That speech was great. I'm also a sucker for great locker room speeches and it's been one of my favorite parts of coaching. I really get into it. I'm not the HC of my team but over the last three years I've assumed the role of pregame and half time "speaker" for the coaching staff.
I don't have a video but I'll share my favorite speech since I've been coaching...My high school has one of the longest and most heated rivalries in the country. We've played every year since 1894 and up until three years ago the series was tied. It's one of those classic "throw out the records" when we play each other and our rivals are a blue-collar, smash mouth city, as are we.
So, pre-game, I start off by talking about this being a heavyweight fight. I compare it to Ali-Frazier. I asked the team for a show of hands. Who wants to be Frazier today? No hands go up. Who wants to be Ali? All hands go up. Wrong answer I tell them. When that bell rang, Joe Frazier came out swinging. He didn't give a ****. He wanted to take the fight out of Ali and end it immediately. That's the attitude we need to have today, I tell them.
Now, most of you are probably thinking to yourself, "But, coach, Ali won two of the three fights against Frazier. Why would we want to be Frazier?". It's very simple, gentlemen. That team hootin' and hollerin' in the other locker room (we can hear them) is not the greatest of all-time. They're not even close to Muhammed Ali. But, I'll tell you what. They talk like Ali. Let's see how much they're talking when we come out like Frazier and punch them in the mouth.
To make a long story short...we punched them in the mouth but fumbled three times inside the 10 yard line and went into halftime down 10 points (16-6). The halftime speech is actually my favorite but it was deeply personal and one of those "you had to be there" moments. We ended up erasing a 10 point deficit with 4 minutes to play and won the game.
