When Delaware and Virginia meet on September 26, this game will bring together more than two proud football programs. It will also reconnect two of college football’s most respected coaching legacies—Coach Tubby Raymond of Delaware and Coach George Welsh of Virginia. Although their personalities, coaching styles, and football philosophies could hardly have been more different, both men built programs that became models of sustained success and organizational alignment, and left an enduring mark on their universities.
In part one of this series, I reflected on the privilege of playing for and later coaching with Coach Raymond before joining Coach Welsh’s staff during his second season at Virginia. Having the opportunity to observe both Hall of Fame coaches from the inside remains one of the most valuable leadership experiences of my career.
After that article was published, I received one question more than any other: “What’s the secret sauce? What did these two Hall of Fame coaches have most in common?”
At first, I assumed the answer would be football. After all, one built the Delaware Wing-T into one of the most recognizable offensive systems in college football, while the other developed an offense built around flexibility, believing his team should be able to run the football when he wanted to run it and throw the football when he wanted to throw it. Their personalities were different, their coaching styles were different, and their offensive philosophies were certainly different. Their defenses were equally different.
The more I reflected on my experiences with both coaches, however, the more I realized the answer had very little to do with football.
What they held in common was that both coaches knew exactly what they wanted.
Everything else followed. Every important decision they made supported that objective. Rather than collecting good ideas or adopting the latest trends, they built systems that consistently produced the decisions, behaviors, and performance they expected from their programs. Practice reinforced player development. Communication strengthened accountability. Culture encouraged execution. Recruiting supported everything. Nothing existed independently because every part of the program was aligned with every other part.
That alignment, more than any particular offense or defense, became the foundation of sustained success.
One of the greatest misconceptions about leadership is that successful organizations are built primarily by charismatic people. Coach Raymond certainly possessed charisma. His pregame talks were legendary among Delaware players because he understood exactly how to motivate each individual. Coach Welsh approached communication very differently. He used remarkably few words, preferring to focus on personnel, assignments, and the strategic priorities for the game while trusting that the preparation completed during the week would provide the necessary confidence on Saturday afternoon.
Although their personalities could not have been more different, both coaches understood that personality alone could never sustain a successful program. Lasting success required a program in which every important activity reinforced every other activity. Leadership established the direction, but aligned systems transformed that direction into consistent performance.
Perhaps the greatest philosophical difference between the two coaches was what each wanted his football program to achieve. Coach Raymond valued predictability. The Delaware Wing-T became far more than an offensive scheme—it became not just the identity of Delaware football, but also the university and, to a certain degree, the state itself. Practices, off-season conditioning, recruiting, teaching, and player development all reinforced an offense built upon discipline, repetition, and precise execution. Coach Welsh pursued something different. He wanted the flexibility to run the football when circumstances demanded it and throw the football when opportunities presented themselves. His offensive philosophy evolved around the strengths of his personnel, allowing Virginia to adapt from season to season while remaining true to the kind of football program he wanted to build.
Those approaches appeared to be opposites, but they were actually expressions of the same leadership principle. Neither coach searched for the perfect system. Instead, each built a system that reflected exactly what he wanted his program to become and then aligned every other part of the program to support it.
That commitment was perhaps most evident in how both coaches responded to change. During one conversation, Coach Raymond confided to our offensive line coach, Gregg Perry, and me that he had considered abandoning the Delaware Wing-T several times throughout his career. However, he always reached the same conclusion. If he abandoned the Wing-T because of frustration or impatience, eventually he would abandon the next offense for the same reason. Changing systems without thoughtful analysis simply restarted the learning curve for players and coaches. Improvement came from refining and innovating the system, not replacing it.
Coach Welsh demonstrated that same discipline from a different perspective. During his first season at Virginia, the Cavaliers had an open week before playing Wake Forest. Coach Welsh contacted Coach Raymond to learn more about the Delaware Wing-T, and Gregg Perry spent time during the week working with UVa’s offensive coordinator Tom O’Brien to install selected elements of the offense for that particular opponent. Virginia won the game.
When I first learned what had happened, I honestly thought it was little more than a coaching novelty. Coach Raymond often reminded us that the Wing-T was a discipline, not simply an offensive package that could be picked up one week and set aside the next. My initial reaction was that borrowing pieces of the offense for a single game seemed to contradict everything I had learned at Delaware.
During the time I worked for Coach Welsh, I came to a very different conclusion. Coach Welsh wasn’t trying to become Coach Raymond, nor did he abandon the offensive philosophy he was building at Virginia. He was doing exactly what great leaders do: remaining faithful to his principles while using every available resource to help his team succeed. The objective was never to prove the superiority of one offensive system over another. The objective was to give his players the best opportunity to win that particular football game.
That experience taught me something I have never forgotten. Great leaders don’t become prisoners of their systems. They build systems strong enough to remain true to their core principles while adapting intelligently when circumstances demand it. Coach Raymond and Coach Welsh arrived at that lesson from different directions, but both understood that the system exists to serve the organization—not the other way around.
The more I think about the question readers asked after my first article, the more convinced I become that football was never the common thread between Coach Raymond and Coach Welsh. The common thread was alignment. They knew exactly what they wanted, and they built every significant part of their program to consistently produce it. Their personalities differed, their philosophies differed, and their methods differed, yet both built programs that performed at an extraordinarily high level because every part of the program moved in the same direction.
Both coaches knew something that very few leaders understand. Over time, something remarkable begins to happen. As aligned systems consistently reinforce the same expectations, behaviors become habits, habits become culture, and culture eventually becomes organizational maturity. That’s the stage both Coach Raymond and Coach Welsh understood so well, although they created it in entirely different ways.
Good leaders build good systems. Great leaders align those systems.