Getting to Us

by Seth Davis

  Swinney’s mother was in Tampa the night her son’s Tigers came back to beat Alabama. Carol is all for focusing on what’s in front of that windshield, but she also believes it’s important to check the rearview mirror from time to time as well. That’s why she put together three scrapbooks with pictures and photographs that detailed her childhood battles with polio and scoliosis, and included written explanations in the margins. She presented the books to her sons on Mother’s Day 2013. “I felt like they really needed to know before something happened to me,” she says.

  Because her curved spine presses against her organs, Carol experiences shortness of breath on occasion. That aside, she is in fine health for a woman in her seventies. She gets physical therapy on a regular basis and does a variety of exercising throughout the week, including Zumba dance classes for seniors. “I’m very active and very determined,” she says. “I do anything that I can to keep moving.”

  Still, she has her moments of sadness, as all of us do. When they arrive, she finds herself craving time with her son the coach. “It brings me to tears because I get to missing him some days,” she says. We are speaking on the phone, and she has to pause to get hold of her emotions. “I’ll look at his pictures, or I read his notes that he wrote when we lived together in that apartment. He could always make me see the better outcome.”

  It isn’t easy being apart from her sons while she stays back in Birmingham with her husband. Yet when Carol is feeling like this, she knows that all she has to do is hop in her car and drive for a few hours to Clemson, and she’s home again. She’s not looking for miracles when she visits Dabo, just a healthy reminder that no matter what losses she might have suffered, the season always starts tomorrow. “If I can just get up there and spend a few days with him, just listen to his little speeches and little sayings, it perks me up,” she says. “He can give you a good pep talk, that’s for sure.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The genesis for this book occurred during a visit I took to Stanford University in the fall of 2014. I was there to interview David Shaw, the school’s football coach, for my Campus Insiders show. After the interview, I went to a campus gymnasium and watched the basketball team practice while sitting with Jeff LaMere, an old friend who was serving as an assistant athletic director at the school. As I explained to Jeff about all the interviews I had been doing, he said to me, “You could write a great book on leadership.”

  The idea had not occurred to me, but the more interviews I did, the more I realized Jeff was right. So thanks first to him for planting the seed. Beyond that, I’d like to acknowledge the nine men profiled in this book. In order to really delve into how leadership is learned, developed, and implemented, it was imperative that I be able to assess my subjects from a close, even intimate, vantage point. The coaches were all generous with their time. In most cases, I interviewed them on multiple occasions. They were especially helpful in connecting me with friends and family who knew them best. That included their wives, who gave me the best nine interviews of this book, proving yet again that women are much smarter than men.

  Thank you to the media relations and sports information folks who helped to facilitate those interviews: Dave Ablauf (Michigan), Tim Bourret (Clemson), Phil Chardis (UConn), Jerry Emig (Ohio State), Jon Jackson (Duke), Matt Larson (Michigan State), and Dennis Rogers (Clippers). I’d like to give special thanks to Celtics assistant coach Micah Shrewsberry, who not only helped me with my Brad Stevens chapter but also made sure my sons got to meet Jayson Tatum at NBA Summer League in Las Vegas.

  This is the second book project that has gotten a major assist from Matt Craig, who as of this writing is finishing up his senior year at Ball State University’s Sports Link program. Matt is intelligent, conscientious, hardworking, and definitely headed into the Transcriber Hall of Fame.

  This book is ultimately about teamwork, and I was blessed to have two incredible partners throughout the process. Scott Moyers of Penguin Press was a fabulous coach. He was the one who suggested at the outset that I make this a book about coaches, and it was his expert prodding that led me to conceive of the PEAK profile and develop universal themes. David Black has become such a close friend that I tend to forget he is my literary agent. But he’s a damn good agent, and his voice in my conversations with Scott was critical in getting us to Us.

  Speaking of damn good agents, thanks to Sandy Montag, who doubles as my life coach without charging me extra.

  I would not have the opportunity to gain access to elusive subjects and write books about them without the incredible platform that Sean McManus and David Berson have provided me at CBS Sports. If you want to see what a winning team looks like, study the culture those two have established at that company. I will forever be grateful for the twenty-two years I worked at Sports Illustrated; so thank you to Stefanie Kaufman for hiring me. Thanks also to Jason Coyle and Josh Wine for creating The Seth Davis Show at Campus Insiders. And a huge thanks to Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann for giving me such an exciting opportunity at The Athletic. Besides being a great writing gig, running The Fieldhouse is the first chance I have had to lead my own team.

  I often joke to people that I have four jobs, three kids, and no life. The truth is I have four jobs, three kids, one dog, and a wonderful life. That’s due to the greatest life partner a man could ever ask for, Melissa Beth Cohen Davis. There is no question who wears the whistle in our house. Our sons, Zachary, Noah, and Gabriel, are the result of our teamwork. Thanks, guys, for putting up with my long hours spent traveling or hovered over my laptop. I love you more than words can say.

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