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Pregame Speeches Can Be Deceiving

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By MICK ELLIOTT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 26, 2007

Updated: 11/26/2007 12:11 am

Florida Gators men's basketball coach Billy Donovan's words, spoken with a firm voice that rose and dropped to fashion perfect emphasis and effect, were powerful and inspiring.

Decide for yourself. Delivered in front of a CBS camera and shown minutes before tip-off, Donovan's pregame address before Florida's 2006 NCAA championship victory against UCLA lives on through the magic of YouTube.

"Tonight is not about the past," the coach says, standing in front of his seated team, head swiveling back and forth to make eye contact with each player. "And it's not about the future. It's about right now. And you guys have got to want this night to last forever. ... Live in the moment. Cherish the moment. And go out there and play like a team."

Every piece of evidence suggests Donovan's call to arms lit a fire that powered Florida to monumental play. The Gators roared out of the locker room to take quick and complete control, building a 13-point lead in the first 12 minutes and running off to a 73-57 victory.

Except that it didn't happen quite that way.

Donovan's speech, although passionate, eloquent and motivating, most likely had little impact beyond providing CBS' broadcast with an extremely fine lead-in. It was, after all, taped at the network's request more than an hour before the coach's actual pregame address.

"What I said was very, very sincere," Donovan said. "It was real. It was not made up. I am never going to get in front of my team and say, 'Guys, I got to do this. It's going to be staged and I really don't mean it.' I did not do that.

"But ... that's actually not what I said right before we went out."

Pregame speeches, they aren't necessarily what you think they are - and, quite probably, never have been.

Fact is the granddaddy of all motivational speeches - Knute Rockne's "Win One for the Gipper" - never took place except in Hollywood. That does not, however, prevent the phrase from being history's gold standard for all locker room inspiration.

The rousing speech that supposedly inspired overmatched Notre Dame to an upset of a very good Army team in 1928 earned its way into popular culture after the 1940 movie "Knute Rockne - All-American." The phrase "Win One of the Gipper," stuck with the young actor who played George Gipp - Ronald Reagan.

To inspire his team, Rockne reputedly repeated a conversation with the dying Gipp:

"I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it and I'll be happy."

Only problem is historical facts report Gipp was too ill to speak during his hospitalization and that doctors had performed an emergency tracheotomy. Also, there is no record that Rockne, supposedly irritated by Gipp's reputation as a wild partier, drinker and gambler, even made the hospital visit.

Yet, the legend took roots. And if that was not enough to shape perceptions of how pregame speeches should be delivered, along came Gene Hackman in "Hoosiers" and Al Pacino in "Any Given Sunday."

Now, former coach Lou Holtz can be found on ESPN's "College GameDay" giving selected teams a pep talk. This is particularly interesting since Holtz is on record calling the traditional locker room speech greatly overrated.

"I remember when I was in college," Holtz said. "The coach gave the greatest pep talk pregame. I was so fired up and then I go down on the opening kickoff and a guy hits you in the throat and you can't remember a word he said. Where you have to do it is during the week; to me, Thursday and Friday were the most important."

Most everyone agrees.

"It sells really well in movies and sells well on 'SportsCenter,'" sports psychologist Bob Rotella says of rah-rah. "If you are playing well, yes, emotion can last for an entire game. But it's not the emotion from a pregame pep talk.

"Most people are going to be talking about execution, game plans and strategy. Or going over basic fundamentals - one down at a time, blocking and tackling, take care of your role and assignments. It's always the boring, mundane stuff, the little stuff that's not very exciting, that wins games."

It's not a theory Florida State's Bobby Bowden, the winningest football coach in major college history, will dispute.

"What they are really is last-minute reminders to your team," Bowden said. "Stuff like, 'Don't let them have the long pass; don't let them block up front.' Those kind of things."

This is not to suggest that emotional fire is not an important part of sports; only that most coaches do not buy into artificial stimulation.

There have been noted exceptions. Long ago when Woody Hayes was at Ohio State, he secretly snipped the stitches in his ball cap, all the better to rip it from his head in a moment of passion. At Mississippi State, Jackie Sherrill once castrated a bull for the "benefit" of his players. Jim Donnan drove a steamroller across the Georgia practice field.

Nevertheless, you are more likely to find Jon Gruden catching a pregame nap than anyone willing to suggest a pregame speech led to a victory.

"There's no win one for the Gipper," Bucs offensive guard Davin Joseph said. "I don't believe it. That was way back in the day. Now it's win one because you can. It's win one because you want to."

Gruden does have a talent for fanning the flames. Buccaneers players referred immediately to this year's game at Carolina when their coach was so revved and animated his face glowed red and his voice reached a scream.

"Some coaches are good at it," veteran Ronde Barber said. "And Jon has a flair for the dramatic. We're used to his shtick and it's good."

All the same, it's nothing Barber hasn't heard before.

"I've been doing this for 11 years," he said. "I've heard the same speech from different guys. So yeah, there is some repetitiveness."

When all is said and done, the ideal pregame talk should provide a quick review of the week's preparation, unite players with a common focus and then finally quicken the pulse. Different coaches approach that task in different ways, simply because each is a separate personality. But the goal is always the same: Draw maximum output from preparation and work that already has been done.

"It's the crescendo of the week," Barber said. "But it's more of a statement of fact to what needs to get done. You have prepared all week for what you have to do; now the moment is at hand. You don't need to prepare for that."

According to SEC legend, Bear Bryant once sent his Alabama team out for a game against heavily favored Tennessee with a two-word speech: "Be strong."

A story from Oklahoma history says Coach Barry Switzer walked into the Sooners' locker room at halftime against Texas knowing his team was playing tight and nervous so he abandoned any words of battle.

Instead Switzer simply said, "I've been coaching college football for more than 20 years and I've never seen the band play at halftime." He then led the Sooners to the edge of the locker room tunnel where they watched the Pride of Oklahoma perform. Then they returned to the field for the second half and came from behind to beat the Longhorns.

"My big thing for our guys is there is a difference between a level of passion and a level of emotion," Florida's Donovan said. "The emotional level in a game starts out very, very high. Then what happens? The emotional level always drops off. And then it comes down to passion for what you are doing."

That's because games never seem to follow the script.

Reporter Mick Elliott can be reached at (813) 281-2534 or melliott@tampatrib.com.

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