Motivation for pre game

I know this doesn't help you....but it's a good story (lol).

a few years ago, our biggest innercity rival was playing at our field (actually our community field) and I was up in the box for the Sophomore game (prior to Varsity)....at half time our opponent's Varsity group, at the direction of their HC paced the entire length of the field for a BFS psychological ploy to "own the field"....well, I started taping it and zoomed in on the HC talking to his huddled players declaring that "this is OUR stadium"...blah blah blah...

So, 2 hours later as it winds down to our kickoff....we're in the locker room right before we hit the field for kickoff......

Needless to say we put that 5 min tape in the big screen.....and the players went APE S***......In my 5 years with that program, I've never seen them so bananas before a game. They tore the hell out of our rival that year.....lol ;D


but.....from where I sit.....and what I've used before for motivation was the last great monologue from the movie Any Given Sunday
(movie clip)

For what it's worth you probably don't need any extra motivation for really big games. Save it for the game with a .500 or losing opponent who's dangerous.

Amen to that.
The great coaches I have studied rarely do much rah rah stuff.
As a player I lasted just a play of two.
When I did my study of HS and youth coaches, the very poor teams for the most part did lots of rah rah speech etc stuff, for the most part the very good teams did not.

I agree. Motivational speeches don't last long but good practices and preparation will carry on throughout the game. However, if you enjoy the speeches, are good at them, and the kids get really fired up....why not? It is part of the experience and the kids will remember some of them for a lifetime. We still have kids come back and talk about some of our HC's speeches!

I hardly ever do pre-game rah-rah speeches (and here's why!).

We're playing our District opener against a team that crushed us last year. We are much better this year and they lost several kids to graduation so it should be a much better game. I decide to use Al Pacino's little speech from Any Given Sunday (Brophy, you know what I'm talking about...). We finish warmups, The refs are about 3 minutes away from calling for the captians - I bring the team over, and start - the kids are hanging on every word, and when I finish, I ask them "Are you going to fight for that inch?" They go nuts, and as I make my way out of the huddle, I see the refs waving everyone off the field - game is suspended due to lightning! We wait for an hour - game is moved to the following Tuesday! So much for my pre-game speech!

As others have said, for a rivalry game (ours is next week), no speech is needed. Save it for that one game you really need, but, beware of things outside your control. I tend to use brief quotes (Bartletts quotations and many others are good sources) to use an inspiratonal nugget. Something short and sweet, that you can easily memorize and make into your own.

listen....

MY season doesn't start until Spring....so I have a LOT of free time on my hands right now. I would be more than happy to travel to ANY one of y'alls programs to deliver motivation and peak-performance training.

Here I am at Knighter's pregame back in the first part of September

There are good coaches who do rah-rah and good coaches who don't. I agree that the rah-rah speeches aren't what wins you the game, its the week of preperation you have put in and the work they did in the offseason and summer camp. If you are a rah-rah guy then by him, but that's not why you are going to win IMO. If you aren't a rah-rah guy then don't try to be one. Just be yourself would be my advice, but what do I know I am only a rookie coach.