Press Box or Sideline?

by: Richard Scott
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Let’s face it: whether you’re coaching in the NFL or the local youth league, the sideline can be a dangerous neighborhood. No one is safe as aggressive athletes, wearing suits of armor and running full speed, hurtle toward their destinations with violent intent. Usually they knock the spit out of each other, but every once in a while, they end up plowing into the innocent crowd on the sideline, scattering coaches, players and officials like bowling pins.

Ever been one of those bowling pins? Former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer has been there and done that, back in the mid-1980s, and suffered a knee injury when a Missouri player rolled into him on the sideline.

Current East Carolina defensive coordinator Tim Rose experienced a similar fate this season, suffering a knee injury during a kickoff return in the TCU game.

“The tackler and the ball carrier were coming toward me,” Rose said. “I had nowhere to go. I tried to get out of the way, but I got rolled up.”

Current Tennessee secondary coach Larry Slade wasn’t fortunate enough to take a shot to the knee. Instead, he took a helmet to the face during the SEC championship game against LSU and needed 30 stitches to close the gash under his left eye.

“I saw it on tape,” Slade said. “It was one heckuva shot.”

And one heckuva good reason to get off the sidelines and go watch the game from a safer location, like, say ... the press box.

Wisconsin coach Barry Alvarez tried it two years ago, but not by choice. Two knee operations and a new artificial knee forced him to spend seven games in the press box. It wasn’t his favorite way to coach a game, but it was better than the game he saw from his hospital bed.

“My team and my assistants might not want to mess with the good thing they’ve got going,” Alvarez said late in the 1999 season. “I can’t get in their face as well from the press box.”

Besides, Alvarez learned a thing or two from his spot in the press box.

“I had to take a look at things and realize there were some things we could accomplish from the press box that we couldn’t from the sideline,” Alvarez said. “When you’re up there, you can have a reasonable conversation with your coordinators, rather than being down there with bullets flying.”

Eventually, though, Alvarez returned to the sidelines and he’s been there ever since, and he’ll probably spend the rest of his head coaching career on the sidelines, unless health issues demand otherwise.

Why? Because the game is played on the field, between the sidelines, and for many coaches, the sidelines are the best way to affect the outcome of the game.

So what’s the best location for a coach? The sidelines or the booth? The view from the field or the view from the sky? The intensity of the game viewed from up close and personal, or the intellectual analysis of the chessboard from above?

The answer, simply, is: both.

No, we’re not trying to take the easy way out here. At the same time, we’re not trying to take a stand either way. Instead, we’ll go with a quick survey of college coaches who told us that both locations have their benefits. Ultimately, the decision to coach from the sidelines or the press box appears to come down to two basic issues: player needs and coaching style.

Think about it: is your quarterback an experienced senior and three-year starter who can communicate effectively by sideline telephone, or an inexperienced sophomore in need of more direct contact on the sideline? Are your defensive linemen a bunch of hard-nosed, assignment-sound self-starters who might need some pointers from the press box, or do they need a swift verbal kick in the backside when they come off the field following a touchdown?

And how about you? Are you more of a cerebral coach who keeps his emotions in check and his mind spinning with ideas and analysis during the game? The sideline might offer more distractions than you need to be an effective coach. Or, are you one of those fiery coaches constantly on the move during the heat of battle? At worst, you’re either likely to hurt yourself or someone else in the confinements of the press box. At best, some of your best qualities might be hindered by the press box environment.

With all this in mind, let’s explore the opinions of coaches who have seen both sides of the equations and believe they have found the right location to work effectively.

Mike Stoops, Oklahoma’s co-defensive coordinator, has explored both views and found that he is more effective on the sidelines.

“The advantage of the booth for a secondary coach is to see everything – the routes, the positioning,” Stoops said. “On the sidelines, you can see the routes, but not the whole picture and the positioning of the defense like you can up there.”

Having experienced both views, Stoops chooses to coach on the field in part because of the changing nature of the game. With teams passing the ball more frequently and productively, defenses are using more defensive backs. The more defensive backs he uses, the more difficult it becomes for Stoops to communicate with all of them from the booth.

“The thing I like about being on the field is that you get a chance to communicate better with your players,” Stoops said. “The secondary has just too much happening, with all the adjustments and everything, to be in the booth. We play a lot of five- and six-DB sets now, and it’s just too hard to relay everything you want to say through another coach or the GAs.”

