Teamwork and Leadership in Remember the Titans

In Remember the Titans we witness Coach Boone fighting for civil rights, signifying the image of an outsider integrating into a foreign white team as their coach. Director Boaz Yakin, uses techniques to strengthen Coach Boone’s character where the initial hate and disrespect towards him succours the development of a meaningful arc. The disrespect and aggression is employed when a brick is thrown through his house window, threatening him with the derogatory coloured comments calling him “Coach Coon”. The pressure of quitting was not felt and heroically he encompasses the journey with Yakin emphasising Boones evocative discipline and determination forcing integration amongst the segregated football team. This technique is employed when we witness Coach Boone stepping up, pushing equality for the players in a determined strike to stop racial abuse for good. His actions initiate the forced building of friendship and acceptance when he forces both races to get to know and accept each other at the camp. Yakin heightens the themes of overcoming racism when Boone rallies the troops together to support their team mate during a sad time. Instinctively, the implicit segregation is evoked further bringing unity to the team, Coach Boone emerges as a ‘hero’ to both the coloured and white community.

This team actually started becoming a team after Coach Boone gave an inspiring speech at the graveyard in Gettysburg. That is when a team actually started to form. The speech was about the Civil War that happened at Gettysburg. He told the players to hear closely, because if they do, they can hear people saying things about killing their own brothers. He told the players that they have to stop fighting with one another and start thinking of each other as brothers and come together as a team and start seeing life in a different perspective. After that, they had plenty of practices and worked hard until they learned how to get along, and they finally did that. It was beautiful to watch them get along and become a team. They were becoming friends and would joke with one another in the locker rooms. Mostly everyone get along. Julius and Gary were becoming great friends, which was hard to believe, because they hated each other at first. Later on, they got a new player. He had long hair, and they called him "Sunshine". He was a quarterback and was the newest player on the mighty Titans. The team thought he was gay but he really wasn't.

After Gerry’s disastrous car accident, Coach Boone is faced with the moral dilemma of selfishness. Boone has always been a coach who strives to win, not only for himself, but for the team, however after the accident, he lacks empathy for the boys and thinks more about what he wants. When he suggests that the team incorporate more training to cope with the changes so that they can win, Yoast feels that Boone is being selfish and lacking consideration of the team's loss, so confronts him with the questions “Is this even about football anymore? Or is it just about you?” To express his reaction to being described as selfish, the

In the beginning of the movie, Coach Boone had to build ethos for himself because of racial differences. Coach Boone, being of African American descent, was hired over their current caucasian coach and this caused the white football players to boycott the team until Coach Yoast became their assistant coach. Coach Boone lead his team by example and his dedication to his craft. He showed the players that he did not care about what color you wore on your skin, but of the sport that brought them together. During his speech he states “I don’t care if you like each other or not. But you will respect each other. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe we’ll learn to play this game like men” (Boone). He uses the built trust aspect of ethos very well to close this speech.

To be a cohesive unit and a great team the Titans would have to learn to trust and respect each other. They would have to overcome their racial issues and differences. Coach Boone implements strategies in his attempt to bring the team together as a cohesive unit. These strategies include:

Operant conditioning was used when Coach Boone attempted getting the players to get to know each other. The training Coach Boone held went from three days, to four days, to five days, and so on until the players knew each person on their team. There were a couple of scenes where prejudice led to discrimination. When the team found out that Coach Yost had been replaced with a black man, they refused to play for Coach Boone because they thought there was no way he would be a good coach. Another example would be when Sunshine took two black guys into a bar, only to be refused any service due to the color of their skin. This is a good example of how the white society has a very unaccepting attitude toward those they share their community

Just before the state semi-finals, a member of the school board tells coach Yoast that he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame after the Titans lose their game. Coach Boone was threatened to be fired if the team lost a single game because he was an African American head coach in a white society. The game was being officiated in the opposing teams favor. Coach Yoast went up to an official and threatened to tell the press of the scam they were trying to run. After the Titans came out victorious, Yoast lost his spot in the Hall of Fame. Although that was his dream, he didn’t want to be inducted that way. He’d rather not be inducted than let his team down.

In the begging of the film, Herman Boone which is Denzel Washington was brought in as an assistant coach to join the all-white coaching team. Couple days later, because of high school rule Coach Boone had to be a head coach. But at first he was unwilling to take the offer the head coaching job at first because same things had happened to him when a white coach was selected as head coach over him in South Carolina. In this scene you can tell Coach Boone respects everybody and not hating people. But soon He finally accepts the head coach when he sees that the black people lived in the town saw him as a symbol of pride and hope because he could be the one could overcome the racism in the town. When he talks with coach Yoast, coach Yoast was worried because his white kids won’t start the football team but Boone told him “I aint going to cut them and eat them. Best player will play color won’t matter”. In this sentence he doesn’t care black or white or not, he wants to best player to win the games

This offer was very tempting, and I think that this was the moment when Coach Yoast experienced the biggest moral dilemma, whether he should help Boone or not. In the beginning of the movie Yoast was not enthusiastic about the fact that he needs to step down, and give his position to a new black Coach. Despite the skin color, Coach Yoast realized that together with Boone they share one common goal. This goal is to win. Coach Yoast ethical dilemma was decision during the game, whether to be a good leader, help the team and Boone, or to stay quiet and see what happens. Regardless of the white and black difference, Yoast was the Coach , a man of his word, not just a random football fan. He faced referees during the game, and that was a crucial moment where two colors started to vanish.

As with most sports teams, the Titans have an autocratic leadership style. Coach Boone is the one and only person who makes the decisions, he is the main man in charge. The style is productive, and the team wins games. Although he has assistant coaches, such as Bill Yoast who is the defensive coordinator, all the decisions must go through Coach Boone first. The democratic leadership style is not applicable on a football team because that’s why teams have coaches. The team does not make group decisions. Coach Boone also uses Job Enlargement in ‘Remember the

One character in the movie Remember the Titans that went through a paradigm shift was Coach Yoast. Yoast’s paradigm of other’s was that the new head coach,

• Coach Herman Boone, newly appointed head coach at a predominately white school, recently integrated. He is married and has two young daughters in a nuclear family.

David Kane is an African-American young gentleman, who has been latterly awarded the position of a principal at the Thurgood Marshall High School, Illinois. The school is two years old and divided into four “house”, each comprised of 300 students, 18 faculty members and a housemaster. Dr. Louis Parker had been the school’s first principal and had an impressive background, but he reassigned in disillusionment and many described him as a “broken man” .

Yoast was dedicated to football and had gained loyalty from his team and white community. He was respected and had demonstrated his effective leadership through several wins. He was also nominated for hall of fame for his exceptional leadership. He cared for the people in his team. When he had the opportunity to leave and take up a position for head coach he did not because he was worried about the players in his team. He considered them like his own kids and was concerned for them and did not want to abandon them. He takes the offer of the assistant coach to ensure that his team members are a part of the new team. His initial objective was to ensure that his boys are a part of the team and are well taken care off.

With all the strengths Coach displayed, he still had some weakness show through. He made judgment errors through overconfident and commitment escalation. Overconfidence came when he first met his assistant coaches. He insisted that he was the head coach and things were going to be done his way. This did not