Whenever a coach leaves a job to take over a new program, there are bits and pieces that he borrows. Maybe a coordinator here or a support staffer there. Perhaps he borrows practice blueprints and various organizational strategies. But how to affect players and get the best out of them is something that can be far more difficult to grasp. You can recruit at the approximate level of the best teams in the sport, but can you get them to actually perform? It’s the great mystery of team sports, especially with a bunch of 18- to 22-year-olds.
There’s a list a mile long of coaches hired off a coaching tree who aren’t able to replicate the success of their former bosses. You don’t have to think long to arrive at your favorite failed knockoff version of Nick Saban, who is himself a product of the Bill Belichick tree, which has produced similarly spoiled fruit. Whenever any coach is hired from a tree, fans focus on how close the on-field product develops in the Saban mold. But some of Saban’s most important work has been around the mental aspect of the game. The same can be said of Kirby Smart, and now Oregon coach Dan Lanning, who worked for both of them along the way to Eugene. In Athens, Lanning met Drew Brannon and Cory Shaffer of AMPLOS, a performance psychology firm that has worked with Clemson and Georgia, among various other corporate clients. The word is Latin for growth and development, and it’s the growth mindset preached that is a key foundation of how the Ducks have built success.
“You hear coaches say it all the time the game is 90% mental 10% physical, and I would say as a football coach, you always lean toward the physical, and that really becomes more than 90% of what you do,” Lanning says. “What I was able to learn from Drew and Cory, working with those guys, is how you can actually go attack the mental just as much as the physical, whether it be from a messaging standpoint, or you know, just understand how to how to connect with a guy and relate to a guy to get the result that you want.”
