COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

First it was the Urban Meyer resignation…..hold it, “leave of absence” that interrupted the Coaches Hot Seat 8-ball tournament at Lake Tahoe (at least for a few minutes) and now this Mike Leach – Adam James “get into the shed” fiasco at Texas Tech comes along right in the middle of a marathon poker game which dissolved into hands of blackjack which later dissolved into darts which ended up with two guys battling each other in foosball deep into the night.  Such is life at the Coaches Hot Seat Lake Tahoe retreats!

Getting to this Mike Leach – Adam James situation at Texas Tech we first must say that we have a lot of respect for Adam’s father Craig James.  Craig is one of our favorite football players from long ago when we were still playing football, along with Eric Dickerson, when both men were playing at SMU and we have no doubt that Craig and his wife were only looking out for their son’s safety in reporting this issues to the folks at Tech.  With that being said, surely Craig James realized that by him inserting himself into this issue with his son and Mike Leach that he has provided a very nice vehicle for the people at Tech and elsewhere that have wanted to get rid of Leach for years with an opportunity to do just that.  Everyone with a working brain knows that Leach and his representatives are not well liked by several people within the Texas Tech power structure and as we said in this very blog last year after Leach came to agreement on a new contract with Tech, it was our recommendation that Leach find another place to coach because the people that he and his reps have pissed off would be coming back for his hide.  Evidently, it is now time to get Mike Leach’s hide!

For the sake of this argument we are going to assume that what has been reported in the press about what Mike Leach asked of Adam James to do is true, that Leach forced James to stand in a dark room on two different occasions for up to 3 hours after James had suffered a concussion that was confirmed by doctors of which concussion Leach was made aware of.  We are going to assume that is what actually happened and that prior to this happening between Leach and Adam James that there had been some tension between the two men, and we want to emphasize the word MEN because as we check the birthdates of Mike Leach, March 9, 1961 and Adam James, February 5, 2008, it is very obvious that neither of these MEN are children.

As we said earlier we can understand that Craig James would have concern for his son, but something we cannot understand is that Craig James believes that his 21, almost 22 year old son, cannot handle this issue himself with his head football coach and that it is the position of a father, a very well known father to boot, to insert himself into this issue to protect his son.  Adam James is 21, almost 22 years old, which is very close to the average age of US soldiers that are stationed around the world and are fighting on the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is our opinion that a 21 year old man should be able to handle an issue like this himself.  If one of our 21 year old sons called us from college and said that his head football coach had put him into a dark room twice for up to 3 hours after a concussion, our conversation with our son would have gone something like:

Son:  Dad, the doctor told me that the Sun would bother my concussion and when I went out to practice with sunglasses on the head coach seemed to get mad and he had a trainer make me stand in a dark room twice for up to 3 hours.

Dad:  Are you telling me that you believe that your head coach mistreated you?

Son:  Yes, don’t you think so?

Dad:  Well, I don’t really know, because I wasn’t there, but again let me ask you, DO YOU THINK your head coach mistreated you?

Son:  Yes.

Dad:  OK.  Then I WANT YOU to go to the associate AD at your school that is over football and tell him your concerns and if you don’t get a good answer at that level then go to the AD.

Son:  You think that is what I should do?

Dad:  Yes, if you think you were mistreated by your head coach, then you should tell the head coach’s boss.  If you don’t get what you think is a straight answer in the athletic department, then go to the president of the school.

Son:  Yes, but what do…

Dad:  If you are about to ask me to intervene in this situation by complaining to the AD, the president or friends of mine on the board of trustees, you can forget about that.  You are 21 years old and if you believe you were mistreated then you need to make your opinion known to your head coach’s bosses.  If I and your mother insert ourselves into this situation then the story will be that your Daddy and Momma are just taking care of their little boy and since you are 21 years old it is not the place of your father to get in between you and your head coach.  What if you were in the military and you were in Afghanistan and your division officer did something like this to you, would you call home and have me call your division officer’s boss? 

Son:  No, but..

Dad:  No but!  This is very simple.  If you believe that you were mistreated then you should make your opinions and concerns known to your head coach’s bosses and if you believe after voicing your concerns that the school is not listening to you then you should quit the team and transfer to another school where the coach will care more about  your health.  Is that clear?

Son:  Yes.

Dad:  Good.  Because you know that I care about your health and if where you are now going to school is not the place for you then damn we are going to find a place where people will treat you well.  Now get off the phone with me and get over the athletic department and tell the folks there what your head coach did, but most importantly keep my name out of this.  Just because your Daddy is a well known does not mean you get special treatment and believe me if what you tell me is true and I don’t know if it is true just because you told me that is the way it happened because I was not there…But, if you what you told me is true that you were forced to stand in a dark room twice for up to three hours and that treatment is really bothering you….well, then Son all I can say to you is that you would not have lasted for 5 seconds playing high school or college football in the 1970s and 80s.

Son:  OK, thanks.

Dad:  Good Luck and keep me apprised but out of this issue and don’t forget your Momma and I love you.

Now, that is how we would have talked to our 21, almost 22 year old son, if he had called us with the facts as have been written about in the press with this Mike Leach – Adam James issue.  Again, we have a lot of respect for Craig James and we fully understand his interest in making sure that his son is safe health-wise and we are not going to change our view of Craig over this issue because when something of a controversial nature comes up with one’s children it is always an emotional issue, especially when the mother gets involved.  We did get to see Craig James on ESPN News last night and we have no doubt of his sincerity in trying to protect his son, but no one here at Coaches Hot Seat can quite figure out why James thinks it is appropriate to be weighing in on this issue between Adam and his head coach in such a public way.  Craig had to know that there are a lot of people at Tech that are ready to pounce on any issue that they believe will give them leverage to fire Mike Leach and surely Craig James realized before he went to whomever he and his wife talked to at Texas Tech that this would cause a huge firestorm.  It is going to be fascinating to see how this all plays out as the very powerful people at Tech that loathe Mike Leach and all that he stands for work to send the Pirate packing. 

As for what Mike Leach had Adam James do, stand in a dark room on two different occasions for up to three hours, we do think that is a little odd for a guy with a concussion but most people are missing the reality that to Mike Leach this was just him sending a message to Adam James that he thought his showing up to practice in sunglasses and acting like a prima donna was not appropriate.  Maybe we are way off base here, but when we were growing up if you had a concussion that was diagnosed by a doctor the last place you wanted to be was anywhere around the head coach because that would only remind him that you were not practicing with everyone else, which usually caused us to head to the weight room or somewhere else out of the head coach’s view.  As for Adam James being put into a dark room twice for up to three hours, we can only wish that something like that was done to us considering some of things we went through while playing football in the 1970s.  We could got into the litany of madcap and crazy things that football coaches used to do to us, withholding water for entire practices was common, bear crawls up and down the football field, stadium runs that seemed to go on for days, grassy drills of being forced to be up running quick-step and t hen onto our stomachs doing push-ups and then back up and then back down, 30+ 100 yard runs on the track in 100+ degree temperatures, being told to sit under the bleachers because that is where the bums sit, and on and on and on, some or all of which Craig James had to experience during his football playing career (We could go into things that happened in the US military that make playing football look like a birthday party, but is that really necessary?  Didn’t think so, although if you read this Washington Post story you can get some idea, At Quantico, the ultimate test, of what it was/is like.).  If Craig James didn’t experience any of the above, which makes what happened to Adam James look like a walk in a park on a 70 degree day, then Craig played for a lot different football coaches than we did and we thought that football coaches in Texas were tough!

To this entire issue of Mike Leach being suspended from coaching in Alamo Bowl and possibly being fired over making a player stand in a dark room twice for up to three hours, if that is all that happened between Leach and James, then it is beyond absurd that Mike Leach was ever suspended and it will be beyond all realms of stupidity if Leach is fired from Texas Tech.  As we have stated in this blog several times over the years, the people that run colleges and universities in the United States are some of the biggest Candy Asses on the planet and we can only imagine one of these Candy Asses, like the president at Texas Tech, Guy Bailey, would be shocked, shocked to hear that a player was told to stand in dark room for up to three hours after being diagnosed with a concussion but then most college presidents would be shocked to hear that there is “Gambling in Casablanca?  No!”  We have some news for the president at Texas Tech and the presidents of colleges and universities across the country, football is a rough and tumble sport and if a player cannot deal with and handle having to stand in a dark room twice for up to three hours then how in the Hell is he going to be able to play football or fight for his country if necessary for that matter?  Is forcing Adam James or any other football player to stand in a dark room for up to three hours something that is right in normal society?  No, but college football is not normal society and if a college football player or any football player for that matter, especially one over the age of 18, feels that he has been mistreated by his head coach or anyone else for that matter then he should take that up with the coach’s bosses.  As for calling your Dad, especially a well known Dad, and having him intervene in a situation that a 21 year old man should be able to handle himself, we can only refer everyone to many past postings in the Coaches Hot Seat blog that talk about what a Candy Ass society America has become and how important it is we change course soon before our entire country gets its ass kicked by folks that don’t give a damn about football, baseball, golf or anything for that matter besides dominating the world.  It’s coming folks and the more we jack around with all this Candy Ass shit and not prepare ourselves, our kids and our country for the inevitable, the worse it is going to be.

We will be watching the court in West Texas very closely this morning to see if Mike Leach can get an injunction to coach in the Alamo Bowl, but Leach should not be under any illusion that there are not a lot of powerful people around the Tech program that wanted to fire his ass yesterday.  That is the REAL reality of this entire Leach – James situation and if we were Mike Leach we rather doubt if we would fight this thing because if this James issues doesn’t get him the folks that want to see Leach fired will find something else.  Just ask Tommy Tuberville about that reality…..

As for the folks that want Mike Leach fired both at Texas Tech, around Texas Tech, or big supporters of Texas Tech, we just hope that all of them are living straight and narrow lives, that they are only sleeping with their wives, that they are running their businesses in honest ways and that everything is on the up and up with them.  We don’t have a dog in this fight between Mike Leach and some folks at and around Texas Tech, but we do know that Mike Leach is a very good football coach, that he wins games, that he graduates players and from what we have been told he builds men.  What more Texas Tech could ask for, we are not really sure, unless of course they are looking for a Candy Ass head coach that will blow sunshine and kiss everyone’s ass so the bigwigs and say:  “See I am the boss of the head coach because he kisses my ass.”  To that we say, any head football coach that kisses anyone’s ass shouldn’t be a head coach in the first place, but then maybe Darrell Royal and Paul Bryant kissed a lot of ass….NOT A CHANCE IN HELL!

