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The Education of a Coach
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 The Education of a Coach
by David Halberstam
Published by Hyperion
November 1, 2005
Hardcover $22.95
288 pages
Hardcover, Paperback, Audio CD |
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Can an
American Coach and a Book Deliver Success in English Football?
04-Feb-2007, Observer Sport Monthly
"Belichick constructed a team that could beat better
fancied, better funded rivals by being smarter than them, more alive to
the telling details, more clinical in drawing the correct conclusions,
less wrapped up in the whole hoop la of the sport. Belichick emerges from
Halberstam's account as a gloomy, slightly dysfunctional man in a sport
dominated by larger-than-life characters in every sense of that phrase – a rainman among the musclemen. But it turns
out that the rainman can tell the musclemen what they need to know to win."
full story |
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Belichick Still an Enigma to
Wordsmiths
21-Jan-2007, San Diego Union-Tribune
"Halberstam wrote a book that, like Belichick, is in no way
exciting but is a thorough examination of how some men can come
to be possessed by football. The game clearly has Belichick in
its thrall. 'What a curious, complicated man, a hard man to
reach and to understand,' Halberstam writes in his book's
concluding chapter. Indeed. In Halberstam's thinking, one of
Belichick's traits is to suppress his own ego, but he has to
have one or he would not have given Halberstam the access to him
that he did. To have one of the country's most eminent
journalists want to write a book about you is heady stuff."
full story |
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Halberstam Uncovers Insights in Book
01-Jan-2006, The Advocate
"Halberstam's research lends the book a weight other sports
books lack, with each anecdote building upon the previous one.
Detail by detail, Halberstam constructs a story that shows the
shaping of Belichick's philosophy, his emphasis on the team in
an era of unbridled athletic egomania, where players commonly
celebrate making a first down with their teams trailing by four
touchdowns."
full story |
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Game Plan for Competing on Field of Life
01-Jan-2006, News & Observer
"I have begun making a bold declaration: To prepare for
the future, you must read two books now: 'The World Is Flat' by
Thomas L. Friedman and 'The Education of a Coach,' David
Halberstam's short biography of Bill Belichick, the head coach
of the New England Patriots. The relevance of Friedman's
analysis of the today's globalized world may seem obvious to the
understanding of our situation, or at least more urgent than the
life of a football coach. But it would be difficult to find a
better model than 'The Education of a Coach' for success in the
face of withering competition. The book is full of lessons
Americans would be wise to heed as we contemplate Friedman's
flat world."
full story |
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WashingtonPost.com Online Chat with David halberstam
06-Dec-2005, Washington Post
"Through interviews with
Belichick himself, bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist David Halberstam examines Belichick's formative years
and the impact his father (Navy coach Steve Belichick) had on
his discipline, strategy and approach toward football.
Halberstam was online Tuesday, Dec. 6, at 2 p.m. ET to discuss
his new book, 'The Education of Coach,' and the life and career
of Bill Belichick."
full transcript |
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David Halberstam Still Finds Drama in Our Lives
02-Dec-2005, Investor's Business Daily
"While he has a record of excellence as durable as any
writer's, the 71-year-old Halberstam is as ambitious and
productive as ever. Last month, Hyperion published his 20th
book, 'The Education of a Coach.' It tells the story of how Bill
Belichick, a career football coach (and the son of one), rose
from the utter sports obscurity of tiny Wesleyan University in
Connecticut to lead the New England Patriots to victories in the
last two Super Bowls. As with all the great journalists, the
secret to Halberstam's success is that he can identify the
contradiction in a person's life and then synthesize the facts
to reach a conclusion. What intrigued him about Belichick was
that the coach represented such a stark contrast to our image of
the stereotypical macho football world."
full story |
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Inside the List: They rise and they curse you
27-Nov-2005, New York Times
Book Review
"What is it about men and football coaches? … Case in point:
The new book from David Halberstam, 'The Education of a Coach,'
which is No. 19 on the extended hardcover nonfiction list. 'The
Education of a Coach' lays bare the teachings of Bill Belichick, the
head coach of the New England Patriots. It's a good book, even if
Halberstam does, at times, make Belichick sound as if he's just
stumbled out of a Hemingway novel with a head wound. ('He did the
things he wanted to do the way he wanted to do them, because in any
given instance it was something he had thought about for a long
time, and he had decided his way was right for him.')"
full story |
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Remembering Steve Belichick
24-Nov-2005, PBS Online NewsHour
"Journalist and author David Halberstam discusses his new
book about the late Steve Belichick, a former assistant football
coach at the U.S. Naval Academy and father of New England Patriots
head coach Bill Belichick." A NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript,
with Jeffrey Brown.
full transcript |
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A Full Life Of Football, Till The Very End
22-Nov-2005, Special to the
Washington Post, by David Halberstam
"He was an exceptional coach himself, classically known within
the hermetically sealed world of college coaches as a coach's coach
and a truly great teacher. He was considered by many the ablest
college scout of his era, first in the period before there was very
much use of film and tape, and scouts had to do most of their work
with nothing save their own eyes from the press box, to the coming
of tape, where he still remained the master, someone who would run
the tape back and forth countless times looking for one more clue
about what an opponent was going to do. 'Steve had superior
intelligence and intellect,' Bill Walsh, the former San Francisco
49ers coach told me, 'and he not only saw the game as very few
scouts did, but as he was seeing it, he understood as very few
scouts did.'"
full story |
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Halberstam on Belichick
22-Nov-2005, WBUR
David Halberstam spoke with Bob Oakes
on WBUR, Boston's NPR News Source.
