Simmons Says - Starstruck by leadership

Only 16 Tennesseans have ever been inducted into the National High School Sports Hall of Fame. Over the last 10 weeks, two of them have sat down in chairs beside myself, Chris Sullens and Trevor Evans on the Warren County Sports Authority Show.

Think about that for a second - Two out of 16 in the history of sports in our state. Honestly, how did we even get here with the WCSA? Actually, I don’t care - I’m just in awe.

First came Rick Insell, who built one of the greatest girls basketball dynasties this state has ever seen at Shelbyville before winning more than 500 games at MTSU and earning his place in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, the MTSU Hall of Fame, C-USA Hall of Fame and . . . well, any Hall of Fame that honors success.

Then came Gary Rankin, Tennessee's winningest football coach and the owner of more state championships than anybody else in state history - 17. As I said on the show Wednesday, Rankin was inducted into the TN Hall of Fame in 2011, then proceeded to have so much success that they could’ve inducted him again based on what he did after the first time he was honored.

As someone who has spent his life covering sports, I should probably be used to sitting across from accomplished people. Well, I wasn't.

There's still a part of me that's the kid who devoured sports pages, filled out state tournament brackets and believed coaches like Rankin and Insell were larger than life. Sitting across from them, asking questions and listening to stories, there was a moment where I felt a little starstruck.

Then they started talking. At that point, the legends disappeared - the coaches stayed.

That's what surprised me most.

These are two men who have every accomplishment imaginable. They have won enough games to justify gigantic egos. They have enough rings to fill a jewelry case. They have influenced thousands of athletes, coached against the biggest names in their sports and earned every accolade imaginable.

Yet neither spent much time talking about himself. They actively avoided it anytime we started gushing, which - let’s be real - how could you not?

Instead, they talked about the people who helped them get there.

Rankin talked about assistants, players, family and mentors. Insell talked about administrators who believed in girls basketball before it was popular, assistants who helped him evolve, players who bought into the standard and friends like Pat Summitt who influenced his career.

Sure, there was plenty of name-dropping - Summitt, Kirby Smart and Jimbo Fisher were names that just casually came up in conversation. As a sports fan, hearing those names casually woven into conversation almost made us want to stop the interview and ask questions about them for another hour.

To Rankin and Insell, though, those weren't celebrity stories - They were stories about peers.

That's what happens when you've spent decades operating at the highest level of your profession. The people the rest of us read about become the people you work alongside.

The remarkable part wasn't that they knew those names - the remarkable part was they never used those names to make themselves seem bigger. If anything, they used them to shine the spotlight on somebody else.

That seems to be a common trait among truly great leaders: They’re proud of what they built, but they're even prouder of the people who built it with them.

It also got me thinking about one of the great "what ifs" in Warren County sports history.

Sports has always been full of butterfly effects. One interview goes differently, one phone call gets returned one school board makes another decision and - BOOM - history can change.

Gary Rankin's coaching journey began in Warren County before taking him on a path that eventually made him Tennessee's all-time winningest football coach. Rick Insell's story almost came here too.

He interviewed for the Warren County boys basketball job in 1977, when Rankin was already on campus as an assistant coach. Insell didn't get it. Instead, Shelbyville hired him as an assistant and asked him to coach the girls. The rest became Tennessee basketball history.

I can’t help but wonder - What if those coaching paths had crossed in McMinnville instead of simply passing through it? Imagine walking across the Warren County campus knowing Gary Rankin was building Pioneer football while Rick Insell was building Lady Pioneer basketball.

Would Pioneer athletics have needed another trophy case? I think they’d need a full hallway. Heck, they’d need a whole warehouse.

Of course, history doesn't work that way.

Maybe Rankin doesn't become Gary Rankin if he stays. Maybe Insell never discovers the career that would define his life if he gets the Warren County boys job instead of coaching girls basketball at Shelbyville.

Sometimes the greatest careers are shaped as much by the opportunities we don't get as the ones we do.

But that wasn't what stayed with me. Neither did their championships (though, my goodness - it’s impossible to ignore the greatness). Even the tales of how they accomplished Hall of Fame status or ended up famous - with famous friends - won’t be how I link those chats in my mind.

What stayed with me was how remarkably similar these two men sounded despite coaching completely different sports.

Both talked about standards. Both talked about preparation. Both talked about surrounding themselves with good people.

And neither talked like someone chasing records. They talked like someone trying to help the next player, the next coach or the next generation.

Insell put it best when discussing the transfer portal and NIL. He acknowledged players are getting paid, but quickly reminded everybody what matters most is the degree hanging on the wall because basketball eventually ends.

That's not a basketball lesson - That’s a life lesson.

Rankin's message wasn't much different. Whether he was discussing assistants, players or programs, the focus was never on himself. It was always on building something bigger than one person.

Maybe that's the biggest lesson I took away from both conversations - Sport doesn't create leaders; Leadership creates winners.

Championships don't automatically make people humble either. Humble people often become champions because they're willing to keep learning, adapting and giving credit away instead of demanding it.

I’m going to be forever thankful I got to spend two Wednesday nights with two coaches who reminded me why they became legendary in the first place.

It happened in different sports, on different sidelines and while they were on different journeys. But they left the same fingerprints the best coaches do in any sport.

That’s because the sport didn’t matter in those situations. The leaders do.