I am not sure where to put this book. Seth Davis is a
nationally known sports reporter and he is a very good sports writer. The prose
that he commits to paper reflects his sports reporting background, and to be
clear, he is a very good sportswriter. He tells his stories well and he has a
fine sense of the internal stories of his subject. The stories are taut and
always gives perspective on the person being featured.
But there is a problem with this book, many problems
actually.
It is a collection of nine profiles of successful coaches;
almost all of them have succeeded in their profession and are recognized as the
leader of athletes. Some have well defined personalities and known reputations,
others are relatively new to the limelight and benefits from not being
ubiquitous in the media spotlight. One
problem is that the chapters are relatively short, which makes for easy reading
but it also make the profiles seem rushed and incomplete. Davis is seemingly
trying to make his points and then rushing to demonstrate the challenges and
obstacles they have faced in their inner life through anecdotes and personal
histories without really examining how those headwinds affected their coaching
philosophies and execution of their philosophies. What we get is a laundry list
of what they do and examples. Davis lays out the facts as a reporter and then
he links the professional practices of these coaches with the facts, but he
never drills in deeply into the why’s of the relationship between the fact and
practices. It isn’t a fatal flaw but it left me wondering. To be fair, he
states in the introduction that this was not the intent of the book, it still
leaves a void, a road not taken which could potentially be productive.
Another problem is that Davis uses a unifying theme to tie
the coaches’ profiles. The theme is the title of the book: Getting To Us. He
explains the theme thus: “A team begins as a collection of me’s, him’s and you’s.
It is the job of the coach to figure out a way to get to Us.” A noble yet
unoriginal theme, as our sports culture has always revolved around teams and teamwork.
Davis uses the acronym PEAK to describe the desired characteristics of a coach
to enable this ability to see the big picture and get the team to Us. PEAK is: Perseverance,
Empathy, Authenticity, and Knowledge. Davis tries to apply these four
characteristics to the story of each of the nine men and tries mightily to
squeeze details about their experience and make up into these four niches. The
effort seems forced and at times are inspired and at times clichéd. Davis
stated that he only intended to highlight PEAK and try to connect those characteristics
to Getting To Us. The results are uneven at best, mostly disappointing.
The coaches that came through with their reputations
enhanced are Geno Auriemma, Doc Rivers, Brad Stevens, and Dabo Swinney. Stevens
and Swinney are relative new to the national spotlight so the portraits are
excellent at revealing their stories to us, through the Davis filter. Auriemma
and Rivers were revelations to me, their stories were fascinating even though a
little short. Rizzo came through unscathed yet also unenhanced.
One thing that Davis did was to give a portrait of these men
that are unadorned, he reaffirms the portrait of coaches like Meyer,
Krzyzewzki, Harbaugh, and Boeheim as they have been portrayed previously in the
press. He does however, go into explaining why they are the way they are, he
was not very successful. Urban Meyer
came off as somewhat reasonable until the recent troubles at Ohio State with
Zach Smith. Ironically, Davis also featured Meyer’s wife Shelley, in this
profile. Davis never fully explained Krzyzewzki’s decision to deal with Grayson
Allen’s transgressions the way he did, other than repeating his defense.
Harbough came off like a petulant child at times, albeit a very successful one.
Boeheim reaffirmed his public persona as prickly personality, even though he
seems more sympathetic.
If you came to this book as a means to get any insight on
Getting to Us, don’t waste your money. If you can to read some quickie
portraits of nine successful coaches, I would say go ahead and read this book,
although I would also advise you to temper your expectations.
