Winning is everything, right? Well, if you’re a coach in any sport, it is, if you want to stay employed for an extended period of time.
However, there’s more to success than just winning, but how you win. If you win fair, then you can sleep easier at night. If you don’t, you still may be able to sleep just fine at night, but you and many others might be out of a job if you don’t do things the right way, and your program will be left feeling the ramifications of your indiscretions (see Kelvin Sampson and Indiana).
Succeeding the right way is one of the qualities that the winner of the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year award must fulfill, and in case you hadn’t seen already, the four winners of the 2008 award were Alabama’s Nick Saban (I-A), James Madison’s Mickey Matthews (I-AA), Pittsburg State’s Chuck Broyles (D-II), and Mount Union’s Larry Kehres (D-III).
Saban is a worthy winner, no doubt, because he led Alabama to a fantastic season. The Crimson Tide ran unbeaten through the rugged SEC in the regular season, and though their season ended with consecutive losses to the teams that finished the season ranked #1 and #2 in the AP poll, ‘Bama’s 11-2 campaign was their best in many years, and saw the Tide return to the kind of national prominence that their passionate fans expect.
There were many worth finalists all around, but personally, among the finalists for the I-A award, I’d have picked Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald. Still one of the youngest head coaches in the country, he’s already been on the job for three years, and the third year was certainly the charm for the Wildcats, who went 9-4 and made the Alamo Bowl. And they did it without a team full of five-star recruits and flashy stars, or a great deal of national media attention.
If you want to read more about any of the four winners or any of the finalists, check out the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year site.