Yes, that Mike Leach was suspended over this Adam James issue, as reported in the press, is absurd.  If Mike Leach is fired over this Adam James issue then the folks doing the firing had better damn make sure that they are not involved in something that will make this James issue look like a tea cup spilling at a little girls party, because it will eventually come out and then we will have a real mess on our hands that will make everyone forget Mike Leach in a hurry…. Yes, this is a hellava mess and this issue and the issue with Leach’s contract at the end of last season when there were a whole lot of powerful people that trying to run Leach out of town tells us everything we need to know about Texas Tech and some of its leadership and boosters, which is… Drop to your knees and kiss our asses or hit the road jack, or Mike in this case…  Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

Mike Leach fired from Texas Tech for having a football player stand in a dark room twice for up three hours…..  Is that really about to happen?  If it does, then no longer will we just think that the United States is filled with Candy Asses everywhere one looks, but also even deep in the heart of Texas in the west Texas town of Lubbock that is known for tough cowboys and for people that don’t flinch at living hard lives.  Yes, even in Lubbock, Texas a head football coach can be fired for having a player stand in a dark room in 2009.  That idea is not only beyond absurd, it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that America is on the decline because if Texas is filled with Candy Asses can you imagine what is in the rest of the country?  That is a thought to hard to consider for very long because it brings on great depression….

Back to the poker games where real men “Ante Up” and let the cards fall where they may.  “I will take two cards….off of the top of deck please!”

On a totally unrelated subject…

Memo to Craig James: While we have your attention Craig, a couple of us were recently in Austin, Texas looking at office space (and our wives looking at homes) as we prepare to flee fruitcake-ville, otherwise known as the state of California, for a place that actually is not at war with business.  Another great California company, Apple Computer, has a pretty good sized operation now in Austin and although we have visited Austin many times for football games and always had a great time we have never really took the time to look around at the town.  We must say that we and our families were very impressed with Austin and not only does it cost a lot less to do business in Austin compared to California a family can actually purchase a very nice home without taking out a 7-figure loan!  Wow!  Getting back to Craig James, when we were in Austin we heard some rumblings from our Republican friends that James was considering a run for the US Senate if one of the current Texas US Senators Kay Bailey Hutchinson wins the Republican primary for Governor of Texas.  We don’t know the laws in Texas so maybe there exists the chance that the Governor could appoint James to Hutchinson’s Senate seat (which runs to 2012) if Hutchinson won the Republican primary and resigned from the Senate, but it sounded to us that there is at least a chance that James might make a run for the Senate or another political office in the coming years.  Our only recommendation to Craig James is that if you are considering a run for the US Senate is that you make damn sure you know what you are getting yourself into because the US Senate is not what it used to be.  The US Senate today is filled with a lot of windbags that blow a lot of smoke up people’s asses but actually get very little done for the American people and though working in Washington DC can be fun for a few years, once one drills down and learns what DC is really about, greed, power, money, and very little to do with or caring two rips about the American people, the place can get old in a hurry.  Washington DC has become much like Rome was in the last days of the Roman Empire, a city filled with greedy bastards that are doing their best to empty the Treasury before someone shuts the music off because anyone with a working brain knows that with all the debt the US has piled up (both on the books for the public to see and the trillions that are hidden from sight but well known to folks that know where to look) that the American Republic as all of us have known it is coming to an end.  No, the United States is not coming to an end, just as we have all known it, because far from the federal government creating new programs that will protect the American people from cradle to grave (the Candy Ass society writ large) the reality is that the folks in DC are doing little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic because a country built upon and funded from a massive pile of growing debt can only end up with one outcome and that outcome is that the interest on all that debt finally causes spending on other programs to decline….When all that interest starts curtailing social programs it will be bad (or good depending on your point of view), but when it starts cutting into defense spending and America’s ability to both defend our country and project force overseas, then that will be the downside of a slope that will be impossible to alter…

Our recommendation to Craig James:  Run or get appointed to the US Senate if you like, but a far better job would be Governor of Texas, which will be open again in 2014 and 2018.  If any of us here at Coaches Hot Seat were looking to get into politics in the coming years, then we would look to the state level because the federal government has now through the reckless actions of elected officials of both parties put the United States on a track to insolvency which will cause both reduced spending and higher taxes in the coming years which will only cause the American people to get even more pissed off and start to look for people besides Democrats and Republicans to solve the problems of our country.  We would hate to see Craig James leave his job in calling college football because he is one of the few guys that will give you his opinion and having the guts to give one’s opinion with the bark on is something that is sorely needed in America today, both in the game of college football and elsewhere.  Give us a choice between US Senator from Texas or Governor of Texas and we would take Governor’s office every time!

OK, back to the poker game.  “I have a full-house King high, can anyone beat that?  Good, can someone get us a round of beers while we wait on this Mike Leach court outcome….and some more Chex Mix with peanuts this time!”

Good Luck Captain Leach!

Somehow Kenny Rogers The Gambler seems appropriate here…

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When the news first broke over the weekend that Urban Meyer was stepping down as the head coach at Florida Coaches Hot Seat members were deep into a pool tournament on the shores of Lake Tahoe.  The first sign was that slow crawl across the bottom of the screen that seemed to say…”Urban Meyer resigning from Florida” was followed up by ESPN breaking into a football game to tell the world that Meyer was done in Gainesville.  Everyone here at Coaches Hot Seat that has followed Urban Meyer since he first came onto our radar at Utah certainly was not surprised that the intense pressure that Meyer puts himself under had finally forced him to step away from the game, but many of us also thought on Saturday that there was little chance he would be away from the game for long. 

Then came Sunday morning and the report that Meyer was not resigning, but taking a “leave of absence” from the Florida football team and then the Sunday news conference with a clearly still shaken and confused Urban Meyer and Florida AD Jeremy Foley working through what was actually going to happen with Meyer in the coming months live on television for all to see in real time.  As we here at Coaches Hot Seat thought on Saturday and only confirmed to us on Sunday, we all knew that Urban Meyer was going to reach a point where his physical and mental health would not allow him to go forward and we are still not sure at this point if Meyer will be on the sidelines when Florida kicks off the 2010 season and we are very confident that Meyer doesn’t know that either.

There have been so many warning signs about Meyer through the years, from some of the stories we first heard when Meyer was the head coach Utah about his days as an assistant at Colorado State and Notre Dame, to Buddy Martin’s book Urban’s Way: Urban Meyer, the Florida Gators, and His Plan to Win, to the Sports Illustrated article in early December that detailed Meyer’s upbringing in Ohio, all are pieces of the story that led to Meyer having to take considerable stock of his life after the SEC Championship Game when he experienced another physical episode that rightfully caused him to question his mortality.

In so many ways, even though Urban Meyer is only 45 years old, he and his upbringing are a throwback to the generation that preceded him where parents, especially Dads, were very demanding on their sons.  As one looks around college football today some of the best coaches were raised by fathers that were not all that different than what Meyer experienced growing up and we think that particular demanding upbringing is often a defining trait of a successful head coach.  The Stoops brothers, Bob, Mike, Mark, Bo Pelini, Nick Saban, and many other very successful head coaches come to mind that had fathers that were demanding of their sons in childhood, but Meyer’s father may have taken it to another level, or least to a level that is rarely seen in America anymore.  Below is an excerpt from the early December Sports Illustrated story on Urban Meyer and his father:

“Still, Dad was no absentminded professor. His expectations were “almost unachievable,” Urban says: The kids were to get straight A’s, skip grades, be impeccable. Any success was greeted with the barest of praise, and any failure, any transgression, with the command to run hundreds of laps around the house or play fierce games of pepper.

Although Urban (Bud) Meyer Jr. was named, like his father and son, for a pope, and spent three years at seminary and would remain a staunch pre–Vatican II Catholic, he cursed like a stevedore. His idol was Woody Hayes. “Some kids in Ashtabula were scared of him because he’s no-bulls—,” says Gigi, a former economics professor who is a vice provost at the University of Cincinnati.

“He’s a nasty ass,” says former Ohio State coach Earle Bruce, Hayes’s successor and an unrepentant hard-liner, who chuckles as he speaks of Bud. “That’s what I like about him.”

There’s a reason, during games, that Florida players rarely find themselves awash in praise. “I tell our coaches all the time, ‘Let’s not act surprised,’” Meyer says. “These guys are gifted athletes; that’s their job. I don’t want every four-yard play to be, Ohmygod!”

And why should it? When Meyer won his first national title, after the 2006 season, it was as clear a moment of arrival as football had seen in years. Meyer had grown up worshipping Ohio State, wearing number 45 in honor of Archie Griffin; he had teared up the first time he touched a Buckeyes jersey. Now, on a perfect January night in Phoenix, this son of Ohio had just crushed Woody’s old school 41–14. Meyer was 42 years old, in just his sixth year as a head coach. He shook hands with Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel at midfield, walked to the sideline and found his father was waiting.

“Well,” Bud said. “It’s about time you did that.””

We can only imagine that most parents raising kids in America in 2009 would either shake their heads or scream with horror at the way Urban Meyer’s father raised and even today interacts with his adult son and to a great extent they would be right to be concerned that something is just not right here, because something is just not right here.  If Urban Meyer really wants to completely understand why he. and so many other football coaches put so much pressure on themselves for that matter, he can give a lot of thought about the way he was raised and how that upbringing affects the way he coaches and more importantly the direct impact the results of his success or failures when coaching affects him and his family’s life. 

The very simple answer is that Urban Meyer was raised by a very demanding father  which is a figure that for the most part has disappeared from the American scene in the last 30 years and the internal pressure that Meyer places on himself are directly related to the way that he was raised.  For a whole host of reasons, more education, more affluence, parents working harder and with much less time to spend with their kids, cultural norms changing, etc., parents for the most part have swung in the entire opposite direction from being very demanding to being very accepting of almost anything their children do, in life or on the sports field.  Now, we here at Coaches Hot Seat believe that the pendulum has swung to far to the Candy Ass “Everyone is a Winner!” view of raising children, but we also believe that the norm in raising children from 30 to 50 years go, especially sons, wasn’t right either.

