ROCKNE of Ages
The Untold Pictorial Story of a Football Icon
EXCERPTS
PEDAGOGY
Excerpt from the Chapter
__________________
"Coaching is more than teaching, in that coaching must not only teach, but in addition must persuade and convince as well. In coaching we are concerned not only that an individual should know what to do, but that he should have, in addition to the knowledge, the ability, the inclination, and the determination to do it. This involves a good many factors which are not essential in ordinary teaching, but which are very real part of coaching."
— KNUTE ROCKNE
__________________
For some inexplicable reason, physical educators seem to have the idea that they have a monopoly on all the big words in athletics, so that when a football coach mentions “pedagogy,” the average physical educator responds by chuckling. The football coach will allow the physical educator a monopoly on such words as “kinesiology,” “somatic,” and “anthropometry,” as those don’t impress too many folks anyway.
An experienced coach knows that motor coordination is developed through drills and exercises of the right kind, and that distance discernment of the eye and muscle of the arm can be developed and improved upon by practice. As for producing large, bulging muscles, that is absolutely devoid of any particular meaning.
But when you come to pedagogy – that is a football coach’s real dish.
The average professor goes into a classroom, gives his lecture, and leaves. His attitude is distinctly one of “take it or leave it.” He may flunk half the class and everyone is awestricken. The coach, however, has to be a super-teacher. He must see to it that the class learns what he has to teach. If he flunks half his class, he flunks with them.
It is not what a coach knows, it is what he can teach his boys, what he can make them do.