Author's note: This article was originally published here at www.aarontorres-sports.com)
The word cool is one of the most relative, subjective adjectives in the English language. What’s cool to one is by no means cool to others.
But as sports fans, we are surrounded by cool. The cool young player, the hip veteran, the flashy rookie. Coolness permeates from LeBron James’ pores, Manny Ramirez’s swing, and Roger Federer’s backhand. We see it every time another athlete dates a model or shows up at a Hollywood event.
Coolness is all over sports. Except in coaching.
Coaches are the anti-cool, guys who spend long hours in the office, whine to the media, and, in many cases, appear to have poor hygiene. NFL coaches are workaholic grumps, baseball managers are usually portly and easily winded even on a short stroll from the dugout, and the guys in charge in the NBA usually look better suited to sell you a ’94 Mitsubishi than teach the intricacies of the pick-and-roll.
But not all coaches are like this. There is a rare, select breed that can elicit a premium response from his players on the field while also appearing right at home in the press room. Guys who can make a speech and get every guy on his couch ready to go to battle for them.
They’re few and they’re far between, but they’re out there. Here are the 10 coolest coaches in sports.
10. Terry Francona, Boston Red Sox
I’ve got to admit, I’ve had my beefs with Francona in the past, and most certainly will in the future. I think he changes pitchers too often and could use his bench more efficiently.
But he’s also won two World Championships in five years, where they hadn’t won any in the 86 years prior to his arrival. And in Boston, winning championships is the only way to get yourself on the front page of newspapers.
Francona will never be known as one of the astute minds of the game, but that’s not his prerogative. With his incessant dugout shaking and constant stares into the distance, he looks like someone who’s just seen a ghost, not the manager of the most consistent team in baseball over the past half a decade.
He’s more of a friend to his players than stern figurehead: think of Francona as the 35-year-old on your street who still lives with his parents and plays video games with the neighborhood children. Not an authority figure, but not quite on the other side of the coin either.
But as the players change, and the egos—Nomar, Pedro, Manny—continue to get shuffled out of town, the wins keep piling up. The Red Sox were one win away from a World Series berth a season ago, despite the constant Ramirez drama and nagging injuries to David Ortiz and Josh Beckett. They were a team that was literally held together by athletic tape and bubble gum. And they were also held together by Terry Francona.
9. Urban Meyer, Florida football
More than any other sport, college football has a wide variety of personalities, all with varying degrees of success. While Pete Carroll hangs out in the California sunshine all week, Meyer is a calculated Midwesterner, who, in the course of four seasons at Florida, has completely changed the dynamic of the sport.
Meyer burst onto the college football landscape in 2004 as the head coach of the University of Utah, which went undefeated that season, routing an over-matched Pitt team in the Fiesta Bowl. Meyer parlayed that season into a gig at Florida, arguably the best and perhaps most stressful job in the sport. It took the new coach just two years to wrap up his first National Championship—albeit with someone else’s players—and win a second this season.
Upon arriving in the swamp, Meyer vowed to have the fastest team in college football and he’s got it. There’s no one close. The Gators fly around the field on defense and blow past people on offense. Defensive tackles chase down the oppositions running backs, while Florida’s skill position personnel run circles around the other team. Now everyone’s recruiting 5-foot-10-inch jitterbugs for their backfields rather than the power guys who were getting scholarships three years ago.
And those 290-lb. defensive linemen? Boring! Get me somebody that’s 265 lbs. and runs a 4.5 40. With Tim Tebow and the entire defense returning for another season, Florida will again be the favorite to win the National Championship. But it’s not only Meyer’s players who are the fastest around; their coach is blowing by the competition too.
8. Jim Leyland, Detroit Tigers
No list of the coolest coaches would be complete without Jim Leyland. He’s the quiet guy at the end of the bar, cigarette lit, whiskey in hand, not saying a word. From your vantage point, he doesn’t appear to be taller than 5’6", but you’ve got this nagging feeling that if you look at him the wrong way you’re going to get a pool stick over your head.
