A Quote by Dick Vitale

When I was growing up, I wanted to be a coach. I had people telling me you can't do this, you're not a great player. Be realistic. When I got rejection letters from colleges where I wanted to coach, my mom would say, "You are going to make it someday. You have something special within you and that is your spirit for life which will help you get to the top."
The word coach comes from the old English word coach, which was a vehicle, a carriage that took royalty or very important people from where they were to where they wanted to go. That's really what a coach is. He or she tries to create a vehicle that will help you get where you're going, not where the coach wants you to go.
I can't be a hypocrite as a coach because as a player that's what I wanted. I wanted feedback, I wanted communication from the boss. I showed up for work, you can yell at me if you want, but I want input. So that's the kind of coach I want to be.
In 1990, I was an assistant coach at Providence College, but I knew I wanted to get married and have children. I did not think I could be a great basketball coach and be a great mom.
My mom never had nothing that she could call her own. So growing up and being able to do something different with basketball and be a special player, that was something that I've always had in my mind, I've always wanted to do. And just having the opportunity to do it for my mom is an incredible experience.
Everything started with my mom. When I was five, she asked me if I wanted to sign up for soccer, but I had some pretty wild contract demands. 'I'll only play if you're my coach.' So my mom went to the library and brought home a bunch of books on how to coach soccer, and that was it. She was my first manager.
I had a coach that was not a great player, but he taught with kids and juniors so that by the time he was 50 he was great. He helped me make the top 5 in the world and yet he wasn't a great player himself.
My dream was to become a rec league coach. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to stay home and help the kids out and be a coach.
In life it wasn't what you know, but who you know. I had people who were trying to buy teams and had they bought the teams, I would have gotten to coach because they wanted me to coach. But the people who have the teams hire their friends.
I coach at Rutgers University and help out there as a part-time assistant coach. I feel like the coach is kind of in me, and it would also be great exposure, so I'd be down for it, for sure.
I thought I would make it (to the NBA). I believed that I would make it. But I had a Plan B. I was going to get my Master's degree at Tulane University had it not worked out. I think the pressure of making it wasn't on me as great as some other players that had no other options. I was going to do something special in life and I wanted to play in the NBA. I had a backup plan but I went full speed ahead with my Plan A.
But after a few minutes of convincing myself that I really wanted to go - telling myself that I love skating and that my coach is there waiting for me - I would get up and go. And my mother would always get up and eat breakfast with me!
Head coach of the England team demands management skills that Brian does not have. We had a head coach who wanted one thing, other coaches who wanted other things. The players hadn't a clue what was going on. Somehow we'd managed to turn our World Cup campaign into a Monty Python sketch - called The Life of Brian.
No one likes getting hit. It's a normal thing... I used to make up excuses when the coach would ask me to get in the ring. I'd say I forgot my mouthpiece, or I'd say I had a headache or something.
Guardiola was a very special coach for me, the first when I was at Barcelona. He is a great coach, a lovely person, and I have very good memories of that time, but I would have liked to have had a full year with him.
As a 26-year-old player I had tried to understand why I was doing certain things and why the coach was telling me to do certain things. I started to view myself as a coach would.
When I moved out, my mom and dad came to help me get settled into my apartment - a place I ultimately got hooked up with in Coach Nelson's building. We had to figure out how to get all my shoes over here. That was a little stressful.
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