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Piece 3: When the Work Compounds (San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon, November 2008) How I got to the start line Between Fulda in 2003 and San Antonio in 2008, my life got in the way of running. I deployed to Iraq. I came home. I damaged the meniscus in my knee running a half- marathon the year after I got back. The knee took its time getting diagnosed and worse, and by September 2007, I was on a table at Fort Polk getting it surgically repaired. The recovery from that surger

Piece 2: What Experience Is For (Fulda Marathon, Germany, September 7, 2003) Two years after I ran the Marine Corps Marathon, I was stationed in Würzburg, Germany, working on the division staff. My friend Mike and I had become close in that job and had deployed together to Turkey. Somewhere before we left for that deployment we got to talking about distance running. He said he wanted to run a marathon someday. I said I’d run one already and would love to take another shot at

Piece 1: The Rookie Race (Marine Corps Marathon, October 2001) We’ve talked a lot about leadership lately, about culture, vision, and the hard work it takes to build lasting programs. For the next few weeks, I want to take a different direction. Over the past twenty-four years, I’ve run seven marathons. Looking back, I learned more about myself, both as a person and a leader, through training and racing than I ever expected. Marathons often serve as a metaphor for anything in

Leadership isn't tested when things are calm. It's tested when the pressure rises, the ego gets invited in, and someone has to decide whether the standards still apply — especially to themselves. Two of the most respected coaches in basketball just gave us a live demonstration. After a heated Final Four moment between Geno Auriemma and Dawn Staley, Auriemma later apologized publicly and said he had "lost himself." The apology, however, didn't name Staley. It address

Leaders love to talk about motivation. How to create it, how to inspire it, and how to get more of it from their teams. But here is the reality many leaders miss: by the time performance is being tested, it is usually too late for motivation. Years ago, while commanding at Fort Lewis, I was out for morning PT when I came across a soldier taking his Army physical fitness test. He was on the two-mile run, grinding through the turnaround point at the one-mile mark. Running besid

How Great Leaders Build Consistency in an Unpredictable Environment Every leader wants consistency. We want consistent performance, consistent habits, and consistent results. That is the standard. But most leaders chase it in the wrong place. We try to control the environment. We try to eliminate variables. We try to create predictability in a world that does not cooperate. Rosters change. Injuries happen. Rules evolve. The environment refuses to stay still. So the question i

Why the Idea of Balance Falls Short The phrase work-life balance is widely used, but rarely examined. It sounds appealing on the surface, yet it creates an expectation that is almost impossible to meet. Balance implies a scale, something evenly distributed and consistently maintained. It suggests that time and energy can be split equally between work and life, as if both operate in predictable and stable conditions. Leadership does not work that way. Life does not work that w

Every coach reaches a point where the skills that brought you success are no longer enough to move you forward. At first, coaching is all about mastering your craft. You earn your reputation through technical skill: breaking down film, designing smart plays, running smooth practices, and helping players grow. The results are easy to see. When practice goes well, performance gets better. When performance improves, you win. And when you win, you move up. This approach works bec

Culture Isn’t a Slogan. It’s Behavior. In athletics, culture is often discussed but rarely defined. Real team culture is not about slogans or locker-room posters. It is the cultivated behaviors that leaders reinforce every day that, when aligned with purpose and standards, create a powerful competitive edge. Every coach is searching for a competitive edge. Coaches study new schemes. They invest in technology. They analyze performance data and look for any advantage that might

Soon, many tributes to Lou Holtz will appear. While most will provide more detail than this, they will cover his coaching career, the championships, memorable moments on the sidelines, and his decades-long influence in college football. This is not a complete account of Lou Holtz’s life. Instead, this is my personal reflection on someone I have admired and tried to follow. For much of my adult life, I have learned from his leadership ideas, his views on life and work, and the

Leadership accountability requires clarity, composure, and respect. The Jerome Tang situation offers a powerful lesson in holding standards without damaging culture.

The scoreboard doesn't lie. Neither does the film. Yet too many coaches fall into the trap of measuring success by the volume of drills run, hours logged, or plays installed rather than the quality of execution and actual game-day performance. Championship cultures aren't built on busyness—they're built on precision, purpose, and relentless focus on fundamentals that matter. Competitive greatness, as Coach John Wooden defined it, is "performing at your best when your best is

A full military career is full of different assignments, different locations, and different experiences. Even when you spend an entire career inside a single specialty (armor, infantry, aviation, logistics, intelligence) the range of units, leaders, missions, and cultures you encounter is wide. The uniforms look the same. The doctrine is the same. The standards are supposed to be the same. But the reality is not.

Summer of 2020 Most leaders are built in peacetime but judged in wartime. Peacetime is where you build identity, culture, discipline, and systems. Wartime is where you’re forced to act under stress, make decisions with imperfect information, and defend the mission when the world is watching. Crisis doesn’t change who you are; it exposes who you already were. I learned that lesson viscerally in July of 2020 when I assumed command of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Div

Sports, man. What a game. And yes — coaching matters. Leadership matters. Previously, I wrote that “if you want to win championships, you need to build a championship culture — on purpose.” The 2025–26 Indiana Hoosiers just demonstrated that lesson with a clarity that should force every athletic director, business leader, and sports fan to recalibrate their thinking about what winning really takes. They didn’t just get better players. They didn’t just get richer boosters. The

I’m taking a break from football, culture, and coaching talk on the blog this week to celebrate one of my heroes. Command Sergeant Major Timothy A. Bolyard would have turned 50 this week. That number feels heavy to me. The older I get, the more I notice how strange time is. It moves quickly when it’s passing, feels slow when you look back, and seems unfair when it’s cut short.

Why do we assume coaches must choose between winning games and developing people? This reflection challenges that false tradeoff and shows how trust, purpose, and discipline create teams built to last.

Most leadership failures in sports don’t come from a lack of effort or discipline—they come from leaders who were promoted for performance without developing the skills or identity required to lead others. That pattern reveals a broader truth about leadership, particularly in athletics: most people are promoted for performance, not for leadership readiness, and the two are not the same thing.

Coaching is demanding in ways most people never face. Leadership is always tough, but coaching stands out because your wins and losses are public and judged right away. It puts a lot on your shoulders, exposes your weaknesses, and makes everything feel bigger. For those in charge, it can feel like living in a pressure cooker.

The sporting world watched with interest over the past six weeks as Lane Kiffin, former head football coach at Ole Miss, went through a very public game of “The (football) Bachelor”.