Swing Your Sword by Mike Leach

Author:Mike Leach
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2011-12-21T22:00:00+00:00

Setting the Tone

The title of this book emerged as the mantra of our program in the wake of a 2003 loss at Missouri. Their quarterback, Brad Smith, ran for almost 300 yards on us. Our team was really struggling. We had an overly aggressive offense and a timid defense, and it got to the point where they were starting to point fingers at one another. We were 5-3. We had just lost back-to-back games. The next day, I showed up at our team meeting with a sword. The blade was about three-feet long, and really glistened when the light hit it.

I’m pretty sure the players had no clue what was about to happen.

I’d thought a lot about what I was going to say before I entered the room. I jotted down a bunch of ideas on a scrap of paper, the same as I normally did before meetings. It’s important for a team to be exposed to more than just football, and as I worked at it the pirates and the metaphor of the sword just sounded right.

I took that sword and laid it across the podium. The players were mesmerized, wondering what was going to happen after such a brutal loss. I’ve read about 20 books on pirates (the best is probably Under the Black Flag). I told them how England had the best pirates because they were the most adept at seafaring, and about how pirates came from all nationalities. You had all of these people who were tired of living in Europe, so they banded together. One may have been an Arawak Indian. One may have been an escaped African slave. Another guy might’ve come from the Orient. One or two guys could’ve come from England, dishonorably discharged from the Navy. In polite society back then there really wasn’t diversity, but on pirate ships there was. All you had to be was a capable hand. Captains were voted into leadership. How is it that they were they so progressive in these ways? I imagine societal mores can go out the window pretty quickly when you’re fighting for your life.

There are a lot of misconceptions about pirates. Pirates varied from the soldier/sailor type hired by the Queen Elizabeth I of England to help wage war against Spain, to ruthless outlaws with no direction but their own. Some pirates were actually pretty organized businessmen. Bartholomew Roberts, for example, didn’t drink. He had a whole fleet of ships. He was a really efficient planner and organizer. Another pirate, Henry Morgan, eventually became the Governor of Jamaica. At some points in time it was illegal to be a pirate, but at other points it wasn’t. Sir Francis Drake was paid by the Elizabeth I to plunder and pillage the Spanish and bring as many riches back to England as his fleet could carry. If you were an Englishman during the sixteenth century, you pretty much had a green light to do anything you wanted to the Spanish.

I told the team how

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