That attitude and image is what has made Leyland one of the premier managers in Major League baseball for the past 23 years. It started with Bonds and Bonilla in Pittsburgh, progressed to the Florida Marlins and their 1997 World Series championship, and wound through Colorado before ending up with the Detroit Tigers.
While he’s only got that one ring, respect follows Leyland like the stench of a hard days' work. Even now, in his mid-60s, Leyland commands respect and gets it. In his first year in Detroit, the once-struggling franchise found its way to the World Series, and no small reason was Leyland. While the Tigers struggled in 2008, better times are to come; Leyland wouldn’t have it any other way. He's a perfect fit for the city.
With a cigarette in mouth (he actually used to smoke in the dugout until it was banned) and a fungo in his hands, Leyland is ready to lead the Tigers back to the top of the AL Central. Don’t the sound of that? Go talk to the short guy with the mustache over there.
7. Mike D’Antoni, New York Knicks
Defense has never been a buzz word for cool in the NBA; it’s about as hip as playing Go Fish with your grandma. But it wasn’t until D’Antoni came along that defense went from uncool to a legitimate four-letter word.
In his four full seasons as head coach of the Phoenix Suns, D’Antoni’s teams averaged 58 wins per season under his offensive philosophy of “seven seconds or less,” which essentially meant that he wanted his team to have the ball up court and a shot hoisted within seven seconds of gaining possession. Sure, the Suns never won a championship, but in the process D’Antoni’s offense made Steve Nash—a middle-of-the-road NBA point guard for most of his career—into a two-time NBA MVP, and took good players like Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion and turned them into superstars.
More importantly, it made the NBA fun to watch again. After years of being subjected to watching the Spurs and Pistons grind their way to a lot of 88-81 wins, here came a team and coach which wanted to push the ball, score a lot of points, and get fans on their feet.
D’Antoni and Phoenix parted ways this past spring, and the coach found his way to New York, where basketball and winning haven’t gone hand-in-hand since the Patrick Ewing-Pat Riley era of over a decade ago. Sure, the Knicks aren’t ready yet to compete for a championship, but they’re playing competitive basketball with the spare parts of David Lee, Nate Robinson, and Al Harrington that Donnie Walsh has been able to scrap together.
In the process, the team has been able to shed a lot of bad contracts and even worse egos, all with the intention of making a run at LeBron James in 2010. Whether the Knicks get him or not, only time will tell. But if you were looking for an indication of how James would fare in D’Antoni’s system, you got it Wednesday night when the King had a 52-point, 10-rebound, 11-assist explosion playing against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden.
The bottom line is this: James is already sewing up a Hall of Fame career and will likely go down as one of the Top 10 players in the sports history. But if he wants to go down as the best ever, there might only be one place do it, and with one man—D’Antoni—as his coach.
6. Les Miles, LSU football
Miles is a relative newbie to the pantheon of cool coaches, but my guess is that he’ll be here for some time. With his trademark purple windbreaker and perfectly-positioned LSU cap, The Mad Hatter (as ESPN’s Rece Davis has named him) is one cool customer.
And, he's cool in the toughest situations. In his early time in Baton Rouge, Miles was often denied credit for his successes, as his wins were simply the byproduct of Nick Saban’s players. But that changed in fall 2007, as Miles entered the season with the No. 2-ranked team in the country and a realistic shot at a national championship. In the tightest game of the early season against Florida, Miles rolled the dice time and time again, converting five of five fourth downs in the game and sealing the first of many big wins on the season.
Two weeks later, rather than setting up for a potential game-winning field goal in the closing seconds against Auburn, Miles again went for it, and Matt Flynn completed a touchdown pass to Demetrius Byrd. The pass sealed a Tigers victory with one second left. LSU went on to win the 2007 National Championship and solidify Miles’ fate as one of the coolest coaches in the game.
While 2008 was a struggle, there’s little doubt the Tigers will be back on top. They recently secured the top high school recruiting class of 2009 and players continue to come to Baton Rouge to play for LSU. Time and wins will tell if Miles can stay on this list, but if the youth of America think he’s the coolest coach in the SEC, than who am I to disagree?
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