A Fair-at-All-Costs Coach? That Would Be a Miracle

It’s a hockey movie, which ordinarily would make it the worst kind, but knowing ahead of time it didn’t end in a tie suggested “Miracle� was going to deliver a satisfying payoff.

In fact, the Disney account of the U.S. hockey team’s gold-medal victory in the 1980 Olympics was not only uplifting, as you might expect, but entertaining and loaded with the kind of first-rate hockey action you’d expect to see -- if you ever ran out of things to do in life and had nowhere left to go but a hockey game.

Kurt Russell is terrific as the late Herb Brooks, the coach who emerges as the movie’s hero, justifying all the mental and physical abuse he employs to push his players to victory.

Just the kind of inspiring American sports story we all love.

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WE DO love success in sports, no matter how it’s achieved, and the 1980 victory over Russia just might be the greatest sports triumph of most of our lifetimes.

By most accounts, Brooks was a wonderful, driven man, eventually loved by the players he set out to make hate him, who sacrificed family time to achieve his goal and get the best out of 20 young hockey players.

But if “Miracle� is to be believed, it is also paying homage to the worst kind of controlling coach, the kind who flourishes everywhere today in youth, high school and collegiate athletics with impunity -- so long as success is achieved.

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IF “MIRACLE� is to be believed, Brooks paid no attention to a week of hockey tryouts, selecting his own team and in many cases ignoring better players because they might not have fit into the team context. Fair is fair if the coach says it’s fair.

Of course that’s how many (recreation, high school, college) coaches, who operate as control freaks or ogres behind closed doors, justify what they do. It’s all done in the guise of the pure quest for teamwork. Bob Knight comes to mind.

Teamwork, as dictated by a coach, was the thrust of another wonderful and successful sports movie, “Hoosiers,� in which Gene Hackman insisted on four passes before anyone could shoot. It’s a movie that would never have been made if Jimmy Chitwood hadn’t come along.

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IF “MIRACLE� is to be believed, Brooks worked his players up and down the ice long after they’d played a game with Norway early in their training. If it hadn’t come along until years later, I would have guessed he was stealing a Bear Bryant tactic from “The Junction Boys.�

The team’s doctor and assistant coach challenge Brooks in the movie while he skates his team until it drops. He ignores them, and I guess it’s a good thing none of his players ended up in the hospital, or that might have resulted in a different kind of movie.

It’s a pivotal scene in “Miracle� -- the coach abusing his players until a gasping Mike Eruzione finally gives Brooks the answer he wants, which once again justifies what has taken place. Remember the Titans.

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IF “MIRACLE� is to be believed, Brooks brought in a hotshot hockey player -- after everyone else had been put through the wringer -- and let it be known the hotshot was there to potentially take someone’s spot. It’s mental torture designed to bring everyone closer together and, of course, it works.

If “Miracle� is to be believed, Brooks tore into an injured player between periods of the United States’ opening Olympic game with Sweden and challenged his manhood. Not exactly Craig T. Nelson and Tom Cruise in “All the Right Moves,� but close.

In the film, the team doctor has advised Brooks that the player can do no more harm to his injury, so Brooks embarrasses the player in front of everyone, prompting him to charge Brooks and fire up the team.

The scene ends with Brooks and an assistant coach laughing privately because the players have fallen for his contrived outburst. The U.S. comes back to tie Sweden -- supporting the contention that Brooks was the master motivator.

The U.S comes back in every Olympic game, like Seabiscuit, prevailing because it has the heart of champion, ridden hard by coach, and jockey.

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IF “MIRACLE� is to be believed, and I’m sure it will be, it will once again empower the recreation, high school and college coaches who believe they’ve been assigned the task of winning, no matter how achieved.

I’m not sure there are too many people more powerful today than youth and high school coaches. Parents interested in their child’s academic standing are considered attentive parents. Parents interested in their child’s athletic standing are considered meddlesome and undoubtedly living vicariously through the child.

If a youngster quits because the coach’s motivational means cannot be tolerated or abided, the youngster is considered a quitter or not tough enough to withstand the mental and physical rigors of what it takes to be successful.

There aren’t many movies with happy endings under such circumstances, leaving an untold number of scarring disappointments at the youth, high school and collegiate levels. Good movies aside, there just aren’t as many miracles as some would like to believe.

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WHO IS in charge of the Lakers? Our Tim Brown wrote Monday morning: “[Phil Jackson] said he would like to sit down and talk to [Kobe] Bryant, perhaps before the break. ...�

What does Jackson have to do -- make an appointment to see the guy? Right now they are together on the road, in the same hotel. Knock, knock ... just don’t say who’s there.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Mary Tanner:

“Don’t you think we’re both in need of a vacation?�

So where should we go?

T.J. Simers can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.