In light of this week’s program focus, let’s take a long, lingering look at the word “Coach” and just what it means.

It comes to us from the small village of Kocs in Hungary, where back in the 15th century some enterprising individual invented a carriage that was a dramatic improvement over the existing modes of transportation – it became wildly popular all over Europe and took it’s Hungarian name kocsi szeker, literally meaning a carriage of Kocs with it.  Now, how did a sports trainer get associated with a carriage of Hungarian villagers?

Well, it’s metaphorical … you see university students in 19th century England likened their instructors to carriages, "conveying" the students through their classes and exams. The "instructor" sense was applied to sports trainers somewhere around 1885.  And if you do the math, the coaching fraternity has had about 122 years to figure it all out. Some, like John Wooden, Harvey Penick, Bear Bryant and Pat Summit got it right from the git go and have led lives we all admire and given us student/athletes who have gone on to greatness.

Then there’s our subject this week, Todd McCorkle, the disgraced golf coach at Georgia – who just didn’t get it – Todd, you’re supposed to have your team stay at the Hilton in Paris, not view sex tapes of Paris Hilton. And it’s underarmor you provide your players with not underwear assessments click, clack – got it?  As for the flipping of hair, patting of butt and rubbing of back – in golf we have a unique device for preventing those gross breaches of conduct … it’s called a driver, it’s 44 inches long and that’s just how far a coach should keep his hands from his players!

If the word coach comes from a precursor of the bus, then I’m happy to see Todd McCorkle thrown under it!  Hey, Todd you’ve earned both an unplayable and untouchable lie … so take a penalty stroke and play on – somewhere else!