If Urban Meyer really wants to get at his problems then he would be wise to give a lot of thought to how his father’s upbringing is still affecting him today and how that upbringing even today is placing a lot of pressure on Meyer to both coach and have his teams perform at a high level and especially how losing games affects his life mentally and physically.  It has been widely reported in the press that Meyer is deeply impacted by losing football games and that one of the main drivers in his life is to avoid at all costs “losing,” because it looks to us that “losing” a football game places on Meyer a mental burden that in many ways overwhelms the man.  We have no doubt that Urban Meyer puts tremendous pressure on himself, which in itself is not bad and is a trait of almost all successful people in the world today, but that pressure has gotten to such a level now with Meyer that it is affecting him mentally and it also seems putting his life in danger.  Now Meyer doesn’t have to descend into psycho-babble of how his Dad was mean and too demanding of him growing up because Meyer is now an adult and he can choose the way he lives his life and fundamentally change the way he thinks, coaches and interacts with his family and players.  As the American philosopher William James said:

“The greatest discover of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.”

No, Urban Meyer doesn’t need to see a psychiatrist to figure out that his Dad was very demanding on him and that Meyer now puts a lot of pressure on himself to both live up to his Dad’s and his own standards, but Meyer must also realize that at the core of his problems is the reality that he has the wrong mental approach when it comes to the importance of football, wins and losses, and how football fits with his life and thus the life of his family and players

If Urban Meyer really wants to understand a different and much more healthy way of thinking about how his job as the head football coach at Florida, football, winning and losing and all that comes with modern college athletics can all fit into a healthy way of living, he can look to another man that was raised in Ohio and has called the state of Florida home for almost 40 years.  We are talking about a man that is we believe the greatest winner in any sport over the past 50 years and possibly the greatest winner in the history of American sport, and that man is Jack Nicklaus.

What should be intriguing to Urban Meyer to look into the way that Jack Nicklaus has lived his life is that Nicklaus was raised in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio by a father (Charlie) that was also very demanding upon his son, but in much different way than the way many young men that went onto great things in the world of sports that were raised in America in the last 50 years.  Charlie Nicklaus was a pharmacist and ran a few drug stores in the Columbus area so he did not have an unlimited amount of time to spend with his son Jack, but in that small amount of time that Charlie did spend with his son he raised not only man that become one of the great winners of all time, but also a man that has his life in balance and most importantly for Urban Meyer a man that has a very healthy view of competing, winning, and most importantly…losing. 

If Urban Meyer asked for our advice on his current predicament, we would advise him to go right to the horse’s mouth and call Jack Nicklaus down in West Palm Beach, Florida to see if he and his family could come down and spend a few days with the Nicklaus family.  What Urban Meyer and his family would find with the Jack Nicklaus and his family is a man that found a way to be one of the greatest winners of all time and a man that by all accounts has been one of the greatest fathers as well (the same can be said for Jack’s wife Barbara, another Ohioan who is one of the classiest people on the Earth today).  In Jack Nicklaus’ great book on the mental side of golf and life, Jack Nicklaus’ Playing Lessons, Nicklaus discusses the things that have driven him during his career, and here Urban Meyer will find much familiarity:

“The two things that motivate me most are closely allied.  They are failure and a desire for self-improvement.”

By failure, I don’t necessarily mean getting beat, although that’s often the end result and in itself is a strong motivation to go to work.  The kind of failing I’m talking about is failing to measure up to the standards I’ve set for myself personally.  When that happens, I get an irresistible urge – almost a compulsion – to improve.  Whatever effort is necessary to prevent another failure, I just have to make it.  Like now.  Today.

Frankly, I believe this, more than anything else, is the reason I am where I am today.  I’m not an easily satisfied person.  Sure I take a lot of satisfaction in what I’ve achieved.  But life doesn’t stand still.  Every satisfaction wanes after a while, so if you’re like me you don’t sit around looking backwards.  You try to move on, to look for something that gives you another satisfaction and, at the same time, hopefully adds a little more to your life.”

We are quite confident that Urban Meyer, as would every successful head football coach, identify with Jack Nicklaus on the above quote.  Nicklaus goes on:

“Motivationally, this urge for self-improvement has very little to do with winning, and nothing at all to do with making money or other materialistic factors.  I’ve always believed that performance takes care of those things.

Anytime there’s a cooling off in this impulse to improve, one emotion above all others will get a good blaze going again.  It’s embarrassment.  I am extremely easily embarrassed by myself.  No single emotion is more responsible for whatever I’ve achieved.”

Yes, the above quotes from Jack Nicklaus are right in line with the way almost all successful head coaches, and folks in all walks of life that are successful in their chosen line of work, view themselves, but Jack Nicklaus’ life has not just been about winning golf tournaments and championships.  As big of a winner that Jack Nicklaus was in golf he is equally of a big winner in his family life and the way that Nicklaus has lived should be a great lesson to all football coaches as well.  Nicklaus goes on in Playing Lessons:

“I sometimes get criticism from people who do know me well that other aspects of my life are so debilitating that they detract from golf.  Generally they are talking about the amount of extra traveling I do to be at home as much as possible, and the amount of time and energy I spend doing things with the kids, and the effort I make to play and watch other sports – in short, to live as full a family life as possible.  Here again, I don’t think I’d have been any more successful at golf if I’d adopted a different life style. 

I think there are three reasons why this busy and varied life style works for me. 

The first is that I am temperamentally unsuited to a one-track life.  Golf is my love and my career, but never has been a never could be everything.  As a result, I have always tried a lot of other things, and as time has passed I have been fortunate enough to find that the four main activities that have evolved each fulfills a basic need.

First, of course, there is my family, which fulfills my strongest emotional needs.  Next, there is golf course design, which supplies an outlet for my creativity.  Then there is business, which poses intellectual and competitive challenges totally different from those of golf.  Finally, there are other sports, which provide both physical exercise and mental relaxation.”

All of these things in sum provide one further ingredient, which is absolutely essential to my mental attitude as a golfer.  That fifth ingredient is the stimulus – really, the constant refreshing – of my desire to play tournament golf.  In other words, after an intensive effort in any or all of these other areas, I am always eager to get back to actually playing golf – just like the weekend golfer who can’t wait to get to the course on Saturday morning, after a week of living his “other” lives.”

Jack Nicklaus goes on in Playing Lessons to make many other salient points about how he approaches playing tournament golf and how he balances the very important factors of family and life outside of golf, but to the point of Urban Meyer and other college coaches that find themselves driven to the point of exhaustion by all that goes into coaching in the college game today, Jack Nicklaus found a formula in where he was able to balance the demands of golf, family, interests outside of golf, etc, and still be one of the greatest winners of all time and college head coaches would be wise as well to carve out time even during the season so that live a more balanced life as well.

One of the things that we have heard in recent days from Urban Meyer and from people around him is that Urban needs to find a way “to relax more.”  Sorry, Urban Meyer finding ways to “relax more” will not solve his problem when it comes to how hard mentally it is on Meyer to meet the demands he places on himself and how losing football games drains him so much mentally and physically.  What Urban Meyer must address if he wants to return to coaching for even 5 more years is the hard wiring that is in his brain that tells him that losing football games will define who he is as a person.  Yes, people on the outside in the press might write that Meyer and the Gators losing a football game is “Meyer’s fault” or something similar but Meyer needs to find a way to turn the large amount of internal and external pressure into a positive so that it does not continue to lap over into negatives that impact him so much mentally and physically.  Yes, winning football games is very important, but have winning and losing in perspective and being able to find the positives in losing and turning the lessons learned when losing into something that makes Meyer and his football team better for the next game or season is where Meyer’s energies should be channeled, because that is the precise point that divides the healthy life of Jack Nicklaus and the unhealthy life of Urban Meyer. 

As Jack Nicklaus wrote in Playing Lessons:

“Golf is my love and my career, but never has been a never could be everything.”

Golf is not everything to Jack Nicklaus and football and what happens on the football field, and especially how Meyer reacts mentally and thus physically to what happens on field, cannot be everything to Meyer.  Urban Meyer has made a point in saying that his family and his faith are the most important things in life, and we have no reason to doubt him on that, but we do believe that the importance of winning and losing and the impact that losing has on Meyer is blown completely out of proportion by Meyer, to his great detriment, and until Meyer gets straight in his mind how both winning and losing can play constructive roles in his life and the life of his players, he will continue to struggle with the large internal demands he places on himself which we believe originate from his upbringing. 

If Meyer doesn’t believe that idea, he should get Nick Saban on the phone, because Saban is another very successful head coach that was raised by a very demanding father and to a great extent Saban has been trying all his life to meet those demands and that is one of the biggest things driving Saban today.  The very same thing could have been said about Paul “Bear” Bryant, Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, Jimmy Johnson and many other great coaches, but there are also great head coaches that were able to balance coaching and life and still be great winners:  Tom Osborne, Darrell Royal, Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno, John Robinson, and many others.

A few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have been lucky enough in our lives to see Jack Nicklaus play golf when he was at the tail-end of his great career, but still winning major championships and to spend a little amount of time around Mr. Nicklaus and play some golf with his sons.  It is just impossible to overemphasize the incredible life that Jack Nicklaus has lived and what a great winner the man is on the golf course and in his life.  One of the golf tournaments that best exemplifies just what a great winner Jack Nicklaus is, and how he can so ably deal with the pain of losing was his battle with Tom Watson at the 1977 US Open at Turnberry.  Below is a video of Nicklaus and Watson playing the 18 th hole at the 1977 British Open.  Watch how Nicklaus battles to the end against his good friend Tom Watson and more importantly how quickly Jack Nicklaus is able to deal with both losing and congratulating his good friend for winning the tournament. 

Yes, not only is Jack Nicklaus one of the greatest champions and winners of all time, he is also one of the classiest Americans of all-time as well.  Jack Nicklaus loves to win, but he does not let losing consume him and in fact far from letting losing overwhelm him Nicklaus like the greatest champions immediately forgets the loss and turns to figure out how he is going to learn from that loss and how to turn the lessons learned into a win.  Jack Nicklaus rebounded from his tough loss to Tom Watson in the 1977 British Open (and The Masters earlier that year also to Watson), to win the US Open and PGA in 1980 at the age of 40 and in still the greatest major championship in golf history, to win The Masters in 1986.

