Coach 'em Up!

With Jack Del Rio getting the axe, I did a little background search on his coaching resume. While doing that, I ran across Mike Tomlin and John Harbaugh. One would think they have a clear progression up the coaching tree. Basically Tomlin was a Defensive Backs guru and Harbaugh was a special teams guy. Then bam, all of a sudden they apply for a head coaching gig and are tearing it up. They aren't even former players of "The Shield." Obviously there is no set criteria for determining what will make a great coach and what will make a loser. The ingrediants are different for all of them. Why one succeeds and another fails usually comes down to the groceries, but how do you explain Jim Harbaugh and Brady Hoke in their first year success?

Good News

All those hours put in coaching kids in baseball may be teaching them more than pitching and hitting. A quote from this article at The American:

But below the radar of popular athletic culture is something that has profoundly shaped the lives of millions of Americans for the better: youth sports. A growing body of research is showing the social and economic benefits of participation in youth sports to be surprisingly large and overwhelmingly positive. Other things being equal, if a kid plays sports, he will earn more money, stay in school longer, and be more engaged in civic life.

Now, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's coached kids, but it certainly is nice to see evidence.