Starting with this edition of PCA Connector, Jim Thompson's essays also appear at his blog, titled Life Lessons from the Playing Field.

You know how sometimes you don't know what you think until you say it?  I was interviewed by Doug Lederman of Inside Higher Education about college football coaching awhile back, and I realized as I talked that coaches sometimes function like monopolists.  And history tells us that when companies become monopolists, it's not good for customers, suppliers or employees.

Typically monopolists have a source of power that protects them from the consequences of their ill-advised actions.  With coaches, that source of power often is a winning record.  John Madden once said that winning is the best deodorant.

If you win, people tend to interpret your behavior extremely generously.  If you bully players through verbal abuse, for example, it's because you have their best interests at heart, rather than the simpler explanation-bullies bully because they enjoy exerting power over others. And having a monopoly often leads to bullying.

When you use questionable means and get good results, it's easy to believe your good fortune is due to your wonderful decision-making, character traits, human decency, etc., rather than the fact that as a monopolist, you have power that all of your competitors lack.  Thus, any challenges to decisions seem especially irritating to a monopolist.

But bullying is not a sustainable leadership style.  Sooner or later most bullies get done in.  I am reading a fascinating book about the reintroduction of the wolf to Yellowstone National Park, Decade of the Wolf by Douglas W. Smith and Gary Ferguson.  In it, they profile alpha female "Number 40," the "full-blown tyrant of the Druid Peak Wolves," the largest and strongest pack in Yellowstone.

Number 40, who "throughout her life was fiercely committed to always having the upper hand," wrested control of the pack from her own mother, who left the pack and was shot not long after.  Number 40 terrorized other female wolves, especially her sister, Number 42, and may have been responsible for the death of 42's pups while giving 42 a "nasty trouncing."

Meanwhile, 40 was not creating any friends among the pack.  Later, when both 40 and 42 were with their new pups, 40 attacked 42. But this time 42 was surrounded by "friends," and apparently they beat 40 so badly that she did not survive.

Number 42 then assumed leadership of the pack and raised 40's pups as her own. She also invited a much lower status wolf -- Number 106, whom Number 40 had especially terrorized -- to bring her pups into 42's den. Number 106 went on to thrive under 42's benevolent leadership and 106 would "show herself highly capable of leadership, becoming among other things the finest hunter in the pack."

Sports history is replete with powerful coaches who get away with bullying their players and subordinates as long as they win.  Then when there is "blood in the water" and the bully appears vulnerable, often due to a losing season, the knives (or teeth) come out to exact revenge.

But the real tragedy of a bully as leader is how it limits the potential of team members (106s lurking in the shadows).  When you are afraid of telling your boss he may be wrong, you are not going to grow into your own potential as a leader.  Assistant coaches who do only what they are told seldom evolve into the kind of superb leadership team needed to reach sustained excellence. 

And athletes who learn only to jump when told to jump and be quiet otherwise are not going to develop their own leadership abilities. 

Across this country, thousands of 106-equivalent athletes with great potential are hunkering down to avoid being bullied rather than learning to become all they can be.  And that is not good for those players, a team, for our society or even, ultimately, for the bullying coach.

So down with the coach as bully and up with the leadership style of Number 42!