So much can be learned from Jack Nicklaus on how to compete, how to win and lose with class and how to live one’s life, and not only by Urban Meyer, because all of us need to live a more balanced life between work, family, our faith and the other pursuits in our lives.  If Urban Meyer is smart he will not only “try to relax” during his leave of absence, but he will also look into the reasons why losing impacts him so personally and how a healthier respect for where winning and losing fits into his and his family’s life as well.

Good Luck to you Coach Meyer.

Still, for us here at Coaches Hot Seat, there will be no excuses for Meyer if the Gators fail to show up in Sugar Bowl like Alabama did last season, so play hard Florida or your head coach might just find himself moving up the Coaches Hot Seat Rankings.  See, pressure is just not internal, but external as well, and the greatest champions of all time don’t ignore that pressure but they find ways to channel it making them even greater champions.  In fact, the ability to take pressure of all kinds and turn it into a positive is the one defining trait of the greatest champions.  We will be watching closely to see if Meyer can get his mind right and come back as an even better husband, father and head coach.

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It has been a busy few weeks for those of us here at Coaches Hot Seat as we wind down 2009 in our real jobs and we must report that although things are fair to middling or worse in the United States, there is a revolution of sorts going on in Asia, mainly China.  Believe it or not there is an economic explosion in China right now and they are very quickly moving back to 10+ percent annual growth in their economy with them basically running the US playbook….or at least what used to be “our” playbook.  If we here in the Untied States are lucky, the Chinese will lift all boats and help to get our country out of its current mess and get our economy back somewhere to sustainable growth, because right now the US is nowhere near operating at a level that will even come close to paying current bills and future obligations.  Sadly, the Chinese are the last real capitalists left on the planet and it is going to be fascinating to watch how the US – China relationship plays out over the coming years and if we will be able to regain our footing as an economic power without massive amounts of government involvement in our economy and gargantuan amounts of debt that is being placed on the backs of our children and grandchildren.

We shall see, but one thing for sure the next couple of federal elections in 2010 and 2012 are going to as momentous as the elections were in the United States in the years 1900, 1904, 1908 and 1912.  The buffoons leading and running the Republican Party between 1992 and 2008 opened the door for the Democrats to make huge gains because of their irresponsibility on foreign and domestic issues and in the next 2 to 4 federal elections we are going to find out if the Republican Party is owned by Wall Street, the Fortune 500 companies and the Forbes 400 billionaires or if they will return to the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.  One thing we do know, if the Republicans don’t change their ways dramatically in a very quick way they are going to find themselves in a permanent minority and see that the American people that value freedom, liberty and capitalism will find another group of people and a new political party to place their votes and trust with.  Interesting times ahead, of that we are very sure!

Getting back to college football….

Coach Paterno was the ESPN SportsCenter Conversation last night and as usual Coach Paterno was his normal intelligent and wise self…

Of course there should be a playoff in college football, that should be common sense to all, unless you are a Candy Ass that prefers going to parades, crowning beauty queens, tossing roses, playing meaningless games and generally acting like an idiot.  Yes, we agree with one of the greatest coaches in college football history that we need a playoff.  Let’s see, the Candy Asses have the bowl executives, the conference commissioners, some ADs and a bunch of college presidents that for the most part have never earned dollar one when not working for the government.  Uhhhhhh, we will stick with Coach Paterno and so would anyone with a lick of common sense, but then the BCS exists today so you know the stupid sobs mentioned above are driving this train, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be arrested and perp walked out of their offices if they are found to have been supporting and running a BCS system that violated US law.  Stick that where the Sun doesn’t shine BCS Boys and Merry Christmas to you!

The other issue that Coach Paterno mentioned was Big Ten expansion which is a subject which has almost had more written about it in the last few than Tiger Woods 14+ mistresses, but to us Big Ten expansion all seems fairly straightforward. 

If we were running the Big Ten of course we would move to add at least 1 team or up to 3 teams to set up two divisions that would lead to a football conference championship game.  With that in mind, below are the teams we would approach in order to invite to join the Big Ten, keeping in mind that we would want to move from 11 teams to 14 if 3 quality schools were interested in joining the conference.

1.  Notre Dame – The Irish have said they are not interested in joining the Big Ten conference, but we would still invite the ND president and AD up to Chicago for dinner and a formal invitation to join the conference that would include letting the Irish keep all their TV revenue with NBC Sports and then a nice revenue sharing plan that could add millions of more dollars to their coffers.  If the Notre Dame declined, we would move on to….

2.  Rutgers – The Big Ten would be wise to first look to the East and the New York metro market and Rutgers would be an ideal school to add to the Big Ten.  Rutgers is the University of New Jersey and it would bring a strong state school and a big media market along with it to the Big Ten and we cannot imagine that Rutgers would stay in the Big East if the Big Ten came calling.

3.  Missouri – One of the best schools geographically to be added to the Big Ten would be Missouri and it sounds like if the Big Ten comes calling in Columbia the Tigers would be ready to make the jump.  Missouri is a solid academic school and they have some very good athletic teams and they would be a great addition to the Big Ten.  (If Missouri left for the Big Ten we would invite TCU, Houston and SMU top join the Big 12 to become the Big 14)

4.  Kentucky – OK, OK, quit screaming that Kentucky would never leave the SEC for the Big Ten, but from where we sit UK would be crazy to pass up a chance to switch to a conference where they could win conference titles in basketball AND football!  Kentucky is geographically a great fit for the Big Ten and they would bring a strong state school, a basketball tradition second to none and an improving football team.  If we were Kentucky and we took a good look at the SEC and saw the big boys in football that the Wildcats will probably never be able to get thru to ever get the opportunity to play for a conference title, we would not only listen to the Big Ten if they came calling we would be on a plane to Chicago posthaste!  (If Kentucky did leave the SEC for the Big Ten that would open up a great opportunity for Georgia Tech to return to its old home, the SEC, which would give the SEC a foothold in its “home” market of Atlanta and would add a great school to their conference).

5 & 6.  Pitt or Syracuse – We are not really sure which would fit better in the Big Ten, Pitt or Syracuse, but both would be on our list if we got this far and deciding between these two schools would probably come down to academic as much athletic issues.  If we had to choose, we would probably lean towards Pitt over Syracuse, just to set-up an annual Pitt – Penn State game which would be great for the conference.

After Pitt and Syracuse, we would lean towards in order:  Iowa State, Cincinnati, and West Virginia.

From where we sit the Big Ten is very smart in moving to expand so they can create two divisions and set up a football championship game and in order the teams we would approach, with an idea to add 3 teams to create the Big Fourteen as the ideal outcome:

Notre Dame

Rutgers

Missouri

Kentucky

Pitt

Syracuse

Iowa State

Cincinnati

West Virginia

If we had to right now say what the Big Ten (Fourteen) might look like 5 years from now, we would guess:

Big Ten

Eastern Division

Kentucky

Indiana

Michigan

Michigan State

Penn State

Purdue

Rutgers

Western Division

Illinois

Iowa

Ohio State

Minnesota

Missouri

Northwestern

Wisconsin

Now that would be a great sports college conference!  How about those Indiana – Kentucky basketball games!

We would switch to a 9 game conference schedule and of course make sure that the traditional rivalries, like Michigan – Ohio State were set-up to be played each year. 

Yes, the Big Ten should expand and if they are smart they will think big and create a super conference that can compete long-term with the SEC and Big 12, because right now the Big Ten is falling behind and we believe that if they don’t do something they are going to find themselves even further behind, especially in football, in the coming years as the Big 12 and SEC grow even stronger.

Earlier this week the Arizona Republic poised some questions to the CEO of the Fiesta Bowl John Junker and one of those questions and Junker’s answer was:

“4. You can’t talk about the Bowl Championship Series without getting into the debate over the current system vs. a playoff system.

I wish we had about 10 pages to really cover this with your readers. The general public hasn’t yet figured it out but they will – in a playoff format, a team arrives at game site the day prior, holds a press conference, plays the game on the second day and is on the plane departing on the second night. The bowl-game experience is five or six days in a new and different city, a reward experience for all the players and memories for a lifetime of their final game of their season or career. It’s no contest in terms of which experience better benefits players.”

Memo to John Junker:  Everyone with a working brain knows the way bowls work and that players arrive a week early to do a lot of nonsense that has nothing to do with intercollegiate athletics and everyone also understands that a playoff would be like every other championship that is run by the NCAA, which would be college football teams focused on playing meaningful football games and not visiting theme parks, going to pie eating contests and a lot of other nonsense at bowl games like the “Sony Gift Suite” where….(From SportsBusiness Journal Sony’s suite is latest innovation in bowl gifts)

““FedEx Orange Bowl officials have reserved a suite at each of the team hotels, the Westin Diplomat and Fontainebleau, and plan to stock them exclusively with Sony Electronics products. On the night that each of the teams arrives in town, the players will be invited to the suite, handed a folio that not coincidentally features their school colors and is emblazoned with the bowl logo, and given what is basically a $300 credit line. Players can check off from a list in the folio the items that they want (up to $300 in total value), and the gifts will be delivered to the addresses of their choice.

It’s all part of the continuing efforts by tech and electronics corporations to stay relevant in the eyes of the coveted, college-age demographic, said Jon Cooperstein of Davene Inc., a Memphis-based promotions company that brokered gift deals for 14 of this year’s 34 bowl games.

In addition to the novelty of letting the players choose their own gifts, the gift-suite option cuts back on ordering snafus and tight deadlines that often require manufacturers to customize bowl-specific products in a matter of days.

“I don’t even need to know how many people will be coming through the doors,” Cooperstein said. “The NCAA allows each bowl to award up to $500 worth of gifts to 125 participants per school. Schools always bring more than that and pay for it on their dime. We’ll make up 500 folios and order forms for each school.””

Now, we wish someone, maybe a college or university president, would please explain to us how a “Sony Gift Suite” fits into the amateur and intercollegiate athletics.  Since many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat actually played in NCAA championships during our time in college we don’t seem to recall a “Sony Gift Suite” nor can we imagine that our coaches would allow such nonsense when playing for a championship, but that’s not the point isn’t it….

