Last week the Marquette men’s basketball head coach Shaka Smart left his hoop and entered college football. Smart himself followed a day in the life of the Alabama Crimson Tide team with their newly hired head coach, Kalen DeBoer. The visit, which might have looked strange at first glance was all in the aim to get some lessons from football leagues.

As ESPN’s Milwaukee stated, Smart talked about his day on ESPN’s Homer Show and that he was impressed by the football team. Smart was especially intrigued with football thinking, and how the teams are coached. Due to the interest that he had developed in the different systems that are there and what he might stand to gain from them. “I got a lot going on in my mind, but I spent a day last week with their football team, and I have been replaying that day in my mind for the last six days,” Smart revealed.

He was not only observing; he observed the profound strategies that the basketball team could adopt from the football team. With Alabama and spending a day with Kalen DeBoer, it was not only learning about football but implementing some of those lessons into his own basketball practice. For Smart, it was an eye-opener, especially on how the football team structures their practice and is skillful in player development.

Smart, pointed out that listening to the staff’s testimonial about two entirely distinct systems: Kalen and Saban, was quite interesting. When DeBoer took over the position of coaching icon Saban, Smart found it a great chance to observe the changes and new tactics that were being practiced.

Learning from the gridiron: football’s influence on basketball coaching

Something that impressed Smart more was the football team’s level of organization and the general commitment to details. “How football coaches organize, football coaches’ work ethic, football coaches’ detail to their players—how they show the film to the players and the way football coaches engage their guys and make them aware,” Smart said. He was specifically impressed by how football coaches question their players and stress technical performance—something Smart believes will be beneficial for basketball coaching too.

“Their game is so technical they emphasize so much on details,” Smart further said. This concept of intense concentration and meticulous rehearsal is something that Smart thought could be applied to basketball.

Smart’s takeaway from the day was clear: motivation and method. “You just get the motivation from their methods and the way their staff works,” he said. These strategies, he is going to use these on his players, in an attempt to enrich his practices with some football mannerisms. By combining the methodologies of football and basketball, Smart intends to introduce new thinking into the methods of training and playing for his team.