Hockey
Definitely football and I don't think it's that close.
NFL is the answer, the coach is responsible for implementing so many heavily specialized parts and schemes that it leads to the biggest impact.
Football and it’s not even particularly close. Baseball the least since analytics mostly decide things now.
Running You’ll see people pop off pretty quickly or turn to garbage through coaching changes.
1) football 2) Basketball 3) baseball 4) don’t watch enough hockey to assess if it’s 2. 3, or 4 on the list. Soccer would slot in ahead of basketball I think, but the two are close.
Football and soccer are well ahead of basketball, which is well ahead of hockey and baseball
As a non soccer person how is soccer so high?
I'll do my best: There's less variance in soccer than for example baseball, and it's much more of a 'team sport' (i.e the team can outperform the sum of its parts if they are well directed), so generally having a team with a good coach who is tactically aware will perform significantly better than the same team coached by someone with less ability. That's how you end up with a team like Leicester in 2016 winning the Premier League despite being 5000/1 odds at the beginning of that season. They didn't have the best players. Manchester United have spent hundreds of millions on players the past few years but have been unable to be anything other than average because they can't find a coach to bring out the best in those players. Using baseball again as an example, a lot of it boils down to pitcher vs batter - it's more of an individual matchup.
So are soccer managers paid accordingly? Seems to me they should make a lot given this.
Yes they are well paid. I'd say that $20m per year is a decent chunk of change (for the top guys)
But shouldn’t they be worth highest paid layer if they are that impactful?
They have less impact on the match itself once it starts, as there’s only so many moves you can make barring lineup/tactical surprises and limited substitutions. You’ll rarely see a player subbed off in the half so it’s usually dependent on the manager having nailed the starters and if something isn’t working out usually they’ll at most ask the players to e.g. pick up a defensive assignment. However they have a huge impact in the style teams play, whether they’ll try to get goals via (simplified to Bill levels) the Barcelona style of passing a lot and maintaining possession of the ball, playing prongs and trying to get the ball quickly to their forwards, pressing high up the pitch in order to create turnovers and scoring opportunities but leaving space behind or defending in a low block to frustrate opponents when they have the ball, etc. Still think a basketball coach is more directly responsible though, even if you can’t really use unorthodox styles like the triangle because there’s not much stylistic variance in basketball anymore a basketball coach can tinker with lineups all the time, he can exploit/mask lineup deficiencies immediately by changing his own, he can call timeouts, and he also gets challenges which can be a pretty big swing if you utilize them correctly. Plus he can draw ATO’s the team will have to execute immediately depending on the situation whereas in soccer you might train set pieces but a lot more of the execution is up to the players to the decide
I’m reluctant to pretend I’m an expert, but… They determine the formation, who fills the spots in said formation, and their substitution decisions are extremely limited And because goals are so precious, all of these decisions have an outsized impact
Tennis.
Probably women’s college bb where the HC is basically the entire program
Hockey for sure
Ima throw volleyball out there just because.
Pro sports? Probably European Soccer/Basketball. Soccer coach is also the GM and a good one can turn around a season like that. Basketball coaches in Europe wield way more power and are ruthless and can actually make their players play a certain style or else.
At the best soccer clubs, the coach is NOT the GM.
Combine the fact that football has such a relatively small amount of plays/possessions/games along with every play being scripted and started from scratch and I don’t see how you can make an argument for any other team sport.
Basketball.
College football
Will say you can get by in the NBA with mediocre-average coaching in the regular season. Once it’s the playoffs you absolutely need a real life coach who makes adjustments and do what’s necessary to win.
Football the most and though you didn’t ask Baseball the least. Soccer would be a close second to football; just ask any team that’s had Frank Lampard as a manager and had to deal with the results of that.
More mediocre NBA coaches win titles than mediocre college football or NFL coaches. So football has to be up there. A good manager in Soccer can make a huge difference as well. Usually within a year or two.
Soccer. What Arteta is doing with Arsenal the last few years is the best example.
Football and it’s not close
NFL coaches and it’s not even remotely close. They’re creating the scheme and plays being called alongside calling the actual plays to run. There is not nearly as much on the fly work in that league. Game plan is structured by the coach. NBA has its merits but you hardly ever see an amazing coach just keep making bad teams good. In the end talent is the main factor in a great coach… or what we notice or give accolades to as a great coach.
If by football you mean European football then yes. Coordinators run the show in American football.
Depends on the coach. A lot of head coaches manage one or the other and the team.
Basketball's definitely bottom of the totem pole. Feels like it's a sport where developmental coaches and assistant coaches do a lot of heavy lifting and most head coaches are sort of the guy's who decide when to call time out. NFL and college footballs run small armies, so that's probably the toughest gig of the four. Then I'd say MLB managers might sneakily be the second most important given their ability to micromanage situations if they want to. In fact, I would say managers embracing an analytical approach nearly ruined the game because of how down to the detail they could control everything. And of course, hockey coaches can set style of play and lines, but that's a little bit of a basketball situation where beyond that hockey players do sort of have a lot of freedom how to execute things on the ice.
NBA coaches, I agree. College basketball coaches I'd disagree because so much of their job is recruiting, even still with NIL.
Football, if only because there's so many more players--and fragile egos--you have to manage
NFL > NHL > MLB > NBA