Sometime around 2005 or 2006, I was reading a recap of the NCAA National Wrestling Tournament and saw an infographic on the number of 
Division I All Americans by State of Origin. Up at the top of the list as I recall was Pennsylvania. In this particular year, not only were they at the top of the list, there wasn’t a state that was even close to them in total AA’s. The question that popped into my mind was, “What are they doing in their high schools that no one else is?”
Be Good or Be Different. I have developed the general philosophy of “be good or be different.” The idea behind this is that we want to either be one of the best at what we do or have the ability to be the best at what we do. If we don’t feel we have the ability to be the best at it, we will search for an alternative to gaining an edge on our competition. I don’t understand why so many teams now run the “offense du jour” regardless of talent and coaching. It is logical to me that if you have the personnel to run the spread, or you have an expertise that leads you to believe that you can get your players there over time, it makes sense. However, if you’re in league with three teams from bigger schools, with a higher SES and they all run Air Raid, I don’t think it’s in your interest to follow suit.
A great example of this has been discussed on a recent episode 
of Revisionist History when Malcolm Gladwell examined the absurdity of Wilt Chamberlain shooting free throws underhand for a season (including his 100 point game), seeing a huge improvement and inexplicably going back to an overhand shot the next season.
“Chamberlain had every incentive in the world to keep shooting free throws underhanded, and he didn’t. I think when people don’t do the thing they ought to do, we assume it’s because of ignorance. This is not that. This is doing something dumb even though you’re fully aware that you’re doing something dumb.” -Malcolm Gladwell
It begs the question: if players like Shaquille O’Neal and DeAndre Jordan could significantly increase their effectiveness in close games (and in the process make themselves even more valuable to their team and sponsors) don’t you think it would at least be worth a try?
Another great example of how being different can provide huge benefits has been the University of Oregon. It is still hard to believe that Oregon has played for two national championships over the past few years. If you had followed the program 20 years ago, I am not sure if you would have thought it possible. But between practicing differently than everyone (No Sweat Thursdays, music throughout practice, using GPS on players during practice), their uniforms looking different from everyone and their offense running differently from everyone has netted them a lot of success. (I understand that a lot of teams have followed suit but I think being different has been a big part of the Ducks’ success since the arrival of Chip Kelly).
The Pareto Principle. In his 2001 book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about General Electric CEO, Jack Welch’s decision to review everything that GE did at the time and cut every division where it was determined they couldn’t be #1 or 2 in the industry. The principle behind that decision is the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule which states that 80% of your production comes from only 20% of what you do. If you can focus and grow the 20%, your 80% is going to grow as well.
Wrestling with Being Different. Back to my obsession with Lehigh Valley high school wrestling. It turns out that while Pennsylvania is consistently one of the best wrestling states in the Union, the year I found that aforementioned infographic, was a bit of an anomaly. However, it spurred me on to do some deep thinking about the system that I was teaching and why I was teaching it.
Around that time, a friend was hired as the new head coach of one of the top programs in the state. I had hired him in the past to do camps and clinics for me as he was a college coach and a multiple NCAA All-American. I taught a lot of the same system he did and when he became a high school coach and became an opponent, I thought to myself, “How do I out teach him using his system?” After all, I had only barely placed at the NAIA National Championships as senior in college and he had been on the Olympic Ladder.
I started doing a lot of research on high school wrestling in Pennsylvania. I was able to get VHS tapes and some DVDs of clinics by Ray Nunamaker, Rob Rohn, Mike Powell and others. I was able to convince my wife to drive two hours out of the way from our trip to NYC in order to sit down and visit with Dave Crowell for three hours after taking the red eye from Portland to Newark. Subsequently, I was able to bring Dave to our school twice to do a coaches clinic as well as a camp for my kids.
Coaches in our league told me that they had to dedicate significant portions of practices to prepare for us and several of them had named techniques after our school. Over time, we found that kids who were otherwise below average wrestlers could find a way to be competitive because their opponents had a hard time adjusting to their style. I’m not saying that we forsook fundamentals and were different for the sake of being different. What we did was went outside of our bubble, found what we liked from those coaches and programs and, built a system that was unique and effective.
A Football Coach with Cauliflower Ears. When I became the head football coach in 2012, I spent a lot of time thinking about what scheme we should run offensively. My best experience professionally had been as an assistant coach for Craig Ruecker whose Multi Pro Offense has netted him 283 wins and two state titles (and counting) during his career. So why didn’t we run that offense? The two main reasons were that we were unsure about what kind of quarterback we were going to have and more important at the time is that there were three good teams in our league that were better at running it than we were. A lot of that decision was based on my insecurity as a first time head coach but, what happened a year later helped prove my point.
After our first season where we went 11-1 and advanced to the semifinals of the State Playoffs for only the second time in school history, we had to deal with the fact that almost the entire Class of 2014 had transferred to a brand new school in our district. We went from 25 seniors on our varsity team in 2012 to less than 10 in 2013, and only one of whom actually played football the season prior. To add insult to injury, our quarterback who was the lone shining light in the senior class, transferred to the other high school the day before we left for a contact team camp. It was an awful experience.
As a result, we ended up shifting our offense to the Single Wing. For those that may not know, the Single Wing is an offense that dominated college and pro football through the first half of the 20th Century. However, with 
the exception of a few holdouts, the offense fell into obscurity and nearly into the dustbin of history. Needless to say, we are the most unique football program in the entire state. We brought in Apopka High School Coach Rick Darlington to help us install the offense and since then, we’ve gone 14-6.
This past season, we went 8-3 (lost twice to the eventual state champions) and had 5500 yards of total offense. We did have talent but, running the Single Wing has allowed us to cover up issues that come with being among the smallest teams in our division in a league with the largest teams.
I am not writing this to try to come off as being smarter than the average bear. I’ve done plenty of dumb things both as a wrestling and football coach. What I can say though is that by finding a way to create and edge for myself and the program, I have been far more successful than if I just did what everyone else did. Regardless of sport or endeavor, I think it is a very valuable exercise to sit down and map out exactly what your “20%” is and how you can maximize its impact on your program.
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