The Sport and the Growing Good Podcast examines leadership and coaching in sports settings. In conversations with leaders from wide-ranging contexts, we learn not just about competitive excellence within the game, but also how to leverage sports for broader individual and group flourishing.
The podcast is hosted by Dr. Peter Miller, a professor in Sports Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
#192: Coach Phil Jackson on learning from roles models (Bell Cows)
Albert Bandura claimed that some of our deepest learning occurs socially – from what we observe and adopt from what we interact with around us. In this conversation with Coach Jackson, we discussed learning from role models, as well as how coaches can utilize players as models on their teams. Our conversation addressed:
1. Cows. Temple Grandin.
2. What Coach Jackson learned from role models. Unconscious modeling.
3. Learning by coaching in the CBA – the “minor leagues.”
4. One of Coach Jackson’s Bell Cows, Red Holzman.
5. How rules can be inconsequential. Examples in action make the difference.
6. Players modeling desirable attributes on teams.
7. Are leaders born?
8. “I think there are moments when you’re vaulted into a leadership role. I think it sometimes makes us. There are situations that call for it.” 19:25
9. “It’s not about me, it’s about the team.”
10. “You cannot stop. You cannot get stagnant.”
11. Gratefulness. “One has to be grateful. I think the first element of living your life in the morning is to spend time in gratefulness and practicing the presence of the universe, the order, the Supreme Being. Your God. And your belief system. And when you center yourself in that particular aspect, I think you become humbled.”
12. “When you read you have to have an open mind.”
13. Learning as a father. “As a parent, your children are your teachers.”
14. “The wealth of a man is measured by his family, his relations, his relationships, not by power or money.”
15. Coming through hard times, difficult times that we all face. “One of the things that’s important is accepting responsibility. Don’t blame. And accepting that you have to be grateful for these experiences because they are what’s showing you the ever-changing relationship we have with life. We’re faced with all these facets of life that bring change. And change is the most difficult thing for people to adapt to, to live with. Unceasing change turns the wheel of life so that we may see it in all of its various forms.”
16. There’s going to be unceasing change in your life. You cannot keep it static and what you always want it to be…All of these things are an opportunity for you to adapt and be part of the change. And accept it instead of fighting against it. That is one of the keys, I think, to living a peaceful coexistence with life.”
17. The responsibility of being a coach lays upon each one of you that wants to be a coach. You’re not just going to show the principles of your sport or the skills that are necessary for your sport, but you’re also going to teach a behavioral pattern to these younger people that are under your tutelage. How you address them and how you participate with them in this effort is really a responsibility of your own making. You’ve chosen this. And now it’s your responsibility to stand up to it and hold it and embrace it. Take advantage of the opportunity it is to portray some of the things that you think are important for people to learn: the basics of your sport; the love of competition; to compete with a passion and yet with still a joy.
18. Learning from a mistake early in his career.
19. Being receptive to insights from former players and recognizing that past players are part of the culture. “There’s plenty of room in the tent.” 33:35
20. Holding things back from the team initially so that there would be more to learn as the season went on.
21. Adapting to players. “If you have a really good idea, please bring it to us.”
22. Helping Kobe Bryant to become a leader. 43:46. “How do you expect to be a leader if you don’t participate in the community?”
23. Drawing from diverse sources to teach leadership.
13 Nov 2025
#191: Coach Phil Jackson on sustaining success (2025 edit)
Winning is difficult – and maintaining success can be even more challenging. In this session, Coach Jackson and some special guests joined us to discuss the topic of “sustaining success.”
1. Reading your team when things are going well. Understanding them. “Getting out of their way.” Winning gets to be habitual.
2. Little inconveniences bringing a team together in new, deeper ways (hotel example in bad weather). Maintaining a positive orientation: “Life’s an adventure, let’s go get it!”
3. You can’t count on just “replicating what we had before.” Examples of players having off-season surgery that change what you have coming back on a team.
4. You have to maintain vision for your team.
5. “Dance of the wounded egos.” Guys overvaluing their roles on the team.
6. “It’s all of us. It’s about how we all fit together.”
7. As a coach something to think about: “Where does this person think he fits into our team effort? How can I make him feel important but also that we will go on regardless?”
8. Getting away from the game after the season. Focusing on family.
9. Also using the off-season to envision what the team would look like.
10. “We always held something back.” Reflecting in the off-season: “What are we going to do differently this year?”
11. Allowing veteran players to teach newcomers what it means to be part of the group and “earning his credibility.”
12. Losing assistant coaches to head coaching positions.
13. Dividing players into groups with a particular coach who they’d get to know intimately. A mentor who would help them to get better.
14. Jordan and Kobe having specific things they worked on in the off-season. Setting the model for other players.
15. Keeping pace with a changing game. Growing as a coach.
16. Phil Nevin on rules changes that affected coaching baseball.
17. Responding to the analytics movement.
18. Mark Sweeney on staying in the game “mentally and physically” as he prepared each game.
19. Davey Lopes as an important coach to Mark.
20. Maintaining “drive” on winning teams. Finding new motivations.
12 Nov 2025
#190: Professor Sameer Deshpande is at the forefront of sports analytics
Sameer Deshpande (https://stat.wisc.edu/staff/deshpande-sameer/) is an assistant professor of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Much of his work is applied in sports settings, where he has emerged as a leader in the field. Sameer is a BIOS fellow and key partner as we’ve continued deepening the connections between sports and research. In this conversation, we discussed:
1. The type of research Sameer conducts. Using probability to quantify all of our uncertainty. Bayesian Statistics.
2. Sameer’s journey to academia. Math competitions. Mentors and supporters along the way. Early studies that got him started in the field.
3. The relatively small data analytics community in professional sports.
4. Study on the “plate discipline” of MLB players.
5. Study on surface-type and concussions in the NFL.
6. Study on associations between football participation during adolescence and mental health during young adulthood.
7. Study estimating NBA players’ impacts on their teams’ winning. (Dirk was #1.)
8. Teaching statistics and “meeting students where they are.”
9. Being a BIOS fellow: “It’s super interesting and inspiring…Working in sports research can be isolating…There are people who I’ve met through BIOS who I never would have spoken to and there’s a lot of fruitful collaborative work that can happen…BIOS has been a great way for connecting people…BIOS embraces the cross-cutting nature of this campus.”
10. Research that’s coming up: Spatial variation/heat maps for NBA players – modeling that allows us to use data smartly in new ways; Decathlon – Can new limits be reached and what would it take?
11. The Dallas Cowboys.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
125
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
19 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 66 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
87
Social presence
0
YouTube
64
Engagement
51
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