How much influence does a coach have?

In a new study, Harris Public Policy academics estimate that coaches account for between 20 and 30 percent of the variation in team results. According to the research news website Futurity, researchers first created the approach to estimate the effects of political leaders on various economic and political outcomes. The method promises to conduct additional research to assess the impact of individual coaches and to better understand why and how coaches are important. The authors applied RIFLE to MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, college football, and college basketball.

We detected the effects of training in all sports, Berry and Fowler wrote. Our estimates generally mean that coaches explain between 20 and 30 percent of the variation in a team's success. As dominant as they have been under the steadfast guidance of Steve Kerr, they have been just as successful and, statistically, even more so during Kerr's two long absences from the team, when Luke Walton and then Mike Brown (not exactly Hall of Fame coaches) took over. Too many children stop playing a sport they appreciate because a coach thinks it's bigger than the game.

I believe that coaches are a vehicle for piecing together the pieces of the puzzle and showing athletes their purpose, which generates motivation. Researchers at the University of Chicago have determined that the impact that coaches have on the success of a team is significant and that some coaches are more effective than others. A coach or mentor can say something or set an example that impacts you and that sparks that motivation. NBA coaches and Golden State Warriors power forward Marreese Speights at an NBA Cares event at the Embassy Annex last August.

So we found it interesting that coaches matter even more in college football than in the NFL. Winning isn't everything at these stages of training young athletes, so developing sportsmanship, confidence and passion for the sport you train should be a top priority. Youth coaches have a big impact on the mentality and attitude of children for the rest of their lives and need to set a good example for their young players. If you wanted to say something about who is a good coach or a bad coach, you would have a much more difficult statistical problem, because it is very possible that someone could be left with a streak of good years.