Game plan for competing on field of life

In my role as a college professor, I think a lot about how to prepare my students for their lives beyond school in the much discussed but less understood "real world." The world economy is changing underneath their feet -- a circumstance that extends to adults, including professors -- and I try to help them understand what is happening and how to adjust.

To do so, I have begun making a bold declaration: To prepare for the future, you must read two books now: "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman and "The Education of a Coach," David Halberstam's short biography of Bill Belichick, the head coach of the New England Patriots.

The relevance of Friedman's analysis of the today's globalized world may seem obvious to the understanding of our situation, or at least more urgent than the life of a football coach. But it would be difficult to find a better model than "The Education of a Coach" for success in the face of withering competition. The book is full of lessons Americans would be wise to heed as we contemplate Friedman's flat world.

The winner of three of the past four Super Bowls, Belichick may well be the most successful figure in America today. But his relentless drive to succeed is coupled with his relentless distrust of all the usual trappings of success (in Belichick's office there are no trophies or any other indications of his stature). Belichick is also notoriously private, a dour presence scowling from under the hood of a sweat shirt on Sunday afternoons. The coach granted Halberstam an unprecedented degree of access, which the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter uses to draw a compelling portrait of "a curious, complicated, contradictory man, a hard man to reach and to understand completely."

You cannot understand Belichick, Halberstam writes, without understanding the Belichicks.

At the pinnacle of American success, Belichick has retained a strong memory of the harsh underside of the American dream. His paternal grandparents were Croatian immigrants who settled just outside Pittsburgh in the late 1800s. "The family code was a simple one: When things were working out, and John Bilicic had work, it was important to save money for the moment when things would go bad." The family survived the Great Depression only because the eldest son quit school to take a job as a ditch digger. "Discipline," writes Halberstam, "was not so much taught as it was lived, as an essential part of life for which there was no alternative."

Belichick carried this discipline with him as he progressed through high school and college football, neither big nor fast, but a smart player who made those around him better, "a coach on the field." For Belichick, "there was always only one dream," to follow in his father's footsteps. Steve Belichick was an assistant coach at Navy for 30 years -- he didn't seek other jobs because Navy granted its coaches tenure and Steve preferred family stability to personal ambition.

After graduating from Wesleyan University, Belichick used his father's connections to land a job with Ted Marchibroda of the Baltimore Colts: "Look," Bill told Marchibroda, "you don't have to pay me, but give me something real."

In 1979 he was hired by the New York Giants as an assistant linebacker's coach; by 1986, the once-losing team had a record of 14-2, with Belichick as defensive coordinator. There he displayed the depth of knowledge and grace under pressure that would mark his rise. Belichick, Halberstam writes, was "much more analytical than most other coaches, and he never lost that analytical ability, not even in the most tense moments of the game ... He was an outstanding situational coach, a man who could get his team to adapt week after week in order to respond to the strengths and weaknesses of any particular team they would be playing."