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”.

If you spend time with young leaders like assistant coaches, new managers, or rising captains, you’ll often hear the same answer when you ask, “What kind of leader are you?”

Spend any time on a practice field and in a motor pool, and you’ll notice similarities in language. We rally around the mission, refuse to let our teammates down, preach next man up, and dig deep when it’s the fourth quarter. We leave it all on the field and trust the process. The vocabulary overlaps so naturally that it almost goes unnoticed. But the real connection isn’t linguistic—it’s foundational. The language is the echo. The roots run much deeper.