Pat Murphy says becoming a father completely changed the way he coached, and now every player he views and coaches as somebody else’s son “It’s got to be real, man. You can’t just say it. You’ve got to live it. When it’s about your kid, when you’re raising kids by yourself, you’re clueless, man. You don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t have that kind of, my parents were way older than me, so I don’t know how to parent. I don’t know what I’m doing, but it’s really important to me.” “And I started thinking about it like, every kid I coach is somebody’s Kai Joseph. You know what I mean? Every kid I coach, they have parents who love their kid the way I love my kid.” “Wow, I’ve got to be a little mindful how I treat these guys. I’ve got to be a little mindful about, like, it’s my job.” “This profession isn’t about the wins and losses. This profession is about, how do I impact this person?

Nick Saban says his mother taught him the mindset that eventually shaped Alabama’s dynasty, it’s not about beating the other guy, the competition is always you “Accountability was really important. If you had a job to do and you didn’t do it exactly right, you were going to do it over again. So you learned how to be accountable. One thing my parents always emphasized was it wasn’t about winning or beating the other guy. It was about, did you do it as well as you were capable of doing it?” “We won 30 games in a row when I was in high school and won a state championship, and that was never good enough. I asked my mom once, ‘Why is it never good enough?’ She said, ‘It’s not about winning the game. It’s not about beating the other guy. It’s about: did you do it as well as you’re capable of doing it?’” “So that makes you kind of a perfectionist, because the competition is always you. It’s always you.” “The other thing that instilled in me was I never had what I call relief syndrome. It’s kind of human nature that if you do something of significance, you think you’re supposed to be able to rest on your laurels.” “Players would win a big game and say, ‘Can we have Monday off practice? We get rewarded for winning this big game.’ Well, I’m thinking about how we’re going to win the next game. Did we play well enough in that game to win the next game, and what do we need to improve on?” “You can never be perfect, but you’re always trying to close the gap on perfect. I think great competitors, whether it’s Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, those guys could always take the next challenge. It didn’t matter how much they won or what they did.” Pasted text

David Wright explains how to identify a selfish teammate “To me, that’s what shows everybody what you’re made of. Anybody can smile and have a good time and enjoy the game when things are going their way and you’re having success.” “But it takes a special person to be a good teammate. To be the first one to high-five the guy when they do something good, even though you’ve had three strikeouts that game.” “What face do you put on in the locker room when you got four hits and the team lost compared to when you went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts and the team won? Happy-hit guy. Happy-hit guy is a term that we use to this day.” “I think that differentiates between the true great teammates and the winners and the guys that are out there trying to do it for themselves. It’s just dealing with failures, dealing with adversity, and it’s a small sample size of what you’re going to get in real life.”