‍Leadership: the movies and the coaches

‍“The President’s Navy, my boat.”

‍“Claw for that inch”

‍“I’m the best person to present my calculations.”

‍“When we get them on the run once, we're going to keep ‘em on the run.”
“You've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body.”

‍“Only the winners perfect the little things.”

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‍I thought it was time to take a break from the “war stories” and have a little fun. 

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‍Leadership is among my favorite subjects. It is an art and a science. Americans of all ages love great leaders, they love to be led by great leaders, and they have long been in love with movies that demonstrate such leadership.

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‍I have seen several movies that strike a chord with me when it comes to leadership.

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‍Three come to mind right away. "Crimson Tide," "Any Given Sunday,” and “Hidden Figures.”

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‍I'm going to present short transcripts, one from each movie that especially inspired me. I'll then provide a transcript of a newsreel film made by Coach Knute Rockne of Notre Dame, and then a speech made by Coach Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers. I’ll close with some thoughts presented by Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant of Alabama's Crimson Tide football team. 

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‍Take all this together, and you get a good sense of what leadership is all about.

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‍To start, I’ll steal from The Soldier’s Handbook:”

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‍“No man is a leader until he is ratified in the minds and hearts of his men.”

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‍"Crimson Tide"

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‍In "Crimson Tide," Capt. Frank Ramsey (Gene Hackman) was the skipper of a nuclear missile submarine, the USS Alabama, to wit, "Crimson Tide." If you’ve seen it, you might think I will write about how the executive officer, played by Denzel Washington, stages a mutiny against the captain, played by Gene Hackman. 

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‍No, that’s not what got me.

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‍I was invigorated by the captain lining up his sailors in the dead of the night, in pouring rain, to establish himself as the skipper in each and every mind. With all hands standing, he communicated with his Chief of the Boat, Mr. Cobb, played by George Dzundza.

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‍I have transcribed what they said. The skipper's words are in regular type, the chief of the boat in bold.

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‍"Little Ducks! There’s trouble in Russia. So they called us. We’re going over there and bringing the most lethal killing machine ever devised. We’re capable of launching more firepower than has ever been released in the history of war. For one purpose alone. To keep our country safe.

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‍"We constitute the front-line and the last line of defense. I expect and demand your very best. Anything less, you shoulda joined the Air Force! (Sailors and officers all laugh heartily).

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‍"This might be our commander-in-chief’s Navy, but this is my boat. All I ask is that you keep up with me. And if you can’t, that strange sensation you’ll be feeling in the seat of your pants will be my boot in your ass. (Sailors and officers all laugh heartily).

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‍"Mr. Cobb!

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‍"Sir!

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‍"You’re aware of the name of this ship, aren’t you, Mr. Cobb?

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‍"Very aware, sir!

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‍"It bears a proud name, doesn’t it, Mr. Cobb?

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‍"Very proud, sir!

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‍"It represents fine people.

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‍"Very fine people, sir!

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‍"Who live in a fine and outstanding state.

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‍"Outstanding, sir!

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‍"In the greatest country in the entire world.

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‍"In the entire world, sir!

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‍"And what is that name, Mr. Cobb?

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‍"Alabama, sir!

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‍"And what do we say?

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‍"Go Bama!

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‍"Go Tide! (Crew responds)

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‍"Chief of the boat. Dismiss your crew.

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‍"Dismiss the crew. Aye, aye, sir.

‍"Crew. Attention to your department. Fall out."

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‍And the crew runs like gangbusters up the ramp and into their assigned positions. The crew was fired up. I was fired up and was just watching a movie! The movie has lots of twists and turns, and a clever plot, but at the end of the day, it's this pep talk I will never forget.

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‍"Any Given Sunday"

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‍This is a football movie. Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino) is the head coach. They're in a big game, and his team played poorly in the first half. So D'Amato gives his team a talk from the heart, from deep in his heart, a soliloquy that will force you to do something really wild, like punch out a telephone pole, or go try to tackle a 40-year-old tree at full speed. This is knockout stuff.

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‍I've transcribed Coach D'Amato's speech while listening. Remember, it's halftime, his team is way down, he's got them in the locker room with only so much time left until they have to go out again, and he stands in front of them and talks. Jimmie Brown, the great fullback from Syracuse and the Cleveland Browns, is standing there behind the coach, and the look on his face reflects the seriousness of the situation --- no foolin' around here.

‍Here's Coach D'Amato.

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‍“I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today. Either we heal as a team, or we’re gonna crumble—inch by inch, play by play, till we’re finished. We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light; we can climb out of hell. One inch at a time.

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‍"Now, I can’t do it for you. I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces, and I think, I mean, I made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, ah, pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror.

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‍"Ya know, when you get old in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s, that’s part of life. But you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out, life’s a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small, I mean one half a step too late, or too early, and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it.

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‍"The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second.