full audio | podcast |
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The Mozart of the Game Plan
20-Nov-2005, Boston Globe
"The great value of Halberstam's exploration of the coaching
profession and Belichick's place in it is the writer's refusal
to strike the facile pose of a cynic. Yet this is not a work of
hero worship. Halberstam is trying to understand and make
understandable how Belichick became, at least for a short while,
the best at a devilishly difficult profession. The writer cannot
take the reader into the film room to explicate the mysteries of
disguised zone defenses, but he does paint a persuasive portrait
of a man who has become the coach of coaches, the embattled
horseman who for the moment clasps the headless goat carcass on
his saddle."
full story |
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Transcript of Online Chat with David Halberstam
17-Nov-2005, Kentucky.com
Q: "Bill always downplays his place in history. He
never really comments on his teams place among the greatest of
all time or his own place among men like Lombardi, Paul Brown,
Shula, Noll, Walsh, etc. Did he talk with you at all about this?
Even if he won't admit it, he has to know how special and
unprecedented this recent Patriots run is." Halberstam: "He's very careful about talking about anything like that. He
has a considerable ego, you couldn't do what he does and coach
at that level in the NFL without it. But one of the things that
sets him apart is the control of the ego. It is used only for
the improvement of his team, never for the promotion or
celebration of self. And in a society like ours, with so many
television cameras watching the world of sports, that's a very
important distinction. He is really the unadorned man. His
signature is that great gray sweatshirt which he wears at all
games as if to say don't put your camera on me, I don't matter.
What he wants is respect and that's what he gets. Someone asked
me if it's fun for him. And I don't think fun is the operative
word. The operative word is satisfaction and I think he gets
great satisfaction by doing what he believes is the right way to
coach with the right emphasis on team and being successful at
the [highest] level. I think he is relatively immune to most of
the rewards, to the money and the fame. I think he'd rather
coach with less fanfare but I think he's also quietly very proud
of what he's done and he's going to let the record speak for
itself."
full transcript |
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A Proponent of 'Intellectual Agility'
17-Nov-2005, Andover Townsman
"When many people think about football, they picture a
violent and brutal game reserved for hulking men. Fewer
recognize football as a cerebral game, a contest of brainpower
between rival teams. But David Halberstam does, and he uses
Patriots coach and Phillips Academy alumnus Bill Belichick as
exhibit A. Halberstam, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist,
emphasized this fact during his well-attended talk at Phillips
Academy last Friday, Nov. 4. He presented Belichick as the
epitome of the intellectual agility that is at the core of
America's most popular sport. Promoting his book, The
Education of a Coach, Halberstam described Belichick as
'both a platoon leader and a commander-in-chief,' as willing to
do the menial work as to map out the X's and the O's."
full story |
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Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Halberstam Discusses New Book on
Bill Belichick '71
14-Nov-2005, The Phillipian
"Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and celebrated author David
Halberstam kicked off the tour for his new book, The
Education of a Coach, last Friday at Andover by holding a
question and answer session open to the Andover community. … Joining Mr. Halberstam was Ernie Adams '71, the Patriots'
Director of Operations and a classmate of Mr. Belichick's from
his years as a student at [Phillips Academy]. The two men
answered questions ranging from what the most challenging aspect
of coaching a modern football team is ('There's just so much
money involved,' said Adams), to the inner workings of Mr.
Belichick's psyche."
full story |
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Thorough Halberstam Checks Under the Hood
08-Nov-2005, Boston Globe
"Belichick didn't seem the ideal subject nor Halberstam the ideal
author for an 'as told to' book; however, the 'education of a coach'
approach seemed to work. 'I think his decision to cooperate was
because he felt it would be an homage to his father, a coaching
lifer and the best scout of his era,' said Halberstam."
full story |
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David Halberstam on The Dale & Holley Show
02-Nov-2005, WEEI
"A lot of people in the media want [Bill Belichick] to be
more charismatic, do these things, have more charm – and they're
angry at him when he isn't, when he is what he is, which is a
very good football coach. … It's almost as if they
subtract points in judging him because he is what he is – he's not charismatic. They
would like him to be more inauthentic. They'd be more comfortable if
he fit what they think a coach should be, rather than just being who he is."
full transcript |
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Halberstam Waxes Poetic About the Belichick Way
31-Oct-2005, John Molori's Media Blitz
"JM: Why did such a private man like Belichick agree to
participate in the book?
DH: A mutual friend brought us together about 18 months ago.
Bill tells his players not to have ego, so he had reservations
about the book. I asked if he would agree to do it as an 'as
told to' book with the emphasis on his education from his father
and other coaches he has known. In June of 2004, he agreed to do
the book. Still, he was not looking forward to the concept of
promoting the book during the season, so we pulled way back. We
basically wrote the book between May and July of this year."
full
transcript |
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Breaking Down Belichick: Author Halberstam offers a scout-like take on the roots of a
coach's coach
27-Oct-2005, Pro Football Weekly
"'The Education of a Coach,' the insightful new book
chronicling Patriots head coach Bill Belichick's roots from boy
wonder as father's apprentice to a Super Bowl-winning mastermind
tells a well-wrought story following Belichick's rise to
greatness in a very deliberate and careful way. Author David
Halberstam … as he has for years as one of the country's great
historians and psychologists, tells the story of a coaching
junkie and complex man through many eyes, most quite earnestly,
and gives us a view into the clinical mind of a man obsessed not
only with playing to his own team's strengths but also with
taking away an opponent's best skill."
full story |
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