COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

As usual, the college football offseason has been filled with all kinds of news and as we here at Coaches Hot Seat have been going about our days filled with work and family time we have kept up with college football the same way so many of you do, with the Coaches Hot Seat Daily News section.  We all use the CHS website the same way our subscribers do and over the past few years college football has truly become a year-long sport that only takes a few weeks off here or there so everyone can catch their breath!  Frankly, we haven’t a clue how these coaches go almost 365 days a year, but maybe that is why there is so much burnout in the game and why coaches need to make sure they carve out time for themselves and their family.

Here are some of the issues that have caught our attention recently:

Off-field trouble at Oregon and elsewhere since the end of the season

 

We have some eyes and ears on the ground in Eugene and we don’t believe that Chip Kelly has lost control of his program as some think, because a handful of players have evidently made some very poor decisions in recent weeks, but those players actions have opened the door for people to wonder if discipline is really a part of the new Kelly regime at Oregon. 

We will tell everyone that is reading this blog that we hear a lot of things about college head and assistant coaches (very little to almost none ever makes it in this blog by the way, even we have verified something ourselves) and from all our friends and even CHS members that live, work and go to school in Eugene and the state of Oregon, we have not heard one bad word about Chip Kelly.  Yes, there have been some rumblings to the effect if he is really running a taut ship or if he plays favorites when doling out discipline, but nothing negative at all about Kelly has been related to us and that is a very rare thing indeed. 

The misdoings, misjudgments, bad decisions and other things that go on with college football players in the game today create a lot of debate here at Coaches Hot Seat about how different college athletics is today from what it was like 25+ years ago.  We have discussed among ourselves here many disciplinary decisions that we have witnessed or were unfortunately a part of by our college coaches and many of those stories would be instructive to how much college athletics has changed over the years.  We came up with one of those stories that we can relate to you, mainly because this is a story that will not readily identify a college coach or player since it happened in a non-major collegiate sport.  Here is that disciplinary story:

A college golf team in the 1980s traveled to a coastal town to play in a golf tournament where there were two golf courses that would be played in the event.  Since a practice round on each course would be necessary to prepare adequately for the tournament the 5-member team and 2 coaches (head coach and assistant coach) traveled down and played the first practice round on the day of arrival (we were to play the second practice round the next day and then start the event on the third day).  That night after dinner the head golf coach (who had a Vince Dooley type approach to discipline:  “Keep rules to the minimum and enforce the ones you have.”) told us at the restaurant that he only had two rules when it came to curfew during this tournament: “You must be on the hotel property by 10PM and in your room by Midnight.  You are all adults and you know how much sleep you need, but I really don’t want you out in the bars or cruising the beach, but you are old enough to go out and see the sights.  Just meet the two curfew times.  Everyone understand?”  We all shook our heads yes and knew that we could do about anything, as long as we were on the property of the hotel by 10PM and in our rooms by Midnight, and we fully expected the head coach to check up on us!

That night all of us went out and had a drink or two (in a hotel restaurant bar which is technically not a bar!  Remember this is a time when 18 year olds could still drink!  Oh, those were the days!) and walked around the beachfront area and all of us were back by to the hotel by 9:30 PM or so and we then started playing poker and other card games (Yes, gambling…we were gambling!  Hey, if you are 18 then you should be able to drink a beer and play poker, because you can vote and die for your country….right?).  Well, we all knocked off and headed to our rooms by 11:45 PM or so because we knew the assistant coach would be checking up on us at Midnight to see if we were in our rooms.  We were all in our rooms at Midnight and the assistant coach hit the sack after checking up on us, but one of the better players on the golf team decided he would go across the street at about 12:30 AM and get a single beer and something to eat.  That golfer was gone for about 15 minutes and was back in his room by 1AM, but what he did not know was that the head golf coach was standing on the balcony taking in the ocean view and witnessed the golfer leave his room, go across the street, buy something, and come back to the hotel. 

Well, we all get down to breakfast in the morning and the head coach calls over the golfer that went to the 7-Eleven after Midnight for a beer/chips run and asked him very calmly but point-blank:  “Did you leave your room after Midnight?”  The golfer said:”  Yes, sir.  I went to get something to drink and eat and was only gone for….”  The golf coach stopped him and turned to the assistant golf coach and said:  “Take “X” here up to his room and get his stuff and take him down to the Greyhound Bus Station and buy him a ticket back to “Y.”  The golfer was shocked but not really surprised because he knew that there would be punishment for breaking the simple rules that the head coach had laid down for all of us.  Of course, in college golf you play 5 golfers and the top 4 scores count so for that golf tournament the remaining 4 players were under tremendous pressure because they knew that their golf score would count and that in order to do well the entire team would have to play very well that week.  The golf team rallied around their coach and finished in third place and we all got a very good lesson in discipline and what the expectations were for us when we were representing our school and playing for our coach. 

The golfer that got sent back on the Greyhound Bus to the campus was suspended for the entire semester (college golf is played in both the fall and spring terms) and was allowed to return to play on the team in the next term, but his curfew at tournaments was always 2 hours earlier than the rest of the team because as the head coach told the player:  “You have to prove to me I can trust you, because if I cannot trust you then you cannot play on my team.”

