What big names were on the sporting news top 50 coaches list?
John Wooden’s friends, family and former players all say they didn’t need an award from a national magazine to confirm the identity of the greatest coach in American sports history. Yet the Sporting News made it official Wednesday, recognizing the 98-year-old Wooden as the pinnacle of a profession that was redefined by the UCLA coach over his unmatched career in Westwood. During a luncheon in the John Wooden Room at one of his favorite restaurants in Sherman Oaks, the coach saw the real reward for a life spent teaching, mentoring and improving lives: A room packed to overflowing with the recipients of those lessons, from his daughter, Nan, to current UCLA coach Ben Howland, to former Bruins center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “I thank you all for the very kind words,” Wooden said in a voice altered but not slowed by age. “No one can really honestly be the very best, no one … (but) these youngsters that have spoken — and some of them aren’t so young anymore — they’re the ones that make the co
Headlining the new issue of Sporting News Magazine: our list of sports’ 50 greatest coaches of all time, as selected by a panel of 118 Hall of Famers, championship coaches and other experts. John Wooden, who at UCLA won a record 10 Division I men’s basketball championships in 12 years, was a runaway winner. SN’s 1970 Sportsman of the Year picked up 57 first-place votes from the panel, which includes seven World Series-winning managers, four Super Bowl champion coaches and the winningest coaches in the NBA, NHL and college basketball. “When I think of Coach Wooden, the first word that comes to mind is execution,” said Gail Goodrich, who wrote an appreciation of his former coach in SN. “We never worried about the opponent, only about how we were going to play.” Green Bay Packers great Vince Lombardi came in second place in SN’s rankings, picking up 20 first-place votes. Wrote Bart Starr, Lombardi’s Hall of Fame quarterback: “(He said), ‘Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfe
