Tom Crean on Developing Team Identity, Embracing Multi-Sport Athletes, & Jim Harbaugh's Unique Coaching Style

NFL: Move the Sticks with Daniel Jeremiah & Bucky Brooks

NFL

Football, Sports

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Move the Sticks, DJ and Bucky are joined by longtime college basketball head coach Tom Crean, who led programs at Marquette, Indiana, and Georgia. The trio explores how the player evaluation process has evolved over the last decade, from what coaches look for to how player development is approached today.

Coach Crean shares insight on the value of building shared adversity early in a team’s journey to help shape identity and culture. He also speaks on the benefits of multi-sport athletes, why we’re seeing a decline in them, and what’s lost when athletes specialize too soon.

The conversation dives into the importance of strength and conditioning, and Crean breaks down the common traits shared by elite athletes he’s coached like Dwyane Wade, Victor Oladipo, and Anthony Edwards.

Plus, Crean offers his perspective on what makes his brother-in-law Jim Harbaugh a special coach, from his unorthodox leadership style to how he brings joy and unity into one of the most physically and mentally grueling sports.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:04.9	And now, Move the Sticks with Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks.
0:11.3	What's up, everybody?
0:12.3	Welcome to Move the Sticks.
0:13.4	DJ, Bucky, with you.
0:15.2	Buck, excited about this one.
0:17.0	We've been kind of going down our personal list of favorite conversations to have,
0:20.7	and we've
0:21.0	got another one of our favorites today. Yeah, Tom Carine, outstanding coach, a great leader,
0:27.1	and someone who has really shared a lot of wisdom with us when it comes to building teams,
0:32.1	the DNA of great players. So we're really excited to kind of revisit those conversations.
0:37.3	Yeah, for those that aren't
0:38.1	familiar with Coach Crean, you know, obviously there's the football connection, the obvious
0:42.3	football connection. He's married to Joni Harbaugh, the sister of Jim and John Harbaugh. So he's
0:47.2	in a football family. But Tom was head coach at Marquette in basketball where he coached
0:51.8	Duane Wade. He was in Indiana where they had a very successful run there from 2008 to 2017 as he kind of turned that program around.
0:58.5	And then coaching Anthony Edwards at Georgia from 2018 to 22 was his time at Georgia,
1:03.8	came across and developed an unbelievable player there in Anthony Edwards.
1:08.2	So he's had a lot of big time, big time talent that he's
1:11.4	helped nurture and develop and someone who offers a lot of wisdom in terms of leadership,
1:16.7	creating a culture, things that we definitely obsessive of on our podcast. We're always trying
1:22.5	to learn and grow. And he's someone that I think helped both of us in those departments. So
	...

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