There is an old adage that states head coaches are hired to be fired, and a vast majority of the time, this is true. In the NFL over the past couple of decades, the average tenure of a head coach has been 3.3 years. According to Business Insider, that average is higher among FBS college football head coaches, but not by much (3.8 years).

Another way to examine coaching turnover is to calculate how many NFL and FBS head coaching changes are made each year. The following table shows data from the last 10 NFL seasons.

Issues between universities and their athletic departments is nothing new, but since the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year, those issues have intensified and become even more complex.

The pandemic has had a major impact (financial and otherwise) on college sports, and caused schools to undertake some drastic cost-cutting measures. According to NBC News, 26 Division I schools have cut more than 90 sports programs this calendar year alone. These cuts have affected more than 1,500 student-athletes.

These cuts have clearly made an impact, but are the effects of the pandemic and subsequent sports program cuts considered significant to all…

I recently heard a question posed that really resonated with me: “Are sports organizations irresponsible if they don’t use behavioral data and assessments in the pre-screening and player development process if it’s available?” Which made me look closer at, when should we go with our gut, or when should we use hard data to make organizational decisions? I wanted to share.

Statisticians love numbers, but the mark of a good statistician is one who knows which numbers are important, which ones are relatively meaningless and understands the limitations of formulas and numeric data.

We would all like to have a…

Before every basketball game, be it a professional one or at the local high school, we’ll often see the players line-up and take their turns making lay-ups. These lay-up lines are done as a warm-up, a good practice considering the fact that lay-ups are one of the highest percentage shots hit during a game, but the question is, is this practice a little stale and dated? Think about this: every team does this. We see they have the same warm-ups, similar strategies, and yet, not all of these teams are performing at the same level. …

We know what we want in a new hire or in our teams: We want someone who is highly motivated, who has good character and strong talent. I know countless folks who have read the books or articles on leadership and hiring, and they’re very good at throwing out buzzwords like ‘grit’ and ‘gusto,’ but when I asked them how exactly they hire for ‘grit’ or what ‘grit’ even looks like to them, I often just get a shrug or a smirk and the response of I just know it when I see it. But is that enough or would…

A lot of folks who haven’t taken assessments roll their eyes at personality assessment tools. In tandem, many folks are subject to DISC, Myers Briggs, and a myriad of other tests and while results are being thrown at them, the root of why these tests are being administered are never explained. We’ve consistently stressed that it’s not the test alone that will give you all the answers. After all, how are you going to find the right answers when you’re not even asking any questions? By sitting down and asking can I learn more or can I get better with…

As I, and many others, have been reiterating over the last few weeks: the world as we know it is fundamentally different now, and who knows what kind of normalcy we’ll return to after all of this is over. While I’ve been thinking about where we are now and what people are looking for in this time of crisis, I took to heart some of the things my brother and I talked about the other day over some drinks. I’ll spare you every word of the conversation, but one of the more striking things he said to me was about…

Before we get anywhere in today’s piece, let me be clear that I understand how many of you here, given the current state of the globe, really have no option but to make these tough choices in regards to your organization. But I know there are people out there sitting comfortably with their businesses and organizations and still making drastic cuts or structural changes just for the sake of making capital gains, or using this pandemic as the scapegoat to make dangerous decisions for their workers in favor of shareholders.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about Disney laying…