It was interesting to read that among the notable students who have graduated from the Kansas University School of Education in the last century were three top university basketball coaches: Phog Allen, Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp.

An education degree seems like a natural for an aspiring coach at any level. Coaches of a generation or two ago apparently thought so, but what about today? Is education the best degree to start a coaching career or have the demands of coaching made some other degree more applicable?

According to biographical material at the University of Buffalo Web site, KU’s new head football coach, Turner Gill, has a bachelor’s degree in behavior analysis. KU head basketball coach Bill Self holds a bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s degree in athletic administration. Both probably think their day-to-day coaching duties have a lot to do with teaching, but degrees in behavior analysis or business may be even more important to the career of today’s college coaches.

At one time, all high school coaches were drawn from a school’s teaching staff. Now, state athletics rules have been loosened to allow more outside coaches. The use of non-teacher coaches is more common in smaller towns and outside the major sports of football and basketball, according to Chris Davis, who ended a nine-year stint as Lawrence High School’s basketball coach last year.

Davis may be more aware than others of that trend because he also was in private business and not a classroom teacher when he coached at LHS. “The connection between the coach and the school is pretty important. …” he said Wednesday. “That was something that I missed when I was at LHS.”

Davis said he tried to compensate for not being in the classroom by finding other ways to connect with students off the playing field. It may have helped that he was trained as a teacher, and is teaching again at South Junior High School. How important is that education degree to a coach?

“It certainly helps, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say you can’t be a coach without it,” he said.

Coaching is a more specialized field now, especially at the college level, he said, but training as a teacher still is important “because that’s what coaching is.”

Although most high school coaches still are drawn from the teaching ranks, the days of college coaches being formally trained as teachers may be gone. College athletes or others who are serious about getting into coaching probably don’t see themselves teaching at the high school level or accepting the high school teaching/coaching salaries that go with those jobs.

Teaching is, no doubt, a natural talent for many top coaches who teach their athletes many lessons about sports and life. Perhaps formal education in teaching strategies isn’t that important. The idea of coaches as educators seems a little quaint in today’s competitive collegiate arena, but if it was good enough for Phog Allen, Dean Smith and Adolph Rupp, it makes you wonder whether it might be a helpful degree for the coaches of today as well.