Collegiality

This article from The Technician attempts to quash rumors of dissension among the football team and rally the NC State student body behind their football team.

In order to be a successful counselor and leader of men, a football coach must be able to get along with and unify his team and colleagues; dissension among the NC State football team thus likely proved to many that Heartley Anderson lacked this coaching qualification.  Council members asked other NC State athletic coaches and staff about Anderson’s “cooperative spirit” and past quarrels or tension with faculty and coaching staff.  Those questioned asserted that Anderson’s relationships with colleagues were not a big issue, but his perceived inability to handle internal squabbles among football players did pose a problem.  “The present athletic situation” that students mention seems to allude to general discord among football players stemming from personal differences, a contested captaincy election, and Anderson’s mid-season dismissal of three players.  Howard Bardes, one of the three removed from the team, said that “a head coach’s business is 50% getting along with the boys,” and he stated that Anderson could not get along with the players.

This concern possibly stems from a heightened awareness of the increasingly competitive and professionalized work-world that demanded employees possess strong managerial and relational skills.  As North Carolina industries competed in an expanding global market, mill and factory owners and managers worked to increase productivity.  In this kind of work environment more NC State graduates could find themselves competing for management positions and would thus need to have effective relational and personal management skills.  A football coach unable to control dissension among a team of students was likely not a positive role model for an aspiring factory manager or for the student body as a whole.  Such dissension did not promote the positive morale that students, administrators, and alumni desired at NC State.  Thus through concerns about Anderson’s collegiality, it is clear that a college football coach must be able to interact with, encourage, and positively unite and lead his team in order to better prepare them for their future careers and to unify the student body and encourage school spirit.