03-22-2025, 05:48 PM
(03-22-2025, 08:42 AM)chimera Wrote:(03-22-2025, 04:33 AM)81alum Wrote:(03-21-2025, 04:58 PM)old spanish trail Wrote: .Coaching styles can be quite different, and different players mature emotionally at different paces, meaning that "fit" is indeed important. I think of Tara like Bill Walsh--coaches who treated their players as mature adults, almost professionally--in a day before they were actually professionals. Cori Close does indeed seem motherly and would be a better fit for a more vulnerable player. Both styles of coaching can be disastrous if taken to the extreme, and both can work if the fit is right.
Yes, thanks, and have to repeat I'm not biggly surprised. I love Tara, and believe Kate will do a terrific job, but Cory Close is indeed more "motherly" and was a better fit at that time in Betts' life. I don't think the "big girl" coach is still with us. And, as someone else mentioned, I will try to remember to be more sensitive to the fact that players might read comments made by rubes like us.
I have a hunch that the Cori Close style will not work so well in the era of paid college athletes. Being motherly with your employees is going to be a difficult combination to pull off.
The current state of college sports with NIL and the portal always in the back of mind, cannot be good for young athletes with mental health issues. There is already plenty of pressure playing a sport. Add in pressure when someone pays you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you are also using your social media to sell yourself, and you have heaps of pressure on them. Wait until they become employees with big paychecks. Employees have to perform a job or be fired. I cannot imagine athletes as employees who are not subject to the same rules as any other employee - perform or get replaced. More pressure there.
I feel for Betts and what she went through at Stanford and at UCLA. But she is also a highly paid athlete now. Can we still treat them as young people who need guidance and sometimes a little coddling and also as the pro athletes they are? Which predominates in the minds of fans? Are you a kid playing a sport? Aw, be kind, treat them like they are kids. Are they adult pro athletes who need to perform or there will be consequences? You are overpaid, you are not as good as we want, we need to replace you. Right now it is sorta both, and that doesn't really work.
Fair points made by both of you, but I think we'll have to wait until after this year, when the Bruins win their first NCAA championship, to see how it all works out.:)



