Coaches Hot Seat Quotes of the Day – Saturday, October 13, 2012 – Knute Rockne
“A coach’s greatest asset is his sense of responsibility – the reliance placed on him by his players.”
And
“Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points.”
And
“Drink the first. Sip the second slowly. Skip the third.”
And
“Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than almost any academic course he takes.”
And
“It isn’t necessary to see a good tackle. You can hear it.”
And
“The essence of football is blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.”
And
“The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”
And
“We count on winning. And if we lose, don’t beef. And the best way to prevent beefing is – don’t lose.”
And
“Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure.”
And
“One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it.”
And
“The best thing I ever learned in life was that things have to be worked for. A lot of people seem to think there is some sort of magic in making a winning football team. There isn’t, but there’s plenty of work.”
And
“I’ve found that prayers work best when you have big players.”
And
“Win or lose, do it fairly.”
And
“Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up”
And
“No star playing, just football.”
And
“Tell the public about the boys. They’re the ones that do the work and they should get the credit. The people are interested in them, not me.”
And
“Most men, when they think they are thinking, are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
If there is one thing we love here at Coaches Hot Seat it is a man with a quick wit and during our lives on this Earth it is hard to think of someone with a quicker wit than…
Beano Cook
ALL of us here at Coaches Hot Seat grew up with ESPN and on ESPN in those early days there was a fellow named Beano Cook who always had something interesting or outrageous to say and if Beano Cook didn’t pick Notre Dame to win the National Title every year before the season got underway between 1982 and 2002 then we must have missed a year because if there was one thing that Beano Cook believed in deeply it was those Golden Helmets and all the tradition and lore that comes with Notre Dame football.
To Beano Cook we say…
Thanks for a Life Well Lived Beano that brought a lot of laughter, guffaws and often….”What the Hell did Beano just say?”….comments to both us here at Coaches Hot Seat and to Millions of College Football Fans across America.
Beano, you will be missed.
RIP Carroll Huff “Beano” Cook – 1931 – 2012
Alex Karras Passes Away
Most of us were still very young when Alex Karras ended his NFL career in 1970 with the Detroit Lions and it was actually Alex’s work in TV and the movies where we came to first know and learn about his football career and more importantly came to listen closely and laugh hard when Alex was on the small or big screen.
Alex Karras was a very tough football player and a very funny man and that is a great combination to us here at Coaches Hot Seat!
Thanks Alex Karras for a Helluva life lived and long after ALL of us at Coaches Hot Seat are gone and forgotten Alex Karras’ movie and TV roles will still have them laughing!
RIP Alexander George “Alex” Karras – 1935 – 2012
Stanford vs. Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana
With Stanford and Notre Dame meeting on Saturday with both their football teams and universities being ranked among the Top 20 in the American Republic we here at Coaches Hot Seat are looking forward to attending this game in South Bend, Indiana as we always do every other football season and for those folks out there that don’t think that a school can have very high academic standards AND very competitive football teams we can only say….
Tune in Saturday to Stanford vs. Notre Dame!
With the biggest ongoing event in college football in ESPN GameDay broadcasting from South Bend, Indiana on Saturday which is but one marker of just how big college football has gotten in America today a couple of us cannot help but remember what an university president told us a couple of years back about the football program on his campus that was about as all encompassing as a sport can be on a college campus in America in the 21 st century.
We were discussing with this university president the pros and cons of having a college football team so intertwined with the university as a whole and this university president said to us (paraphrased since it was so long ago and neither of us wrote down notes after that meeting as all of us almost always do):
“For most of my academic career I carried a mild disdain and irritation at the amount of attention and resources that the football and basketball programs got on the college campuses I was working on, but as I rose up through the administration ranks I came to the realization that college football and in fact the entire athletics department can play a very positive and defining role in achieving the overall goals of the university.
Yes, I know there are going to be excesses in both things we do wrong internally within the athletic department and among our fans and alumni relative to the football and basketball programs and that is something that I spend a decent amount of time talking with my athletic director about to limit as much of that excess as possible, but as I was telling one of my deans awhile back for him to imagine for a moment that there was no football stadium and football team on this campus and intercollegiate athletics was not bound so tightly to our university and for him to think about what our institution would look, feel and be like in that scenario. That dean considered the thought of no football or basketball team on campus that commanded the attention of millions of fans and alumni all over the world and attention that is garnered by the name of the university being so widely dispersed in the news media for FREE and he finally looked at me and said:
“You are right. This school without “X” football would mean this would not be the same the university of “X” and certainly if football had not been played at this school for the last 100 years or so we would have a lot less alumni and a lot less students on campus right now. Of that I have no doubt.”
Coaches Hot Seat: So somewhere along the line you rationalized that college football and basketball and the athletics department was an important part of the university as a whole and that a college president must first deal with that reality and then utilize the college football and basketball programs in the best way possible to drive the overall goals of the university?”
University President: “Exactly. I must…know I have to deal with the reality that a long time ago before professional football was even played colleges formed football teams and thus long before the NFL was formed and could create a farm system similar to what Major League Baseball has in place the highest level of football in America was played on college campuses and from that college football has just continued to grow and grow until now it is the second most popular sport in America and for our school in particular the football program is a key driver of donations from alumni and boosters and is THE best way to get the word out to the general public and our future students of what we are doing at the University of “X.””
Coaches Hot Seat:How do you personally rationalize some of the excesses and some of the crazy fandom you see that sometimes clearly crosses the line and gives college football and even higher education a black eye in the mind of the public?
University President: “We just deal with each of those situations as they arise and I try to make sure on a regular basis that the people in positions of leadership in the athletic department understand that things that go wrong in athletics are magnified in the news media and that staying in front of potential problems and stopping them in their tracks before they become an embarrassment for the school is paramount to running a strong athletic department that is a credit to the university as a whole. Beyond that I want to see all of our school’s athletic teams achieve at a high level and win conference and national titles and do it in the right way which means our student-athletes are going to go to class and keep moving forward towards earning a college degree while doing the best possible work they can do in the classroom. Every student-athlete cannot be a Rhodes Scholar just like most of our top academic students could never play football or basketball, but there is a happy medium where our student-athletes can do their best in the classroom and if there best work is what some might say is average work, but they are still passing their classes and moving towards earning their degree then that is achievement in my book and will help drive the goals of the university forward as our students and student-athletes both perform in the classroom and on the field and do it on both places in the right way.”
Triple Amen to that!
In the aftermath of Beano Cook passing this week we cannot think of a better game or a better place for ESPN GameDay to be than at the Stanford – Notre Dame game in South Bend on Saturday because Beano Cook loved Notre Dame and he loved schools that did things the right way both in the classroom and on the field and on Saturday two schools that do things the right way…
The Stanford Cardinal and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish
….will meet at Notre Dame Stadium in what should be a great football game and Beano Cook wouldn’t want it any other way!
As for us here at Coaches Hot Seat that will be heading over to South Bend, Indiana from Columbus, Ohio on Friday and we can only say…
GO STANFORD!
LET’S SHOW THE FIGHTING IRISH…HOW THE CARDINAL FIGHTS!