Listening to that story from a Coaches Hot Seat member and thinking about some of the things that go on in college football today where football players on full-scholarships can be arrested, jailed and get into trouble with law enforcement and still not be suspended from their college team just defies all understanding to us here at CHS.   In Allen Barra’s book about Paul “Bear” Bryant, The Last Coach, there is a terrific section (pgs. 313 – 316) on Bryant’s suspension of his star QB Joe Namath during the 1963 season for the final game and the Sugar Bowl against unbeaten Ole Miss.  What did Joe Namath do wrong to warrant a suspension for 2 games including the Sugar Bowl?  He was involved in an altercation in a parking lot in front of a convenience store.  That section on Bryant’s suspension of Joe Namath and in fact Barra’s great book on Bryant, The Last Coach, should be required reading before coach takes over a head coaching job on the college level (of any sport!).

From where we sit discipline of college athletes should be very straight-forward.  A player that violates a fundamental team rule should be suspended until the head coach believes the player has been properly punished.  Yes, that is right, properly “punished.”  Punishment is at the heart of disciplining a player whether that punishment includes loss of playing time, running stadiums, doing extra reps, or a combination of all of the above.  A player that gets involved with law enforcement in any way should be suspended immediately until the matter is cleared up or adjudicated.  Playing on a college football team is not a democracy where it is “Innocent until proven guilty.”  Yes, there are football players that are improperly or wrongly arrested or harassed by the police, but not very often and it should be a fundamental rule that if you are arrested by the police or get a DUI or are even cited by the police and released immediately, the college athlete should be suspended from the team until the matter is settled by the police, the courts and/or satisfies the head coach fully that it will not happen again. 

Maybe some people will call us old fashioned or out of touch with the way the world works in 2010, but we don’t think so.  We have all been college athletes and we all wanted the head coach to set very clear rules and guidelines that we would have to follow and not cross if we wanted to stay on the team and most importantly to get playing time.  What happens when a head coach seems to have one set of rules for starters and another for backups is that it starts to eat at the insides of the team and creates many more problems than the head coach just being straight-up with all of the players when they arrive on campus by letting them know that the head coach, the athletic department and the school are not going to tolerate inappropriate and especially illegal behavior.  You break the rules of the team:  You will be suspended and maybe thrown off the team.  The same goes for breaking the laws of this community.

Now, we only wish someone could explain to us how in the Hell any head coach can approach disciplining the players on his team in another way?  Yes, there are coaches that are very “flexible” or “selective” when it comes to discipline or even determining who should and who should not play (one day we will have to relate a story to us about how USC fell apart last season all due to some players getting “preferential” treatment) for the team, but it is our firm belief that a head coach that does not have a very clear and understandable disciplinary policy is only setting himself and his team up for failure.

Enough said on that subject, but needless to say there is much work to be done by a number of head coaches on the policies that they have and do not have when it comes to disciplining their players.  It should be very clear to all head coaches:  If you don’t have a clear policy for breaking team rules and discipline…pretty soon you will not have a football team.

Notre Dame to the Big Ten?

 

To us the no-brainer of all-time is for Notre Dame to be invited to join and the Irish becoming a part of the Big Ten (Big Fourteen) Conference.  The Big Ten adding Notre Dame would be a big Win for the conference and we believe that it would help Notre Dame as well, because it would provide a consistent and solid group of rivalries that could be developed in all sports, not just football.  The Big Ten has a very good group of universities, both academically and athletically, and Notre Dame could do a lot worse than aligning itself with that very good group of schools.

We are sure that the Big Ten could cut a deal with Notre Dame to let them keep most of their TV football revenue from their home games in South Bend and the other Irish athletic teams would benefit from having a group of schools that were both close by and would provide very good rivalries.  In football Notre Dame already plays 3 Big Ten schools, Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue on a regular basis and even if the Big Ten moved to a 9 game conference schedule, the Irish could still play USC, a military academy and another I-A school which would give them a very attractive schedule each year.  As for basketball, Notre Dame would be leaving a nice basketball conference in the Big East to join a very solid group of teams in the Big Ten. 

Another factor that should not be overlooked by Notre Dame is the reality of the world that we are now living in, which is that for the foreseeable future because of the demographic situation in the United States (and the massive costs and taxes that will come with the Baby Boomers retiring) college athletic departments will be forced to closely watch their spending, expenses and revenues and Notre Dame in the Big Ten would allow the Irish to play other collegiate teams that are all in a very close proximity to South Bend. 

Notre Dame to the Big Ten?  Both sides would be smart to put together this deal and if the Irish were part of the Big Ten the conference could then add Missouri and Rutgers and overnight have a VERY strong athletic conference that could really compete against the SEC.  Call it the Big 14!

Other Issues

We have been working the BCS story with some of our friends back in Washington DC and we have some comments on the BCS and what we believe will end up happening with a possible Justice Department investigation and what may come of the Congress looking into the core issues of just how the BCS works.  Our view on the BCS has been made very clear over the years.  The BCS is a fraud and there is no way someone can believe in or support the NCAA Basketball Tournament, or how every other championship in collegiate athletics is determined, and support the BCS, unless you are massive Hypocrite OR your pockets are being lined by the Bogus BCS.  More to come on this and other issues soon…

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