These bowl games aren’t really about the student-athletes or even the game of college football, but rather a bunch of bums that are sucking on the game of college football to line their pockets, aren’t they?  College presidents that support “Sony Gift Suites” and claim that the bowl games are proper places to settle championships in intercollegiate athletics are clearly massive hypocrites, but then what else is new?  Not much.

As for Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker, if you want to know what is wrong with the college football postseason take a look at this clown, who is exhibit A in our mind.  In one man is everything that is wrong with the college football postseason and in our opinion, America itself.  For anyone that has been in Washington DC or your state capital lately one has seen the number of CEO’s in the private sector that are constantly lobbying politicians and spending massive amounts of money in order to gain advantage instead of just running their own businesses.  If you want to know how sorry a CEO is, just check how much lobbying he does at the federal and state level.  The more lobbying done by the CEO, the sorrier the CEO, and sadly there are way too many CEOs in America today that spend way too much time trying to gain advantage by lobbying the government instead of running their company in a more effective and profitable way.  Pretty soon though the federal and state governments will not have the ability nor money to carve out favorable tax and other treatments for private companies and CEOs will have to quit sucking off the American people and actually go to work running their companies and competing for market share in a world that is only going to get more competitive.   

Speaking of these bogus bowl games, and in our opinion, that is exactly what they are for the most part, bogus games that do nothing more than reward mediocrity (Again, what’s new?  Mediocrity being rewarded is the new normal in America in the 21 st century) Brent Schrotenboer of the San Diego Union-Tribune punched a hole in the idea that most of the bowls are anything but teams throwing a party for themselves because they have to sell a certain number of tickets or pay up big time to the bowl. 

Costly kick in the teeth to bowl teams – San Diego Union-Tribune

“A lot of these bowls really would have been on the ropes without this ticket guarantee,” said David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at USC.

It’s helped the bowl system thrive but often at a big expense to schools and conferences. Hundreds of similar records obtained by the newspaper show that unsold bowl tickets cost schools and their conferences $15.53 million last year to participate in the combined 34 bowl games. That’s an all-time high, up from $14.9 million in 2007-08 and $9.3 million for 2006-07. Unsold tickets — 200,000 to 300,000 per year — are the third-biggest expense for teams and conferences involved in these games, right behind transportation and meals/lodging.

As a result, many schools lose money from attending them, especially those in lower-tier games that depend on selling a guaranteed amount of tickets to schools.

“Some bowls struggle, and thanks to that ticket guarantee, they know they’re going to sell X-number of tickets,” said Bruce Binkowski, executive director of San Diego’s two bowl games. “I think it would weed out some of the weaker bowls” if schools were not required to buy a block of tickets from these games, he said.”

Yes, that is a mighty interesting read and only points to the fact that these bowl games are often nothing more than someone throwing a birthday party for him or herself.  “Looky here, it’s my birthday, everyone come, even though I had a mediocre year, it’s time to party!”  No, that is not the way intercollegiate athletics nor America should operate, but then when you have a bunch of Candy Asses running the show you end up with a bunch of meaningless games that mean nothing at all except of course to put money into the pockets of people that have nothing to do with the game of college football.

Due to how much longer than expected we had to work before the Christmas holiday we all were just able to get together the last couple of days at Lake Tahoe for the holidays and we have been trading business war stories and talking college football.  Several of us watched the Utah – Cal game last night and for Cal all we can say is…… OUCH!   That Cal loss was ugly and even uglier was the Oregon State loss to BYU the night before.  We thought that all those people that were talking up how great the Pac-10 was this season were out to lunch and the first two Pac-10 bowl games only confirmed what we thought about the Pac-10 for most of the year.  Of course, how much can one really determine from a meaningless bowl game because one never knows how hard the coaches were coaching, the players were playing and if anyone really gave a damn if their team won or not.  Such is the reality of games that mean nothing if the teams win or lose the contest…  Kind of like playing pick-up basketball and not keeping score or some idiot telling their kid that “You’re still a winner” after his team got beat…  No, your kid is not a loser when his team loses, but his team lost and understanding, accepting and learning from losses is one of the most important things in our society, but sadly even that is now being taken away because as the Football Bowl Association claims:  “Where Everyone Wins”  

OK, everyone in unison…..CANDY ASSES!

We do have a number of things to get to over the next few days at Lake Tahoe, in between celebrating Christmas with our families and hitting the ski slopes and hopefully we can get some of our Coaches Hot Seat work done.  Check out the Lake Tahoe ski resort webcams!  Maybe you will see us hitting the slopes this week!

If we don’t have another blog post before Christmas…….

Merry Christmas to ALL from everyone here at Coaches Hot Seat!

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One thing for sure, there were 5 great football players at the Heisman Trophy ceremony last night and any of them would have a legitimate claim on the best football player in the land.  We have never been big on individual awards in team sports because it is the team that surrounds a superstar that leads to the individual accolades and one rarely hears the names of those players that opened up holes, blocked or occupied others or otherwise were great team members.  Still, the Heisman Trophy winner is a marker of sorts of what happened in each college football season and there certainly have been some great football players of years past that when we think of them we often think of the Heisman Trophy. 

Mark Ingram had a very nice year at Alabama playing in a very tough conference but like the rest of the 2009 college football season it is not easy for us to recall the reason he ended up with the Heisman or why 2 of 5 unbeaten teams were chosen to play in a bogus title game.  Such is absurdity of college football in 2009 where no one can honestly look you in the eyes and say that this team or this player is better than another team or player when they have not faced off on the field, because the difference between teams and players has never been smaller.  Guess what?  It will only get smaller in the coming years and that reality will really make the BCS look stupid, but then Bill Hancock and his PR hack Ari Fleischer say all is well!  Yes, all is well if you are a Candy Ass!

Pete Fiutak of College Football News in his latest, Instant Analysis – Ingram’s Heisman Win, makes some great points about the 2009 Heisman voting and some reforms that the folks running the Heisman might consider in the future.  As Fiutak points out, one of the biggest problems with the Heisman and in college football is that there are too many people that have votes and influence that watch relatively very few football games.  That the head coaches voting in Coaches Poll watch less football than your Aunt Edna is well known by anyone with a working brain, that the Harris Poll voters are participating in what is nothing more than a rigged poll thrown together to try and create some legitimacy for the Bogus BCS is known to all, and the computer polls are…..well, anyone stupid enough to allow or support using computers that are programmed by computer geeks to help decide the champion in the game of college football….well, they are beyond help.  There is core group of national, regional and local media members, approximately 200 to 300 people, that follow the game of college football very closely and probably have the best handle on which teams and players are best in any given week and over and entire season, but the geniuses running the BCS tossed their AP poll out because they would not guarantee their final vote for the winner of a bogus title game.  Again, such is life in college football in 2009 when you have a bunch of Candy Asses backed up by another group of Candy Asses in charge of the game of college football.  Yes, that makes a lot of sense!  If you are a Candy Ass!

We have a hellava situation with college football:  Real men both coaching and playing the game of college football supported by real fans that give a damn about their teams and schools and the entire shooting match is run by a bunch of Candy Asses.  Yes, that makes sense, but then any American that can actually defend the BCS with a straight face has in our opinion sacrificed their right to call themselves an American because Americans are not Candy Asses….Unless you work in, for, or support the Bogus BCS…

Congratulations to Mark Ingram for winning the 2009 Heisman Trophy and best of luck to you in the future.  Like all 5 of the Heisman finalists, Ingram is a great football player and a class act off the field and we need all the men like Mark Ingram that we can find.

Speaking of Candy Asses running an absurd college football bowl system, Kevin Gorman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review blows a hole in the idea that the current bowl system is somehow a big windfall money wise for college football programs in his column:  College bowl payouts don’t always add up.  In fact, most college football teams that are heading to bowl games often hope to not lose money on the trip, forget about some kind of bogus windfall that is trumpeted by the bowl executives and their supporters that rather enjoy the money they put into their pockets off the backs of our teams.  Bowl games are what they are, they are meaningless exhibition games and if would be laughable if basketball, baseball, soccer or any other intercollegiate sport used the same post-season system that college football has because in the real world teams go to the post-season to play for a championship, not to go on vacation.  Hey, its great that college football teams get a vacation, get some extra practices, get to play in a meaningless exhibition game, but coaches, players, ADs, and fans are just kidding themselves if they think 6-6 or even 7-5 teams with a win over a I-AA team is anything other mediocrity being rewarded.  Of course, with the NCAA basketball tournament looking at expanding from 64 teams to 90-something teams, we are just seeing more folks in intercollegiate athletics trying to figure out a way to reward mediocrity which is probably one of the biggest themes running throughout American society right now.  No, when Johnny says that 2 + 2 = 5 he is not “wrong” but merely confused momentarily, but most off all he is a “winner” whatever he does because God-forbid we have a child think he or she’s not a winner.  No, we can’t have that, because it is evil for a child to think he is a loser.  When the folks that are perpetuating mediocrity in our country wake up one day and everyone around them believes that they are winners because that is what they have been told their entire life, whether they won or not, and realize that America is no longer competitive in the world, please don’t forget the mantra that college football players now dream of shouting:  “Bowl eligible, we are Bowl Eligible!”  Uh, while America is dumbing down our youth and we have student-athletes screaming out “Bowl Eligible” the rest of the world is reading about the things that made America great, freedom, liberty, capitalism, competitiveness and very shortly they are going to whip our ass at our own game.  Of course, we will have teams playing in bowl games with 6-6 records, “So we have that going for us!”

Early next week we will be out with the Final Regular Season Coaches Hot Seat Rankings and also the final Winningest Active Coaches Ranking after the ’09 regular season which is one of our favorite rankings here at Coaches Hot Seat.  CHS subscribers can see all of our rankings right now, but we will also put them in to the CHS blog next week.

We are also still working on a couple of other items that we plan to publish before Christmas, the Top 100 Assistant Coaches List and the CHS Television Media Critique (Rankings?) which got thrown off-track when a lot of us here at CHS and our families came down with H1N1 in November.  We have been working on both of the above lists/rankings with gusto and they should be great fun to go over in the upcoming long and absurd lull between the end of the regular season and the bowl games.  Again, only a Candy Ass could dream up and defend the Bogus College Football Postseason.  Only a real Candy Ass!

Meanwhile in the real world…..

