http://kdl.cs.umass.edu/papers/fast-jensen-aaai2006.pdf

The link above leads to an article concerning the most significant network in the NFL: the network between coaches. From the beginning of the NFL to the present, almost every successful NFL coach has been linked to a great coach before him as an assistant under him. This article identifies the network that these links form and explores the reasons behind the development of these bonds.

The article focuses on the success of a coach and how his success affects the development of the coaching network. The main criterion used in evaluating how successful a coach is is the ability to win a championship. The article concluded through this criterion that the fewer mentors a coach has, the more likely he becomes a championship coach and the more likely he produces future head coaches. The article presents two figures that support this theory. On the third page of the article, in Figure 3, a network of coaches is presented. The colored names are coaches who have won either a Super Bowl or a championship. As one can see, most of these coaches has had few mentors, but ended up producing many coaches, some of whom also won championships. Then, on the next page, Table 1 shows a list of coaches who have won 3 or more championships. As one can see, all these coaches eventually produced at least 6 head coaches. This article shows us at the end that the vast coaching network has been developed over the years by coaches of championship and the assistants they mentored.

This article relates to the class in that it shows us the power of a social network. As we can tell from the article, many of the assistants that were linked to successful coaches eventually became coaches themselves. Besides the people that started coaching when the league started, almost every successful coach is at most two degrees of separation away from a former title-winning coach. We learn from this that in the NFL, being part of a strong network of coaches can lead to future jobs and success in the league.