Stoops’ fiery personality also factored into his decision. Anybody who’s ever watched him coach from the sideline can tell he’s really into the game, and that fervor can be a real asset on the sideline.

“I’m obviously animated and enthusiastic during the game, and I feel like my players feed off that,” Stoops said. “Sometimes you’ve got to fire your guys up if they’re not playing well. I like to see what their body language is like during the games. Everyone acts differently during a game, and on the field you can see what they need. You might need to pat somebody on the butt, but you might need to chew somebody out, too.”

The sideline might offer more distractions than you need to be an effective coach.

Mississippi State defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn tried the press box once, and he’ll never go back.

“It was a long time ago, back in the ‘70s when in one of my previous jobs I was scouting a game at Tennessee,” Dunn said. “From the press box, the players looked like ants. That stadium now is so much bigger, you can imagine what the players look like.”

Dunn has always called his defensive signals from the sidelines, but this is also the same guy who never wears a headset and set his players from memory, experience and instinct, rather than a sheet of paper.

“I designed the defenses, so I know everything about them and where everybody is supposed to be,” Dunn said. “If something goes wrong, I know who didn’t do his job.

“Everybody has a different way they like to coach a game. To me, I call a game by feel. I get my best feel by being down there on the sideline.”

Brent Pease spent the first few games of his first season as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator in the booth, but eventually moved down to the field to work directly with Kentucky’s young quarterbacks, sophomore Jared Lorenzen and redshirt freshman Shayne Boyd.

“The thing that made a big difference for us was that I had more communication with the quarterbacks and the receivers,” Pease said. “Where I was at before (Montana), the kids had been doing it so long and new how to control things themselves. At Kentucky, I wanted to see what they were seeing and what they needed, and being on the field opened up the lines of communication and helped us make better adjustments from series to series.”

As Kentucky’s quarterbacks grow and gain more experience, Pease might end up back in the press box.

“When I was an assistant at Montana, I always sat in the press box because I could always see what was going on, see the adjustments by the defense, and I felt like I could be a couple of plays ahead instead of getting caught up in the game,” Pease said. “But moving down (to the field) now, I’ve matured and I do a better job of keeping with the flow of the game and making the calls that need to be made.

“I still think I lose out some by not being able to see what the defense is doing, like if they’re sending in different personnel, knowing their moves, like a chess game.”

Randy Sanders, in his fourth season as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator, moved from the coaching booth to the sideline this season, making this past season the first time in at least 20 years that the Vols’ offensive plays were called from field level. Previous offensive coordinators David Cutcliffe, Phillip Fulmer, Walt Harris and Al Saunders all worked from the booth.

Sanders wasn’t trying to be different, though. He just knew he needed more direct contact with his players.

“I like being able to be on the field to talk to the guys face to face and be able to look them in the eye when you are talking to them and get a feel for the emotions of the game,” Sanders said. “”I don’t see as much as I did before in the press box, but I like talking face-to-face with my quarterback. In the press box, you are separated from those emotions.”

Cutcliffe, now the head coach at Ole Miss, always preferred to the view from the booth for his play calling needs, but now calls the plays from the sidelines.

“It’s an adjustment,” Cutcliffe said. “I enjoyed the ability to see everything from the press box and quickly make adjustments. On the field, you have to rely on coaches in the press box for information before you call a play. We spend a lot of time on down and distance planning before a game, so there’s not a lot of stuff left to decide before we get out there and play.”

Cutcliffe’s star quarterback, Eli Manning, is another reason why Cutcliffe might need to be on the sidelines.

“It’s good for me because I can go to the sideline and Coach Cutcliffe is right there,” said Manning. “We’re able to talk right there, and he gives me an idea of what we have, what we can run that will be good. Plus, I get to know what he’s thinking face to face and not on a headset.”

Like Cutcliffe, Georgia coach Mark Richt called his plays from the press box when he served as the offensive coordinator at Florida State. This season, his first as a head coach, Richt moved to the sidelines and continued to call plays.

Richt said he always liked the press box as a coordinator because he could “spread out all my play sheets and tape them to the desk.” This season, he had to condense all his plays on the front and back of a single sheet of paper so he could keep his entire play sheet in hand on the sideline.

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