On this Sunday morning on the West Coast of America we have been watching with great interest the developments in Copenhagen, Denmark with the “Global Climate Summit.”  Like all Americans that give a damn about their country and their children/grandchildren’s future we pay attention to anything that could affect the future and the crowd that has gathered around the ideas of global warming and climate change in the last 20 years are of a great concern to us.  The one thing that everyone here at Coaches Hot Seat is still waiting on is real evidence, we mean real scientific evidence that CO2 is responsible for the 1.4 F temperature degree rise in the last 30 or so years.  We have yet to ever read about anyone, ever met anyone or come across anyone that can actually connect the rise in CO2 in recent years to a very small 1.4 F degree rise and we would be thrilled if there is anyone on this planet that can actually prove with real facts, not bogus models that have bogus data and parameters plugged into them, but real science that CO2 has cause the Earth to warm 1.4 F degrees or is in fact causing climate change.  We are not holding our breath on that challenge, because far from the science of global warming or climate change being settled, the entire field of “climate science” is built upon models that have up to this point been dramatically wrong in their predictions and anyone that believes that a human can predict what the climate will be like on our planet a year from now forget about 10, 20, or even 100 years from now is way beyond the stupidity of the BCS Boys, you have lost all sense of reality.

Yes, there has been a 1.4 F degree change in the last 30 years, but where exactly does that fit in the history of the Earth, at least as far back as we can determine with our most advanced technologies and science?  We are glad you asked, because below is chart that shows temperature changes on the Earth from the Greenland Ice Cores which is by far the most accurate way to determine what the Earth was like in its history, especially compared to the bogus studies using “selected” tree rings and “rigged” temperature data that for some reason the folks responsible for compiling the date cannot now find.  Let’s see just where the latest 1.4 F degree change fits in relative to temperature changes on the Earth in the last 15,000 years.

Do you see the current “global warming” and “climate change” that is claimed by the Chicken Little crowd that is screaming to anyone that will listen that the world is coming to and end?  As you can plainly see, the recent 1.4 F degree rise is but a very small change in the last 15,000 years, but for some reason many of our elected officials think that Americans should dramatically alter their lives to save the planet but we cannot find a shred of evidence that what these folks are claiming is actually true.  In fact, the recent ClimateGate emails and the hiding and losing of real temperature data has only confirmed what we have thought for a long time about the global warming crown….It is HORSESHIT!  Far from the world coming to an end, we do not believe there is shred of evidence that can be produced by any reputable scientist that the recent 1.4 F degree change has been caused by the rise in CO2, but that is not stopping our own government and people from around the world that are meeting in Copenhagen to make plans to dramatically alter the way industrialized nations and their citizens live their lives and to that we must call…BULLSHIT.

Of course, the elected officials and the Chicken Little crowd that are very quick to say the world is coming to an end often have no idea how their ideas and policies will actually impact the real world since very few of these people have ever had to make a living not working for government or a quasi-government agency.  People that work for the government have very little understanding that every time they raise taxes, put in new regulations, and put burdens onto the backs of businesses and individuals they have a dramatic impact upon on economies and the lives of citizens and we have experienced that reality first hand here in California.  Long before the Chicken Little crowd gained the upper-hand in Washington DC the fruitcakes in the state of California that have been waging an ongoing battle against business for a couple of decades now and recently they passed their own “global warming” bill, AB 32 in September 2006, and the impact of that bill has been terribly detrimental to the state.  The goal of AB 32 is reduce man-made California greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020 and the affect of that bill is that the electricity and power bills of all Californians has doubled and in some cases tripled in a very short amount of time.  Imagine for a moment if something like California’s AB 32 passed the Congress and was signed by into law by the President of the impact it would have across the US on all Americans, because all of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have seen dramatic increased in our home power bills and the current “climate change” bill that has passed the US House and is now about to be considered in the US Senate would raise power and electricity rates even higher and subject CO2 to a “Cap and Trade” market which would effectively put the greedy bastards on Wall Street in charge of your home power bill.  Yes, lock in higher power bills for all Americans all based on faulty science that no scientist can actually prove with real scientific data and then turn over the future price of energy to the greedy bastards on Wall Street that are all too happy to steal money from the American people.  Yes, that make a lot of sense… If you are a moron… 

What elected officials do not realize is that every time you create a new or raise a current tax, every dollar that you take out of the hands of Americans has a direct impact upon the private economy.  Most liberals do not understand that idea because they believe that they no better how to spend the money we earn than we do and thus the reason that Washington DC has turned into a cess pool where both Democrat and Republican politicians believe that the US Treasury is little more than their own personal piggy bank and that if we have to issue more debt to satisfy their needs, “Then issue more debt, the country be damned!”  Here in California as the cost of electricity, power, and gasoline have gone up in recent years hundreds of billions of dollars have been removed from the bank accounts and pocketbooks of all Californians and redistributed to create a pittance of “green jobs” that have not to this point and never will in the future have a dramatic impact up on the state’s economy (There never will be a large wave of new “green jobs” in the US or anywhere else because energy is just too small of a part of the economy even when the government intervenes and gives massive incentives to power/energy companies, which they have been doing for years to very little real effect on the economy).  It is just common sense that when you double or triple the cost of electricity and power that the money that is now being spent by consumers on power is then not then being spent in the private economy and that is how you end up with jobs, businesses, families, companies fleeing California and even the US and setting up in places where the cost of doing business is more reasonable.  The cost of living in and doing business in California has gotten so high in the last 10 years that just moving across the state line to Nevada will easily half or even more the costs of the average business and for an individual that makes over $100,000 dollars a year, it will save his family over 10 percent in income taxes.  That is real money and liberals that believe you can just keep raising taxes and piling on higher energy bills and it will not have an impact upon the economy, have evidently not been in California lately which is being destroyed by high taxes, massive amounts of regulations and out of control spending.  Sound familiar?  If a climate change bill gets signed into law at the federal level the US will turn into California which is right now nothing more than a broke state that is just a whisper from total and complete insolvency. 

Getting back to the direct impact of AB 32, the California climate change bill, we will give you a real idea of how this bill has affected the lives of Coaches Hot Seat members and how a climate change bill would affect your life out there in America if something like it on the national level was ever signed into law.  Most of the Coaches Hot Seat members live very near the San Francisco Bay and thus we are lucky to live in place that has some of the best weather on the planet.  Most of us never turn on an air conditioner in our houses and we usually only run our heaters for 45 to 60 days each year in our very short winter.  Yes, we are very lucky to live in a place that has great weather, but even though we never run an air conditioner and the heater in our houses gets run less than 20 percent in any given year our average home power bills (electricity and natural gas) have gone up in the last 5 years from around $200 bucks a month on average to over $500 bucks a month.  For friends of ours that live out away from the SF Bay area that have to run their air conditioners and heaters some of the year but by all means not a majority of the year they have experienced their home power bills rising from around $400 bucks a month on average to $1,000 dollars or even a lot more per month.  If you are living out there in America we can tell you that no matter what your elected officials tell you about the costs of the current climate change legislation that is being considered in the Congress, you can at least double and maybe even triple your current home power bill and that is what you will experience if a climate change bill becomes law.  Those are facts and the reality right now here in California and the same thing will happen in America is a climate change bill is signed into law at the federal level.

In addition to your home power bill going up by at least double, expect the cost of your gasoline to go up as well because for most of us here at Coaches Hot Seat, we are still paying over $3.00 dollars a gallon because of the high taxes on gas in the state of California.  Yes, the impact upon your life will be dramatic, but what the folks that are barreling ahead with climate change legislation in the US do not understand is that in a country like the US where Americans for the most part live paycheck to paycheck is that when you dramatically increase the cost of their home power bills and the cost of gasoline, the impact upon private economy will be huge.  Just imagine that for the average family that makes around $60,000 a year if they are suddenly hit with an extra 300 to 400 dollars in higher home power bills and another 50 dollars a month for the cost of gasoline and you are very quickly talking about adding $500 bucks a month in fixed costs to the average American family’s budget.  Do elected officials, especially liberal elected officials that love to run around and brag about how they are saving the world with all the bills they are passing understand that basic family budgeting arithmetic?  We don’t think so, and that is why Americans should be paying very close attention to not only what is happening in Washington DC when it comes to climate change legislation, which we consider one of the worst and possibly disastrous bills to ever be considered by the Congress, but also what is now going on with this Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. 

The thing has most struck us as very odd about President Obama and the people he has around him that advise him climate issues, is that how few of them have ever held a real job in the real world.  In fact, President Obama has some scientists around him that we would not trust to turn on a Bunsen Burner but somehow they have gotten into influential positions to advise the President and others on climate change issues and they have no idea of how a dramatic impact their preferred polices would have upon the American people.  President Obama also has another group of people around him advising him on climate issues, we call these folks the jackals, because they clearly represent private citizens and companies that will make a huge windfall in the hundreds of billions of dollars if a bogus climate bill is passed by the Congress and signed into law.  What a striking difference it is that President Obama has clueless scientists and what we consider to be jackals looking out for themselves and their friends that advise him on climate issues and the way that Obama considered all sides of the issues relative to Afghanistan before committing more troops to that conflict.  On Afghanistan, President Obama looks at all sides of every issue, hearing from people that are pro, con and in between, but on climate issues Obama is surrounded by people that have one point of view and even worse stand to benefit personally if a climate change bill is signed into law in the US.  Yes, those are the facts as we see them, and it is not just lately that President Obama has been surrounded people on climate issues that are spouting what we consider to be little more than propaganda, because way back when then Senator Obama was beginning his run for the Presidency he added members to his campaign team that have been feeding him that same propaganda for years now.  Do you not believe that President Obama wants to do to the country what AB 32 and these fruitcake wackos have done to the people of California?  Let’s go to the videotape:

The above videotape is from when then Senator Obama sat down with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in early 2008 when he was running for President.  Here’s what he said:

Senator Obama:  “Under my plan of a Cap and Trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Well, President Obama, electricity rates have already skyrocketed here in California and it is our opinion that electricity rates across the United States would skyrocket, going from around 10 to 15 cents per KW to over 30 cents per KW as we now have here in California.  There really is no getting around then Senator Obama’s words and we believe that unless the American people are ready to add another $500 bucks a month in power costs to their monthly budget they better damn get their elected representatives on the phone and tell them to put the KABOSH on the Climate Chang bill that has already passed the US House and is about to be brought up in the Senate.