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‍"On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know, when we add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the (expletive deleted) difference between winning and losing, between living and dying.

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‍"I’ll tell you this. In any fight, it’s the guy who’s willing to die who’s gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore, it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch.

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‍"Because that’s what livin’ is. The six inches in front of your face. Now I can’t make ya do it. You gotta look at the guy next to ya. Look into his eyes. Now I think you’re gonna see a guy who will go that inch with you. You’re gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it, you’re gonna do the same for him.

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‍"That’s a team, gentlemen. And, either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals.

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‍"That’s football, guys ---- that’s all it is.

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‍"Now, what ’ya gonna do? "

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‍Of course, they went out and got 'er done, with incredible emotion.

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‍“Hidden Figures”

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‍This is the true story about four Black women mathematicians at NASA—Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden—who made crucial contributions to NASA's early space missions. They were all top graduates of historically black colleges. Yet they had to work away in segregated offices under Jim Crow laws.

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‍Of the three, Katherine Johnson stood out to me, played by Taraji P. Henson. She played a vital role in delivering calculations no one else could come up with for John Glenn’s orbital mission days before the launch, under incredible stress.

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‍Before getting into the calculations, I’ll offer the point in the movie where Katherine returned soaking wet after running across the NASA campus in order to get to a bathroom for black people. Her boss asks, “Where the hell have you been. Everywhere I look, you’re not where I need you to be.” 

‍Katherine responds that she has been in the bathroom. The boss gets pretty angry and asks, “For 40 minutes a day? What do you do in there? We are T-minus zero here. I put a lot of faith in you!”

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‍Katherine then takes control,

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‍“There’s no bathroom here. There are no colored bathrooms in this building or any building outside the West Campus, which is half a mile away! Did you know that? I have to walk to Timbuktu just to relieve myself! And I can’t take one of the handy bikes. Picture that, with my uniform: skirt below the knees and my heels. And don’t get me started about the simple pearl necklace I can’t afford. Lord knows you don’t pay the coloreds enough for that. And I work like a dog day and night, living on coffee from a coffee pot, half of you don’t want me to touch! So excuse me if I have to go to the restroom a few times a day!” 

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‍Everyone in the room is startled. She made her point, and the boss went to the restroom she had been using and knocked down the door that said “Colored restrooms” and said, “There you have it! No more colored restrooms. No more white restrooms. Just plain old toilets. At NASA, we all...pee the same color!”

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‍Katherine’s courage prevailed. But she was not finished. She urged the boss to let her attend the critical Space Task Group briefings, which would be a break in protocol for women attending, especially a black woman. 

‍Katherine will not take “no” for an answer, and says, “I feel like I’m the best person to present my calculations.” The problem was that they needed a Go/No-Go landing point in the ocean. 

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‍During the discussion, Katherine again startles the group, and spoke up without anyone asking her to, in response to, “What’s the speed now?” She blurts out, “17,544 miles per hour at the time the rocket delivers the capsule into low space orbit.”

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‍The room looks to Katherine to take charge, so she goes to the chalkboard and starts calculating before everyone’s eyes,

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‍“The Go point for re-entry is 2,990 miles from where we want Colonel Glenn to land. If we assume that’s the Bahamas, at 17,544 miles per hour upon recovery, at a descent angle of 45.56 degrees, that puts the landing zone at 25.0667 degrees North, 77.33333 degrees West, right there, give or take 20 square miles.”

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‍Katherine went on to perform calculations for the Apollo 11 and Space Shuttle missions. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and NASA dedicated the Langley Research Center's Katherine Johnson Computational Building in her honor the following year.

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‍Katherine’s actions yielded respect. She demanded to be acknowledged, and she displayed uncanny perseverance, not one to quit, not one to be belittled, but rather one filled with self-confidence and positive drive. After she was done with these big wheels, they all were looking to her for the answers, for leadership.

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‍Knute Rockne

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‍Remember Knute Rockne? He coached Notre Dame football in the 1920s. The Knute was a showman, and in the late 20s recreated a pep talk for newsreels. It was designed to reflect his motivational techniques. Here he goes,

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‍"And the same backfield, Jimmy, you and Collins, Chevigny, and Niemiec. Now, the success of any team men is based on team-play -- the same as you've shown all year -- sacrifice, unselfish sacrifice! These are the fellows they say are pretty good, but I think we're better! And I think if we get ourselves keyed up to a point, and when we're confident of that ... why the results will take care of themselves.

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‍"All right, now. On the kickoff -- if we receive, the zone men will drop back to the receiver and block long -- that old Notre Dame style. If we kick off -- which the rest of the teams want -- let's run down fast -- just as fast as you can run. And then we go on defense. And on defense -- I want the center in and out of that line -- according to the situation. Use your old head! And I want you guards charging through as far as you can go -- on every play. Expect the play right over you every time.

