Hard disagree. A good coach only needs to see the players on the field, notice the things that wins game, and figure out the way to motivate their players. Don't need to have played the game, though it helps. I'm thinking of one of the best coaches in the world, who played the sport at an unimpressive level as a teen...but at a young age he watched his father work as an assistant coach. That's where he learned his skills.

As well, the requirement for "must hit X bar of quality", where X is some arbitrarily high level, is nonsensical. If they're so good at building quality products...then why aren't they doing that in the first place. Necessarily, your best builders should be builders, and your best managers...should be managers.

> notice the things that wins game

> motivate their players

These are made so much easier if you have "played the game" that you pretty much end up back to the original argument of it being a requirement if being "a coach" to remain competitive. There of course will be outliers to this, like your aforementioned "coach that never played", but why deliberately base your point on an outlier?

> "must hit X bar of quality", where X is some arbitrarily high level

Quoting myself, I said "of quality", i.e. something that is reputable and, relative to some reasonable and well-known industry standard software development principles and benchmarks, of quality. I wouldn't say it's totally arbitrary.