As for what should really be on the national agenda when it comes to Energy in America, the United States needs a comprehensive Energy Policy that will move us away from imported oil to the US using more of the our own energy right here at home.  Our own oil, natural gas, solar, wind, oil shale, coal, nuclear power, battery technologies and other new energy ideas that are now being considered should all be part of the mix for our Energy future, but we do not believe that the current proposals being considered in Copenhagen and Washington DC will do a thing about global warming and climate change, but will rather do what they are really designed to do, transfer TRILLIONS of dollars from the American people to other countries around the world.  Far from the President and Congress considering a comprehensive Energy bill that could transform our economy, the current Climate Change bills before the Congress do little more than transfer hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars from the American people to power companies, “green” companies, venture capitalists, greedy bastards on Wall Street and every other vulture that can find a few bucks to hire a lobbyist to get his company into the bill and onto the government dole. 

That last line brings us to the current Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen and what his Summit and Climate Change is really about.  No, for the vast majority of the people in Copenhagen and others that are behind this movement this is not about global warming or climate change or saving the world or anything else, rather it is about…..

That’s right, this entire Climate Change Summit is about how much money will America and other western countries “give” to developing countries, even China, because of the CO2 we emit to power our economies.  You didn’t know or understand that?  Well, it is about time that you woke up and realized what global warming and climate change is really about when you get down to where the rubber meets the road, or in Copenhagen behind the curtain where they are this very moment dividing up how much of the American people’s money countries from around the world are going to get.

Still don’t believe that?

Read this column by Dr. Bill Gray, the renowned hurricane forecaster and Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University:

Puncturing the Climate Balloon “There has been an unrelenting quarter century of one-sided indoctrination”

Or even better is this column by Weather Channel founder John Coleman on the “six legged monster” that is the Climate Change industry:

David and Goliath:  Climate Change and the Six Legged Monster

Or George Will’s ripping apart of the Climate Change myths and just what is behind the travesty in Copenhagen…

The Climate Change Travesty

Another place to go to find information on “global warming” and “climate change” that for the most part you will not find in the mainstream media is..

http://www.climatedepot.com/

Yes, there is a lot at stake for our country in the coming weeks and months at Copenhagen, in Washington DC and around the kitchen table of average Americans, because the folks driving this “Climate Change” train have plans to dramatically increase how much you pay for energy (i.e. “electricity would necessarily skyrocket”) and they are doing it all for something that we believe cannot be proved by any scientist on this planet with actual real data, that CO2 is responsible for the 1.4 F degree rise in the last 30 or so years.  Scientists involved on the pro-global warming side of this debate know they cannot prove that CO2 causes the Earth to warm so they rely on bogus models that are filled with bogus temperature data, all in the name of saving the planet, while really they are just picking our pockets.

Maybe just maybe we will get your attention on this “Climate Change” issue and you will call your US House member and US Senator in Washington DC and see if their staffs have an explanation for why they want to turn the rest of the country into the same thing we have here in California, which when it comes to energy is “skyrocketing” power bills and believe it or not even more plans by the same fruitcake wackos to run those bills up even more!  Yes, these folks really are that stupid, but maybe 12.5 percent unemployment plus is not high enough for them so they want to put even more regulations and restrictions on the state.  We say ENOUGH!  We are tired of people that have never made a payroll, never run a business, never worked in a job that was not paid for by the taxpayers, sitting around dreaming up how they can save the world for the rest of us while they are picking our pockets.

Luckily there are elected representatives in Washington DC that are willing to stand up for the American people, such as Democratic Senator Jim Webb from Virginia who wrote a letter to President Obama on Copenhagen…

Webb warns Obama on Copenhagen trip

Let’s just hope that there are millions of Americans that are ready and willing to stand up to Congress and stop the Climate Change legislation that is now being considered in the US Senate, Kerry-Lieberman-Graham-Boxer-Waxman-Markey bill, and demand that it be replaced with a real Energy bill that will address the very real problems we have with obtaining, generating, and using energy in the United States.  If they do find a way to get a Climate Change bill through the Congress and signed into law and electricity prices skyrocket across the US like they have here in California then all of our elected officials, not just the Democrats and a few Republicans that are sponsoring or let this Climate Change legislation pass will have to answer to the American people and that will be a Hellava answer they will have to give that in the middle of a very deep recession with double-digit unemployment that the Congress and the President are going to pile on even more taxes on the American people.  If that makes sense to you, then you must have learned at the feet of the Candy Ass BCS Boys!

President Obama and his “climate change” advisors (In our mind clueless scientists and people that have friends that will make billions of dollars if a climate change bill is passed and signed into law in the US) are scheduled to travel to Copenhagen later this week for the “Climate Change Summit.”  No doubt, right now in Copenhagen countries and others from around the world are salivating over how they will spend the trillions of dollars that will flow from the bank accounts and pocketbooks of average Americans to what will be nothing less than pouring money down a rat hole.  President Obama knows that he cannot commit the United States to any binding treaty without that treaty being ratified by the US Senate and if Obama believes that the US is going to as George Will says in the column referenced above…

“Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million in 2050, so Obama’s promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.”

No, that will never happen, but there is one thing we do know will happen and that is if the US Congress and President sign a bill into law that causes electricity prices and thus bills of the American people to “skyrocket” then everyone in Washington DC should take a good look at the people around them, because by 2012 there will be a wholesale change in our elected leaders at the national level. 

Yes, it has gotten to a point here in California where it really makes no sense to start a business in this state and with the same fruitcake wackos that put in place AB 32 that has doubled and tripled our energy prices hoping to put into place hundreds of billions more in energy taxes, it makes little sense for us and our families to live in this state as well.  There are plenty of great places to live in America where government is not at war with business and where capitalist and businessmen are not hated because they pursue profit.  Imagine that, a state where profit is not an evil word, but rather a term that is paired with a successful business or enterprise that is growing and adding employees and thus helping the state rather than bringing it down!  Yes, with the 2009 college football season winding down and 2010 only a few weeks away there have been more and more emails among Coaches Hot Seat members that start out like:  “What do you think or know about Reno, Austin, Jacksonville, FL, Asheville, NC, Seattle, WA, Charlotte, NC, Atlanta, GA, Destin, FL, Tampa, FL, Nashville, TN, Bend, OR, etc…..”  Yes, we are at point with California where it makes little sense to remain in this state, because believe it or not California is facing the possibility that it could elect as Governor in 2010 a man that would only make things much worse, current attorney general and former Gov. Jerry Brown.  There is a very good chance, much better than 50 – 50 that even before the current school year ends for our children that many of us will be sitting down with our families to talk about what we have all been talking about for several years now, leaving California and the wackos that are destroying this former great state for good.  Since most of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have traveled extensively across the US, we can think of a lot of cities, towns and states where not only the quality of life is better, but places where we can grow our businesses without worrying about the all out attack on business that now exists in California.  Oh, that would be nice and what great fun it would be to live in place where one was not demonized for trying to run a successful business that created good paying jobs with health care for Americans.  With that in mind all of us here at Coaches Hot Seat live by the words of the greatest Americans Henry Ford when it comes to business:

“There is one rule for the industrialist and that is:  Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest price possible, paying the highest wages. – A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits.  They will be embarrassingly large.”

Unfortunately, in the state of California business and entrepreneurs are evil people that are to be taxed to death and to be punished.  We know for sure there are better places to do business from in this great country of ours and no doubt the emails and discussions here at Coaches Hot Seat will be very intense on that subject in the coming months.

What is really scary to consider that in addition to trillions of new energy taxes and dozens of new taxes in the health care bills that are before the US House and Senate that add up to hundreds of billions of dollars that will be dropped on the American people in the coming years these bastards in Washington DC are dreaming up another way to get into your wallet and pocketbook with a “VAT” Value Added Tax that will add trillions more in taxes in the coming years.  Don’t believe it?  Read this article in the New York Times about what these bastards care cooking up now….

Many See VAT Option as the Cure for Deficits

Will it ever end?  Yes, it will end when the American people start holding our elected officials accountable for their actions and this out of control spending that will bankrupt our country, undermine the dollar and destroy our children’s future is it is not stopped.  College football is a nice diversion from the daily grind of work and the BCS is a travesty, but something much more important, the future of our country will be determined in the coming years and we will be damned if we are just going to sit on the sidelines and let these bastards destroy our children’s future.  No, that is not going to happen.

All of the above means get off your ass and call your elected officials and give them a piece of your mind, whether you agree with us or not.

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Coaches Hot Seat members were watching with great interest this past week as the Notre Dame and other coaching searches unfolded as we had our eyes on college football and our day jobs/companies as we wind down 2009.  For non-retail businesses there really are only 5 more working days in the year, because the decision makers across US and overseas companies are already starting to check-out for the Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year’s Even Holidays.  Yes, it is about time to wrap this thing up and head to Lake Tahoe for the duration!

A few CHS housekeeping notes before we get to the subject of this blog post.  We have tasked all of our CHS members to complete their Final 2009 Regular Season CHS Rankings by early next week which we will publish once we have the results.  There are a few coaches that are either on the Hot Seat or have the potential to be on the Hot Seat that have teams playing in bowl games, but for the most part the upcoming Final CHS Regular Season Rankings is what the Rankings will look like heading into the 2010 season and there will be a number of very high profile coaches that will have to perform at a very high level in ’10 or find themselves on this very long unemployment line we now have going in America.  We certainly don’t cry though for coaches with these multi-million dollar buyouts and asinine contracts that are fully paid out without buyouts, because if you are being paid a lot of money to do something that a lot of people in America would do for free, then you should be under great scrutiny.

Besides watching the coaching developments this past week we have read, watched and talked with people we run into each day about the BCS and it is fascinating to see how Americans have widely divergent views on something like the BCS.  For everyone here at CHS it is absurd that a championship in any sport be awarded to anyone or any team that has not been earned and won on the field of play, but there are a considerable, but still a minority of Americans that can somehow square the BCS in their own minds.  To us here at CHS the BCS is tragic and unfair, because we love the game of college football and have a great interest in seeing a legitimate national champion crowned, but really the BCS is but a symptom of greater problems in our country.  For any American to claim or say that the BCS crowns a legitimate national champion is no different from the crony-capitalism that now dominates our country from Wall Street to almost every company larger than a few hundred people.  Much like the last days of the Roman Empire, large Americans companies and Wall Street banks spend an inordinate amount of time and money in Washington DC (as influential Romans did in Rome) trying to tilt the system in their favor instead of just rolling up their sleeves and going to work. 

