Cleveland Guardians vs. Atlanta Braves, August 15, 2025
Guardians manager Stephen Vogt has become known for his ability to connect with players.Joshua Gunter, cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Which sport gives coaches the opportunity to make the most significant impact on a team’s success?
On the latest Terry’s Talkin’ podcast, listener Ron Rychener from South Carolina raised the question, and cleveland.com columnist Terry Pluto and host David Campbell tackled it head-on.
While both agreed that football coaches have the greatest influence on their team’s performance, they diverged significantly on which sport ranked second.
Campbell made a strong case for football coaches’ supremacy.
“I think football has the greatest impact because there are 11 guys on the field on every play. If one of them doesn’t do their job, the play blows up,” he said. “Things have to be working in synchronization. There’s so much detail and coaching that goes on in football and it’s just so intricate that a bad coach will never have a good team.”
Pluto concurred with football coaches having the most impact, comparing the job to “running the Pentagon.”
However, Pluto placed baseball coaches second and basketball coaches a distant third, flipping Campbell’s order
Pluto’s reasoning? The overwhelming influence of superstar players in basketball.
“LeBron James hooked up with David Blatt to go to the NBA Finals,” Pluto explained. “You either have LeBron James or you don’t... a star in basketball has a greater impact than the other sports because he’s just out there with everything.”
Pluto elaborated on this key distinction: “In football, as great as your quarterback is, he doesn’t play defense. Baseball, unless it’s Shohei Otani, he doesn’t pitch and hit.
“Both LeBron James, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, we watched the other night. They’re involved in like every play in the game.”
This omnipresence gives basketball superstars an outsized influence that diminishes a coach’s impact, Pluto said. While strategic elements remain important, Pluto argued that a basketball coach’s primary job often becomes managing egos rather than X’s and O’s.
To illustrate his point, Pluto shared a revealing anecdote from his interview with legendary Celtics coach Red Auerbach.
“I remember talking to Red Auerbach... He made Bill Russell the player/coach of his team. And he said, ‘One, I knew it’d be very hard to get anybody else to coach Bill. But secondly, I knew Bill as the coach would really make Bill as a player deliver. And because again, Bill Russell’s on the court... he’s playing.”
The discussion pointed to how the structure of each sport dictates a coach’s influence.
In football, with its complex schemes and specialized roles, a coach must orchestrate numerous moving parts.
In baseball, managers make countless strategic decisions throughout a game’s 27 outs.
But in basketball, five players on the court mean a single transcendent talent can override coaching decisions.
The podcast highlighted how a team’s success often results from the specific relationship between coaches and players rather than a universal formula.
While schemes and strategies matter, the human element — how effectively a coach communicates and connects with their personnel — often proves more decisive than tactical brilliance alone.
What’s your ranking, and why? Email it to sports@cleveland.com, and put “Terry’s Talkin’” in the subject line. It may be chosen for inclusion on next week’s podcast.
Here’s the podcast for this week:
You can find previous podcasts below.