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‍"And the tackles -- I want you to go in a yard and a half -- and then check yourselves. Spread your feet -- squat down low -- and be ready with your hands and elbows, so you won't be sideswiped. But I want the ends in there fast every play. Every play, but under control. And you men in the backfield there, I want you to analyze it before you move. If they throw a forward pass, a zone pass, wait ‘til you see the ball in the air -- and then go and get it! And when we get it, boys, that's when we go on offense. And that's when we go to ‘em -- and, don't forget, we're gonna pick on one tackle that is weak.

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‍"We're going inside of ‘em, we're going outside of ‘em -- inside of ‘em! outside of ‘em! -- and when we get them on the run once, we're going to keep ‘em on the run. And we're not going to pass unless their secondary comes up too close. But don't forget, men -- we're gonna get ‘em on the run, we're gonna go, go, go, go! -- and we aren't going to stop until we go over that goal line! And don't forget, men -- today is the day we're gonna win. They can't lick us -- and that's how it goes... The first platoon men -- go in there and fight, fight, fight, fight, fight! What do you say, men! “

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‍Vince Lombardi 

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‍Coach Vince Lombardi was a Catholic and was on his way as a young man to be a priest, but changed his mind and changed schools. He played fullback for the football team at St. Francis Preparatory High School.

‍He then played at Fordham University, a 170 lb. guard, part of the famous "Seven Blocks of Granite" on the front line --- Leo Paquin, Johnny Druze, Alex Wojciechowicz, Ed Franco, Al Babartsky, Natty Pierce, and Vince Lombardi. There's Lombardi in a photo at Fordham, all 170 lbs., a lineman.

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‍After college, he worked for a financial company, took law school courses at night, and played semi-pro football for the Wilmington, Delaware Clippers. He then took a teaching job teaching Latin, algebra, physics, and chemistry, and coached the football, basketball, and baseball teams.

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‍Lombardi went on to coach the defensive line at West Point, where he refined his leadership skills during his six-year stint with the Long Gray Line under Coach Earl "Colonel Red" Blaik. Then on to the New York Giants, where he stayed for five years as a defensive coach. He then took a risk, wanting to be a head coach, and took the head coaching job at Green Bay, a perennial loser, with only one win the previous year. The rest is history.

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‍This speech by Lombardi is billed as his #1 Speech.

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‍"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

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‍"There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that's first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There is a second-place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.

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‍"Every time a football player goes to play his trade, he's got to play from the ground up - from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That's O.K. You've got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second.

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‍"Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization - an army, a political party, or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win - to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is.

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‍"It is a reality of life that men are competitive, and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That's why they are there - to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules - but to win.

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‍"And in truth, I've never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head-to-head combat.

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‍"I don't say these things because I believe in the 'brute' nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he's exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.

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‍Coach Lombardi led the Green Bay Packers from nothing to five league championships and two Super Bowl championships in nine years.

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‍Paul “Bear” Bryant

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‍Let's finish up with a college football coach I admired greatly as a young guy. I was a New York boy, a northerner, and there were two teams I respected a great deal, the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Alabama Crimson Tide. 

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‍I loved the Razorbacks largely because I loved their chant, "Whoo...Pigs Sooie!" I loved The Tide because of their coach, Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, "The Bear." The "Bear" of the Alabama Crimson Tide brings us back to the USS Alabama and the movie, "Crimson Tide," where we started.

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‍“You boys were eight and ten years old last time Alabama was on top. That was before any of you were paying much attention to it. What are you doing here? Tell me why you are here. If you are not here to win a national championship, you're in the wrong place. You boys are special. I don't want my players to be like other students. I want special people. You can learn a lot on the football field that isn't taught in the home, the church, or the classroom. There are going to be days when you think you've got no more to give, and then you're going to give plenty more. You are going to have pride and class. You are going to be very special. You are going to win the national championship for Alabama.”

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‍“It’s awfully important to win with humility. It’s also important to lose. I hate to lose worse than anyone, but if you never lose, you won’t know how to act. If you lose with humility, then you can come back.”

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‍“Listen, does your boy know how to work? Try to teach him to work, to sacrifice, to fight. He better learn now, because he’s going to have to do it some day. Lloyd Hale was a sophomore on that first team we took to Junction, and he asked me one time what I meant by “fight.” Well, I don’t mean fistfight, like we used to do back in Arkansas, I told him. I mean, some morning when you’ve been out of school twenty years and you wake up and your house has burned down and your mother is in the hospital and the kids are all sick and you’re overdrawn at the bank and your wife has run off with the drummer, what are you going to do? Throw in?”

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‍“I don’t hire anybody not brighter than I am. If they’re not brighter than I am, I don’t need them.”

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‍“If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it. That's all it takes to get people to win football games for you.”

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‍“Little things make the difference. Everyone is well prepared in the big things, but only the winners perfect the little things.”

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‍“When you get in the endzone, act like you've been there before.

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‍Americans love leadership --- they love to lead, and they love to follow good leaders.

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