With news that the latest round of NFL team hirings did not include former Patriots coach Bill Belichick, there has been a strange chorus in the media about why the legend doesn’t have a job. The narrative put forth in many news articles shows a thinly-disguised bias against Belichick that also reveals cultural attitudes toward power and authority that need to be examined. 

Some members of sports media – and apparently NFL team owners themselves – are put off by Belichick’s conditions for taking a new coaching job, conditions similar to what he enjoyed in New England. With the Patriots, Belichick held both head coaching and general manager duties. This enabled him to assemble teams with lesser-known players who often overachieved expectations. While most NFL owners today would balk at granting a head coach the added powers of a general manager, it was respected Giants coach Bill Parcells who famously said, “If they want you to cook the dinner, they at least ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.” In addition, Belichick and the Patriots’ success is largely owed to Belichick being able to make more unilateral decisions than most head coaches. 

But in light of the Patriots’ on-the-field struggles after the departure of Tom Brady in 2019, Belichick’s leadership ability has been roundly questioned. Some people in the media and casual fans alike have speculated that Brady, not Belichick, should be credited with the franchise’s historic winning culture, which includes a record 6 Super Bowl titles. Painted as rigid and unrelatable, Belichick is viewed by some as too old-school for today’s NFL, and his demands for power too absolute to justify. But maybe our culture’s attitude toward authority, while rightly concerned with the way power is abused, is throwing the baby out with the bathwater in its view of Belichick. 

Rational Authority

In an era where empathy is sometimes confused with endless tolerance, Belichick’s brand of authority is equally easy for some to confuse with tyranny. Psychoanalyst and author Erich Fromm, who emphasized the role of society and culture in shaping man’s character, used the phrase rational authority to describe “any authority which is based on competence and knowledge, which permits criticism…which is not based on the emotional factors of submission and masochism, but on the realistic recognition of the competence of the person for a certain job.”

When reading about Belichick’s coaching history in Ian O’Connor’s biography, Belichick: the making of the greatest football coach of all time, what stands out most is the coach’s efforts to instill his expansive knowledge of football to the players and coaches working for him. Belichick’s motto to his team – “Do your job” – is an example of the way he viewed his own role within an organization: a job that needs to be done, and done well. 

Belichick would often seek feedback from other experts – coaching colleagues, players, scouts, etc. – who might have ideas that could help his team on game day. While demanding of his players, Belichick never asked for more than he himself was willing to give. He reportedly arrived at the team facility at 6:00 a.m. each morning and did not leave until midnight. He has been known to ask members of his team to write extensive reports on all of the opposing players they will be competing against in the coming week, including backups. Far from seeing this as the sadistic behavior of a tyrannical coach, Belichick’s players saw their coach as preparing them thoroughly for the challenge that awaited them on Sundays.

Belichick earned credibility for his unconventional thinking, attention to detail, and personal commitment to his job. An equal opportunity educator, Belichick didn’t hesitate to call out his future-Hall-of-Fame quarterback Tom Brady just as he would anyone else on his team, showing a respect for the team which transcended any single individual on it. 

Belichick was frequently tasked with making difficult decisions, like benching franchise quarterback Drew Bledsoe for the young upstart Brady. He let valuable players, such as All-Pro safety Lawyer Milloy, leave New England because their contract demands would hamstring his team. He benched key starters for important games – even the Super Bowl – because they violated team rules. Belichick taught his scouts to be original in their thinking, to be less influenced by the whims of popular opinion when it came to evaluating talent. His efforts reflect what is good and necessary about rational authority, the act of sharing with those who know less so they can know more. 

By learning from someone who possesses rational authority, said Fromm, the student “becomes more and more like the teacher himself. In other words, the authority relationship tends to dissolve itself.” Interviews with players coached by Belichick often reveal a sense of gratitude for the coach’s way of teaching and motivating his players. His authority has been in the service of enriching others. 

Irrational Authority

Fromm’s concept of irrational authority, on the other hand, describes an authority based on “power over people” and “authority exercised by fear and pressure on the basis of emotional submission.” It’s authority with the purpose of keeping people in a subordinate position. While Belichick did hold power over his team, it was not power for power’s sake, but for a purpose: the benefit of the team.

Our culture’s current emphasis on reducing power hierarchies should be balanced with discernment between the types of power we are talking about. We are smart to question irrational authority and its tyrannical abuses. Irrational authority elevates one individual over others as a compensation for insecurity, a way of hoarding power in order to not feel weak and vulnerable. But rational authority is a necessary tool for growth and learning. It requires our submission, not necessarily to a specific person, but to the principle that we don’t always know best. 

Although our culture is rife with examples of parents, teachers, coaches, celebrities and political leaders who flex their authority in irrational ways, we would be wise not to cast someone like Belichick in the same light. The media’s resentment toward Belichick and his current situation might be the decades-long residue of his shortness with the press, but it seems too easy to confuse his example of authority with its harmful opposite. By all accounts, Belichick has been motivated not by a desire for personal recognition, but by important aspects of rational authority: a sense of responsibility and purpose that benefits others. NFL owners who refuse to give Belichick the authority he seeks in order to run a team his way might be showing their own need to seize power and control, even at the expense of their own organizations. 

Rational authority has to be cultivated within ourselves throughout our lives, through the process of struggling with its irrational counterpart which exists in us all. We help ourselves develop this more benevolent form of authority by recognizing it in others and learning from them what we can. Belichick, despite his flaws, might be as good an example as any. 

Sources:

O’Connor, I. (2019). Belichick: The making of the greatest football coach of all time. Mariner Books. 

Authority – Fromm-online.org. Erich Fromm online. (n.d.). https://fromm-online.org/wp-content/uploads/glossar/006-157.pdf