No track coaches at all on the list:
Who deserves to be on there?
No track coaches at all on the list:
Who deserves to be on there?
Anson Dorrance
It's actually an extremely bad list. Among Yankee managers, to rank Casey Stengel above Joe McCarthy is moronic.
And maybe "Sporting News" didn't get the memo, but Walter Alston, who is on the list, is now generally considered to have been a dumb and bad manager who, among other things, mishandled Sandy Koufax for years.
The list just isn't very thoughtful. It honors longevity too much and particularly in basketball, it just honors guys who managed to not totally mess things up when they had enormously talented teams. I mean, does anyone REALLY think Pat Riley was one of the great coaches?
I would say that in the Sporting News vernacular, 'coach' implies that of a team sport; a big part of coaching is making disparate personalities mesh, i.e. Phil Jackson with Shaq and Kobe.
Even with that caveat, Anson Dorrance is a glaring 'small sport' omission.
But people like McDonnell, Lydiard, and Bela Karolyi are more likely considered 'trainers' although they do have some aspect of team management in their positions.
and it is US-only, which also justifies Lydiard's omission.
Otherwise, people like Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger would surely be on it before Lydiard.
They only appear to be aware of the existence of about 3-4 sports.
Agreed. This list seems to only cover the "major" sports. As someone else said, how is Anson Dorrance not on this list? You could easily argue he should be in the top 10. He's the "John Wooden" of NCAA women's soccer, in terms of success and national championships. Also agree McDonnell should be on the list. Maybe I missed it, but I also didn't see Bowerman on the list. Seems to me he was pretty successful, as well.
The entire list of 50 only includes people who coached the big four team sports, though in the 21st century I'm not even sure why hockey is among those four.
Sporting news is about sports, not athletics.
McDonnell should without a doubt be on it. Considering he has like 30+ NCAA champs (or more? 40+?) and a ridiculous amount of SEC champs, seems like an easy addition. He probably holds the records for championships, so even if the writers did a simple search for the record for most NCAA titles, they could've come out with McDonnell, even if they had never followed track.
In a related story, The Sporting News was left off the list of "things anyone reads."
joe mcblow wrote:
In a related story, The Sporting News was left off the list of "things anyone reads."
I had to look it up, but Dan Gable won 15 NCAA wrestling championships at Iowa. In the US, college track is on par with college wrestling in terms of mass appeal.
rojo wrote:
No track coaches at all on the list:
Who deserves to be on there?
I would find it downright embarassing to see a track coach on that list.
It is a list of football, basketball, baseball, and hockey coaches.
When John Jock looks at Sporting News and sees an unknown name in a who-cares sport on a list like that, he either immediately forgets the name or laughs his ass of at it.
Which would put the legends of our sport in the horrible position of being ridiculed for their unwitting inclusion midway down on pointless list created by a boneheaded publication that nobody reads in the first place.
I'm thankful our sport got passed over on this occasion. Token attention would have been much worse.
And I'm sure it was oh-so-hard for Sporting News to leave our own personal favorites off their list.
Maybe we should flood them with e-mails.
hart, kersee, henry, and mcdonnell
No Phog Allen, but another Big 8 coach in Hank Iba, as well as two of Allen's proteges in Smith and Rupp is a bit of a laugh as well.
double B
Jacob Philips
Dean Cromwell:
"His many outstanding pupils included Fred Kelly (1912 gold medalist in the 110m hurdles), Charlie Paddock (1920 gold medalist in the 100m and 4x100 relay), Bud Houser (1924 gold medalist in the shot put and discus; 1928 gold medalist in the discus), Jess Mortensen (1929 NCAA javelin champion, 1931 world record in the decathlon), Frank Wykoff (1928, 1932 and 1936 gold medalist in the 4x100 relay), Ken Carpenter (1936 gold medalist in the discus), Earle Meadows (1936 gold medalist in the pole vault), Louis Zamperini (collegiate record-holder in the mile from 1938-53), Wilbur Thompson (1948 gold medalist in the shot put), Clifford Bourland (1948 gold medalist in the 4x400 relay), Bill Sefton (two-time world record holder in the pole vault), and Mel Patton (1948 gold medalist in the 200m and 4x100 relay). Athletes coached by Cromwell eventually set individual world records in 14 events and relay world records in three others, and won 12 Olympic gold medals during his time at USC."
Scott Raczko