"Coach" Davis, once again, it isn't about ME, although spinning it around to my direction helps you avoid my initial question asked many threads ago: What credentials do you have in the area of coaching that make you believe you can just show up on some web site and start calling yourself a coach? Sure, you've got/had world-class running talent, thanks to good genes. But that doesn't mean anything as far as coaching. It's the old idea that just because someone has a talent for Mathematics, OF COURSE they can teach Math to others. "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach"--right? Same principle, same belief.
To the board:
So Davis is/was a world-class talent. Fine. I have watched the results of his competitive years and, according to his huge talent, consider him an underachiever. And based on what I know of his work habits in Eugene and Boulder, believe him to be a huge slacker. My opinion, and I'm entititled to it. I never claimed anything different.
But the opinion-aside question is Davis' coaching credentials. A topic that keeps getting the short shift, once Davis and/or his starry-eyed disciples spin the subject back to specualtion of my identity and motivations.
My motivation is simple: to bring into question Marc Davis' lack of coaching credentials now that he has taken it upon himself to designate himself as a coach. That's all, that's it.
Davis, of course, can counter this by naming his credentials, either formal (classroom: collegiate, USATF Level 1 or 2 schools, etc.) or experience (hands on work as an assistant somewhere, anywhere!).
Davis has none of these. And he dares not make anything up, because it would be too easy to check. And damn right I would.
All Davis has to offer is that he has been a world-class runner himself and knows other world-class runners. that isn't enough, and never will be. Like Said Aquita, Davis is a fraud, a pretender, and should regarded as such until the time he PROVES his legitimacy as something more than an athlete.
No person without formal education and experience coaching has any business signing his posts "Coach". To do so is to make a claim of expertise and steal a title without earning it. A title that illegitimately elevates Davis to the level of people who have paid their dues and earned the title, people named Lananna, Wetmore, McDonnell, etc. That takes a lot of gall.
Let me give another example: what if I decided, "Hey, I've read The Bible, I go to church, I know religious people, including actual ministers, so I think I'll start calling myself Reverend and set up a web page giving out religious advice.
I could do just that. Like Davis, I'd be breaking no law. But like Davis, I'd be a fraud. Because reading The Bible, going to church, and having friends in the clergy does NOT mean I am capable of ministering to others in a way that helps them improve their lot in life, barring generalized knowledge and good luck. No, to truly help others, I'd need to attend the seminary for years and work hard to learn things the right way, the way that works for others and not just for myself. A way based on education and experience (like student-teaching, a seminary provides mentoring and supervision), not just something I'm doing on my own because I bought a web page. (That hard work part seems to trouble Davis. He didn't work hard as an athlete and he's not working hard now as a "coach". He's just writing on the computer, expecting to be rewarded for taking the easy way.)
Any other motivations? Just this: this country has gone through a very bad phase in international distance running. The reason it's coming out of it isn't so much because of the Webb's, Ritz', etc.--look at the old T&FN high school lists, those guys with talent have always been there--but because of the coaching that has exerted itself the past 5-10 years. Learned and educated people in the coaching ranks who have paid their dues in the classroom and then worked up through the ranks.
The exact opposite of Davis. In all his years at college, did he take any coaching classes? In all his years in Boulder and Eugene, did he spend any time at all preparing for a coaching career by volunteering even part-time for a local high school? Having decided lately to be a coach, has he attended either USATF Level coaching schools? (Too busy with training time? He always found time for golf, beer-drinking, and video games...)
Probably not. Why should he when all he has to do is sit down at his computer and start calling himself "Coach" and a legion of starry-eyed worshippers will legitimize him for free right away, no years of work or service wasted doing something as stupid as actually learning the craft?
Nothing more to read into me. That's my complaint with this guy: he's a pretender, and people like him are responsible in great part for the terrible shape of distance running in this country, not the opposite as they claim, where they are "saving" it. And when I see him using an eighties style of marketing--call it "Madonna marketing"--where he repeats the same thing over and over until eventually people begin to subscribe to it's validity simply because they've heard it so much, I call him on it. Style over substance. Little to offer, but non-stop repetition which eventually makes it a household word.
Look at what I write without worrying who I am. That doesn't matter. I've laid it all out for you now. Some of you out there have confused jealousy with disgust. That's how Davis will always play the tune for you. Don't sing along.