The Halftime Talk

We see it all the time in the movies. The underdog team is down at halftime and hanging their heads. The Academy Award winning actor storms into the locker room, gives a speech for the ages and our beloved underdog team wills their way to victory. We do a pretty good job of overhyping the halftime talk with broadcasting games. We have sideline reports trailing after the coach asking them 'what do you tell your guys at half' or right after a scoring drive to open the second half have have the broadcast team speculating on what the coach said at half to fire the boys up.

Having played and coached a fair amount of sports in my day I have been involved in plenty of halftime speeches, both good and bad. I just don't think they are all that important. I remember an old coaching book I read where the coach (I forget his name) said that he didn't give halftime or pre-game speeches because once you gave one you had to give another and another and another. My guess is that most teams would rather have a good coach than a good motivational speaker. My bet is that most games that see a sudden swing in momentum from first half to second is more a result of good half time adjustsments than some 'We few, we happy few. We band of brothers....'. So it kinda warmed my heart to read this today.

There was speculation by the ESPN2 television team about what sort of grandiose halftime talk Schmid might have given, but the coach with a league-record 18 playoff victories said he kept it short and sweet. "I tried to be calmer than normal," Schmid said. "We were done with our halftime talk with like four minutes to go. I didn't want to overburden them with stuff."

Not to mention that probably the most successful halftime speeches I have been part of or given were pretty simple. Something like 'You guys are playing like shit.' can be pretty awe inspiring.