Whitey Herzog went into the HOF yesterday

by Jay, San Diego, Monday, July 26, 2010, 09:10 (5798 days ago)
edited by Jay, Monday, July 26, 2010, 09:16

I'll spare you my hagiographic memories of the White Rat, the greatest baseball manager in the history of the sport, but I was thinking about an essay that Bill James wrote about Herzog's management skills in the 1988 Baseball Abstract (his last Abstract). James broke down baseball management to three levels of responsibility: (1) game-level decision making, (2) team-level decision making, and (3) personnel management and instruction. James praised Herzog as a manager who had command of all three areas, and who often "made decisions on all three levels at the same time", giving some examples of such. I wish I still had my hard copy of this, because it's not available on the web, but it was a great essay not just about Herzog but about baseball management in general.

I think college football coaching probably has similar levels of management, but the circles might be drawn a bit differently and include different responsibilities than in major league baseball.

For starters, you've got a much bigger roster with more specialized areas of instruction. That means delegating a lot of the instruction (3), the roster choices (2), and even the game-level decision making (1) when you consider the authority granted to offensive and defensive coordinators. For the HC, this of course means a greater emphasis on the management of assistants and the ability to delegate than in baseball. Tony LaRussa hands off the pitching to Dave Duncan, but in terms of specialized skill instruction, Brian Kelly keeps the QB coaching to himself and has to delegate 1) OL coaching to Warriner, 2) DL coaching to Elston, 3) secondary coaching to Martin, 4) special teams instruction to one or more people, etc. Much more delegating.

There's also a much wider circle of responsibility in personnel management. College football coaches are also their own general managers, recruiters, and directors of player development, responsible for not just the starting 22 on game day but the entire "farm" system as well.

These are just some random ramblings on a Monday morning, but Herzog and James got me thinking.