Anyone that has been in Washington DC lately and knows where to look can see that the lobbyists for large American companies and Wall Street banks are for the most part running the country and our elected officials are only trying to find places where they can stand and vote that will both satisfy the lobbyists that fill their campaign coffers with cash and their pissed off their constituents who are everyday learning more about how much time they spend with and representing American business interests.  Of course, most companies in America do not have the time or interest to hire PR and lobbying flacks in Washington DC to represent them but rather spend all of their time running their businesses and trying to serve their customers.  It certainly did not surprise anyone here at CHS that the BCS, much like the large companies that sponsor the bowl games, hired a PR hack in Washington DC because that is the natural inclination of American business today.  The Bogus BCS with meaningless exhibition games, a pre-determined title game and a very small group of entrenched interests controlling the entire game of college football is a terrific example for all Americans of how much of the business is really done in America today.  Set-up a bogus business model, hire a PR flack in Washington DC to flog your bogus business model to the people in power that have the ability to pile up debt and send money your way and just watch the money flow in!  Yes, that is going on in America today, but it isn’t American nor capitalism for that matter.  Capitalism, at least at the highest levels of American business and society disappeared long ago to be replaced by influence and lobbying that will tilt business in your direction is now the order of the day.  Real Capitalism?  Settling championships on the field of play?  Sadly, both are disappearing from the American Republic only to be replaced by either high-priced lobbyists in $2,500 dollar suits that have never done an honest days work in their life or Candy Asses that care little beyond that direct deposit into their bank account each week that keeps them out of the reality of the real world.  The sad part is that very few of the American people know what is coming….

A good friend of ours (and CHS subscriber) in the Los Angeles area that has worked in the television/movie business for most of his adult life recently sent us a package containing the episode from a TV program he worked on, Star Trek, The Next Generation.  All of us here at CHS grew up on replays of the original Star Trek starring the Great William Shatner and we will every once in awhile catch a “Next Generation” episode replay but we have never been up on the storylines or general direction of the show beyond the great opening that was carried over from the original show.

A few of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have been fans of the actor that plays the captain in Star Trek, The Next Generation, Patrick Stewart, having seen him a number of times on the stage and in Central Park in New York and in his latest starring role, The X-Men movie series (Stewart is now back in England playing Macbeth).  A few years back our friend in Los Angeles invited a few of us to an event in LA where we got to meet Patrick Stewart and his public persona is really not any different than the man seemed in private, a man that is full of life and interested in what anyone with a working brain has to say.  Getting back to the story our friend in LA sent us an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation along with a letter that said:

“You are so right about the BCS and what is facing our country.  Hope this episode of The Next Generation opens your eyes.”

Well, that was a damn interesting note we thought so one night this past week several of us sat down to watch the Season 2, Episode 16 of Star Trek, The Next Generation, Q Who?:

Q Who? Episode Synopsis – Q tries to prove that Picard needs him as part of their crew by hurling the Enterprise 7,000 light years away where they encounter the Borg for the first time.  Here is the Wikipedia summary of the episode

Here is a link to watch the episode on LiveVideo.com:  Season 2, Episode 16 of Star Trek, The Next Generation, Q Who?

Whether Americans want to admit it or not, we are now in the first years of an Economic War of sorts that will challenge our country much like the Two World Wars and the Cold War did in the past.  We will let you draw your own conclusions about exactly what challenges are facing our country in the coming years, but make no mistake about it, our country is facing an enemy of sorts that is unlike any we have faced in the history of our Republic.  Yes, draw your own conclusions, but don’t dither too long, for the time for dithering is drawing to a close and the time for action and for getting the US back into a position of strength before we destroy ourselves from within with our own stupidity and hubris is almost over. 

Yes, the BCS is but a symptom of an America that is going soft and a soft America will never be able to both deal with its own massive problems and to fend off the challenges that are not only coming, they are already here and demanding an answer.

Getting back to the game of college football, we will have a lot more to say about all of the coaching changes once they are all completed, but the Brian Kelly hiring at Notre Dame this week is certainly worth a comment or two.

As we have said in this blog for a number of weeks now, we have thought that Brian Kelly was the best hire for Notre Dame if coaches like Bob Stoops and Urban Meyer were not interested in the job.  Meyer took his name out of the mix at Notre Dame a few months ago and Bob Stoops must not have wanted to make such a big change at this point in his coaching career (We still believe that Bob Stoops needs to really get away from the game in the offseason and recharge himself because it looks to us that Stoops needs to find the energy and fire that he had in his first few years at Oklahoma.  Bob Stoops is one of the best coaches in the game, but like everyone that does the same job for a long period of time, getting away from that job is vital if you hope to stay fresh and fully engaged in the demands that come with being a head coach at the I-A level.  Maybe a fishing trip to Montana, a trip to Europe, a few weeks in Hawaii, a trip to Australia, whatever Bob and his family think might be great fun, but we think Stoops would do well to get away from his job for a few weeks in the offseason so that he is refreshed when the 2010 season kicks off). 

Brian Kelly is one of the best head coaches in the game and he has figured out over his long head coaching career the key ingredients that separate a successful head coach from an also-ran and Kelly’s experience will be a huge asset to him as he takes on one of the toughest jobs in sport.  As Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick and Brian Kelly both said, Notre Dame is a very unique place and it is also a very good educational institution that differentiates it from all but a handful of I-A schools in our country (Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, etc…).  Winning at a school like Notre Dame is never easy, but when you add in the scholastic requirements and the fish bowl that surrounds the team and head football coach in South Bend it makes for an environment that only a very tough character can handle.  Brian Kelly is tough enough to handle it all, of that much we are very sure.

Earlier this week on a talk radio show we heard someone say that Brian Kelly was a lot like Charlie Weis in his general demeanor and attitude towards the game and to that comment we could not disagree more.  Yes, both Weis and Kelly come off as confident bordering on cocky, but in our opinion Weis’ bluster comes not from being a successful coach for a long period of time, but from the arrogance that he was taught by Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick.  Parcells and Belichick are arrogant to a fault and when Weis landed in South Bend 5 years ago he was over the top arrogant, but we always thought about Weis and others that behave like Weis is that their behavior flows from a lack of self-esteem rather than an underlying confidence that is derived from actually doing and accomplishing things in the real world.

Brian Kelly has done and accomplished things in the real world as head football coach and as American citizen that extend beyond the football field and that is the exact kind of coach that Notre Dame needed at this particular point in it history.  We have no doubt that Brian Kelly will be a big winner at Notre Dame and that he will have the Irish in the “national championship” conversation on a regular basis.

Looking at Notre Dame’s 2010 schedule…

Sept. 4     PURDUE
Sept. 11     MICHIGAN
Sept. 18     at Michigan State
Sept. 25     STANFORD
Oct. 2     at Boston College
Oct. 9     PITTSBURGH
Oct. 16     WESTERN MICHIGAN
Oct. 23     at Navy (at Meadowlands – East Rutherford, N.J.)
Oct. 30     TULSA
Nov. 6     Open Date
Nov. 13     UTAH
Nov. 20     ARMY (at Yankee Stadium – Bronx, N.Y.)
Nov. 27     at USC

…We don’t see why Notre Dame and Brian Kelly shouldn’t have a chance to win every game in 2010….. Will Notre Dame win every game in 2010?  No, but they will be in every game and they will win a lot more than they lose next season and during Brian Kelly’s tenure in South Bend. 

We will have a lot more to say about Brian Kelly and all the coaching changes in the coming weeks.

Long before Brian Kelly was ever considered by the folks at Notre Dame we here at Coaches Hot Seat had our favorite “Kelly’s” in movie history, with…

Kelly’s Heroes – Clint Eastwood playing Pvt. Kelly

The Sting – Robert Redford playing Johnny Hooker who played a “Kelly” when he and Paul Newman’s character (Henry Gondorff) were conning Doyle Lonnegan.

Don’t tell us that Paul Newman isn’t one of the all-time greats!

Lastly, on the Heisman Trophy there is no way we could honestly and fairly vote for the Heisman Trophy winner if we had a vote because we are just way too biased on this issue.  Many of us here at Coaches Hot Seat have gotten to see Stanford RB Toby Gerhart up close and personal for three years now and to see his size in person (Gerhart is smaller physically than most of us here at CHS now and even during our high school days) and to see what he could do on the football field is stunning for us to watch.  Yes, we like most everyone else that has an opinion on  the Heisman Trophy bring too many biases to the table and it would be next to impossible for us to honestly vote for anyone but Gerhart.  With that in mind, here is our Heisman ballot, or rather our Top 10 Most Outstanding College Football Players in 2009, if were voting:

1.  Toby Gerhart, Stanford RB

2.  Colt McCoy, Texas QB

3.  Mark Ingram, Alabama RB

4.  CJ Spiller, Clemson RB

5.  Ndamukong Suh, Nebraska DT

6.  Tim Tebow, Florida QB

7.  Kellen Moore, Boise State QB

8.  Dion Lewis, Pitt RB

9.  Josh Nesbitt, Georgia Tech QB

10.  Rolando McClain, Alabama LB

There’s our 10 cents on the Heisman Trophy…

Let’s all hope for a great and safe Army – Navy game today.  A number of us here at Coaches Hot Seat actually served in the military with men that played football at Army or Navy and what we were always struck by was by how small they were compared to college football players at major I-A schools or even to us and our teammates in high school.  One of us remembers a newly minted Naval Academy graduate reporting to duty on a USS Naval warship and not really telling anyone that he had played football at Annapolis.  Of course, after some prying questions with this young officer over a midnight watch in the Atlantic Ocean his football player career at Annapolis was determined and at the next flag-football game most of the crew were surprised that this young officer was the first player chosen by a team captain.  “I wonder why they chose him?” was heard whispered around the field, but those questions quickly ended when the newly minted officer was sent down the field on a fly route and broke into the open to catch an easy TD!  7 TDs later, a big win and the opposing team having to pony up for 3 kegs of beer and 20 buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken (with mashed potatoes and cole slaw of course!) there were great laughs about the “ringer” we had gotten into the big game!  Kind of like the “ringer” in the movie M.A.S.H.!

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