Coaches in sports have to do two things: coach the players and manage the game. Both these tasks are very hard, which is why every head coach has his own coaching staff to help. But one of the things that assistants can't help with is making tough decisions. Sure they can offer guidance and different forms information to help the head coach, but at the end of the day the decision has to be made by the head coach and the head coach alone. I'm writing this article because I saw yet another coach make a tough-but-good decision and then follow it by saying it wasn't easy. Coaches hiding behind the phrase 'it's not easy' is one of my biggest pet peeves in sports because it is easy.
Tough decisions often come up when a player is not performing well or slumping. The coach usually gives the player time to work out the kinks and usually the player does. Every so often, however, a player just can't shake a slump and the coach is forced to bench him. If the benched player is a veteran, that's when the coach utters those dreaded words 'it's not easy.' The reality of the matter is that the decision was very easy. The guy isn't doing is job well, you leave him out there anyways, the guy can't turn things around, and so you remove him from his job. It is simple logic that goes on in any company. A coach's job is to win games. Anything that threatens a win needs to be changed or else it could cost the coach his job. Benching a slumping player is a relatively simple task compared to other challenges a coach faces.
The latest coach, well manager, to say those dreaded words was Fredi Gonzalez, manager baseball's Atlanta Braves. He said it wasn't easy benching second basemen Dan Uggla, who's average is barely above the Mendoza line (.200) at .208. The decision comes during the last month of the season when the Braves are fighting for a playoff spot, but, no, the decision to bench a largely ineffective player wasn't easy. Gonzalez knows that the decision was a no-brainer. Other slumping veterans that were benched this year in the majors were Chone Figgins of the Seattle Mariners and Vernon Wells of the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim). Figgins was benched so that younger players could get their chance while Wells was benched because 21 year old phenom Mike Trout exploded onto the scene and there Wells was left without a spot. All three of these decisions came at various points of the season and all were sound, logical, and easy. So why do managers say they aren't?
The answer lies in the informing of the decision, not the decision itself. When manager's say it's not easy to bench a veteran, he means it's hard to call a guy who has played the game a long time and knows his role into an office and tell him he's no longer in that role. It's the equivalent of demoting a long time president of a company to the mail room because the sales he's generating have been down for awhile. You need to have some big cojones to be able to do that. But even so, I still don't agree with coaches saying 'it's not easy,' because it goes without saying. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that benching a prominent player is a hard task to go through with. It also doesn't help any. Players do not find comfort in hearing their coach say it wasn't easy to bench them because it's just sugarcoating the fact that they are benched. And the media could care less how hard the decision was, they just want to know why and how long will it be in affect. The phrase is as useless as saying 'I love you' to your pet.
The bottom line is that coaching decisions are simple if they are looked at logically, and even though the act of benching a player is hard, you don't have to always say 'it isn't easy.' Coaching is hard, but it's not THAT hard.
References
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8333464/struggling-atlanta-braves-2b-dan-uggla-benched-martin-prado
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/7892116/seattle-mariners-remove-slumping-chone-figgins-lineup
http://halohangout.com/2012/08/18/vernon-wells-adjusts-to-life-on-the-bench/
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