Don Shula said¹:

A lot of coaches have a tendency to stay too long with people with potential. We call them coach killers. As soon as you find out who the coach killers are on your team, the better off you are. You go with the guys who may have lesser talent, but more dedication, more singleness of purpose. You spot them and stick with them because in a big game, they’ll win it for you.

Shula is one of the most succesful coaches in the history of the NFL, including mentoring the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the only team in the sport’s history to go undefeated in the season and win a Superbowl.

There’s many a bitter fan of whatever sport who has spent numerous frustrating seasons who’ll find a resonance in Shula’s words.

Now, Shula may have been talking specifically about the NFL, but I think this is a caution that one can apply far beyond just sports, or only people for that matter.

See, it’s about a particular mindset and personality type. It’s about people who just keep letting you down. It’s not that they can’t do the job, or can’t be more responsible or whatever. It’s not that they’re bad, either. In fact, that’s the worst part of a coach killer — sometimes they do come through. They are not inadequate or stupid or plain bad people. Sometimes they show glimpses of the quality of worker or person they can be. Sometimes they are courteous and conscientious.

And then, just when you get your hopes up that maybe they’ve turned a corner and things are going to be better now, they let you down. Usually badly.

It would be better if they sucked, if they were obviously not up to playing in a higher league. Not skilled enough to master the job requirements. Plain assholes as people.

Whether you’re  a coach, an employer, a family member or a friend or, for that matter, a fan of the writer/ actor/ musician, the choice is easier when it’s straightforward. When they suck.

Coach killers don’t suck. They show you just enough that you invest in them. That you caution yourself to patience. That you remind yourself some writers bloom late, that actors and filmmakers and musicians do make comebacks all the time, that players and employees who might look the least capable initially can and do turn out to vindicate your faith. People go through rough patches. Some take longer to settle. Some as youngsters are the kind of wild and reckless wash-ups that only their truest friends and parents can continue to love and support but we always believe there’ll come a moment when they make the conscious choice to make something of themselves, when they’ll reward what so often comes down to nothing but blind faith on our part.

And they do, many of them do reward that faith.

When people are young, when players are in the beginning of their careers, when employees are new, and when gadgets and internet tools are fresh and wobbly — they 100% resemble coach killers.

They are the same, on the outside, on results and behavior.

The difference lies on the inside, where we can’t see, in the mind and personality.

The one person will reward your patience a 100 times over. The other will break you.

Coach killers will drain you — of hope, of money, of resources, of attention, of everything. They’ll take and produce only enough so you can never get yourself so far as to finally cut them loose, to sever the ties.

Make no mistake — the coach killer is the one who absolutely, always, ends up being the one who benefits, who thrives while you wane. Those moments when they suddenly look like they might have turned a corner, when you get your hopes up all over again, is just part of this particular personality — probably so deeply ingrained they have no control over it — and nothing but an illusion. Call it an evolutionary strategy. A technique the parasite employs by instinct when it senses its host is about to harden itself, cast it off, cut it loose.

The parasite can’t survive on its own. But the only way it can survive is to, inevitably, bring down the host, wither it, reduce it.

In sports, we call them coach killers, these young men and women who never seem to shape up. As fans, these are the writers who’s books we keep on buying even though they disappoint us again and again and again until finally we can’t handle the insult anymore. And it is an insult when they serve drivel and expect us to keep dishing out our money.

ah, hell, you know these writers and bloggers who’re always going, “please link me! please tweet me! please review me! please comment me! please help me! me, me, me!” I promise you many of them are nice and kind and will be wonderful and grateful so long as you dedicatingly bitch yourselves to them, and they will be nice and kind when you don’t, and I guarantee that when they day comes that you ask them for a favor, they’ll turn around and walk away. When you refuse to be of service to them, they will forget you ever existed and find a new eager bitch.

You want this kind of online “friend”? You want to keep supporting this kind of writer or actor or singer? You want this kind of player on your team?

Forget that and let’s get serious about coach killers:

The real life equivalent of coach killers are sociopaths. I struggle to fathom the pschological make-up of these people. Why they become the way they are and how they can just keep on being the way they are without regard for others, how one person can so deliberately use another. How to tell them apart, absolutely, from those who’re just a bit wilder and reckless and callous for a brief time. Yeah, this latter group look like fuck-ups, they screw up plenty but they can and do turn it around. Coach killers have no intention to stop using other people.

I do know you can’t afford to have these people in your life. You cannot afford to let them sink their hooks into you. I do know you must harden yourself 365 and a quarter days² for so long as you both shall live.

Coach killers won’t kill you. They’ll simply destroy you and then move on to the next host.

They are parasites, the non-mutually beneficent kind. They are our friends and family. That’s not the scary part, it’s the hard part. Giving up on friends and family, giving up on people, is never easy and never should be.

Sometimes you have to.

1. I saw this quote on Turf Show Times, a blog passionate about the St. Louis Rams [↩]
2. 366 in leap years [↩]

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