Superstition
Why Roy Williams owns his quirks
A while ago, I was at a dinner with a club chairman, and he asked me about the consistent traits that I’d observed in elite coaches.
I think he was expecting me to answer along the typical lines: great motivator, hard working, organized.
But that’s not what came to mind.
“Neuroticism,” I said.
“The job sends you a little bit bonkers,” I added, before silence befell the room. He didn’t ask me any more questions after that.
I’ve found that you have to be a little bit crazy to be a head coach, but once you’re in the job you end up closer to certifiably crazy. In this line of work, calm people start jumping at shadows, small obsessions start becoming big ones, and odd quirks start turning into full-blown superstitions.
Which is why I appreciated former UNC Tar Heels basketball coach Roy Williams writing about his coaching superstitions in his book.
In 1982, while Williams was still the assistant coach with UNC, the Final Four was held in New Orleans. One of the food vendors on Bourbon Street told him that it was good luck to spit in the Mississippi River, so every day he’d walk down to the waterfront and spit into the river.
North Carolina went on to win the national championship, so anytime his teams played along the Mississippi he continued the tradition.
(Having Michael Jordan and James Worthy on the 1982 team might helped the winning part, but who knows…?)
Here are some others Williams writes about:
Before every home game at Kansas, he’d go for a jog, stop at Phog Allen’s gravesite, pat the headstone and say, “Doc, we need all the help we can get tonight.”
If it was a particularly big game, he’d do the same thing at Dr. James Naismith’s gravesite as well.
He never got a haircut on the day of the game.
If he wore a tie for the first time and the team lost, he’d never wear the tie again.
He had to nap before every game.
Of his funny list of superstitions, Williams writes: “Common sense tells me that the result of a basketball game does not depend on whether or not I got a haircut that day, but it settles my mind to think that I have done something to help us win. As a coach, I feel really limited about how much I can affect the game. I just want to say I’ve done my part.”
I’m all for it.
If it helps settle your mind to put your right sock on first, kiss the grass, eat coco puffs for breakfast and wear lucky underwear, I’d urge you to go for it.
Our objective is to be more human, and superstitions are deeply human. If you have them, lean in!
And besides, do we really know that it wasn’t Williams spitting in the Mississippi River that won UNC the 1982 national championship?