(FORTUNE Magazine) – What I most remember about the football coaches of my youth was their foul breath. To a man, they liked to get up close and personal whenever you erred. Miss a block or run the wrong pass route, and they would be right in your face, eyes bulging and spittle flying as they questioned your budding manhood and your mother's morals. I suppose there was some aspect of character building in all that, but I couldn't imagine seeking out any of those old gasbags for advice on how to run my life or my business affairs.

So I approached a new collection of motivational essays by ten current and former National Football League coaches with more than a little skepticism. Surprise! The book, Game Plans for Success, (Little Brown, $22.95), compiled by Philadelphia Daily News sportswriter Ray Didinger, is not half bad. For readers with a taste for nitty-gritty management advice and at least a modest acquaintance with the game, there is plenty here to cheer.

The most cerebral offering is San Francisco 49ers coach George Seifert's treatise on transition management. In 1989, Seifert took over a highly successful operation from the legendary Bill Walsh. Like other managers in such situations, he soon discovered the difficulties of maintaining continuity and holding off on changes until his troops were ready to accept them. Seifert writes well about the importance of delegating and allowing subordinates the freedom to solve their own problems. "I present ideas, not mandates," he says.

He's also instructive when he talks about managing flamboyant players such as Deion Sanders. Like any other executive who hopes to bring out the best in unconventional employees, he learned how to appreciate their quirks. Seifert, who has a conservative coaching style, could have squashed Sanders's wild dancing in the end zone after touchdowns. Instead he let the players have their way as long as they didn't get too far out of line. Says he: "I honestly felt that if I tried to impose too much of myself on that team and be too restrictive, the whole thing would have crumbled."

Minnesota Vikings coach Dennis Green contributes a timely essay on turning around a losing outfit. When he took over his club in 1992, Green inherited a helmetful of problems--racial divisions, salary disputes, a roster full of underachievers. Sound familiar? Seeing a need for greater togetherness, he forced everyone to share hotel rooms on the road and busted up cliques by switching locker assignments. Green cut some players with superior skills but lousy work habits, signed up others with less talent but better attitudes. The key to the Vikings' turnaround, says Green, was coming up with an overall strategy and finding the right people to see it through: "Plan your work, work your plan."

Former 49ers coach Bill Walsh, now an NFL consultant, writes entertainingly about the power of doing the unexpected. Most coaches script plays for the sidelines when time is running down in order to stop the clock; Walsh's teams often run or throw down the middle--but not always. "More than creating, innovation involves anticipating," he writes. "It is having a broad base of knowledge on your subject and an ability to see where the game is headed."

Most of the remaining essays strike relevant themes. Kansas City Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer points out the pitfalls of trying to remake yourself when you take on a new job. "What the new group is looking for is essentially what you delivered before," he writes. "It would be a mistake for an executive to make a lateral move, one company to another, and suddenly decide to blaze a new trail."

Tom Coughlin of the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars is particularly eloquent on the burdens of presiding over a startup: "You step into a situation where you are not only head coach or boss, but part designer, part engineer, and full-time visionary." Current Redskins coach Norv Turner details the problems of moving to the top spot from the middle-management ranks--learning how to take a broader view of the organization, managing new demands on your time--and offers sensible advice: "You have to be more authoritative. Not that you have to yell and scream like a drill sergeant, but you have to make it clear you are in charge." Anyone who has struggled with life after a promotion will recognize the turf.

One fumble: It's unlikely that anyone will gain much from former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka's somewhat primitive thoughts about hands-on management. "I've never had a philosophy other than 'whip the other guy,' " he informs us right up front. Now, that's the sort of coach I remember.