Tag Archives: College Football

December 30, 2018 · 1:31 PM

A good week ruined?

I used to LOVE college football bowl week.

Now I don’t.

I used to get an education in football by watching as many games as I possibly could over the course of the week. I’ve even written about this before with a post called, Crash Course.

I can’t really pinpoint the exact reason for my shift in Bowl Week fandom. My first thought is that ESPN, who used to do an exceptional job hosting the bulk of Bowl Week, has become too entrenched in the College Football Playoff politics. While watching a few minor bowl games this year on ESPN, I felt like the network’s sole purpose in broadcasting that particular minor bowl game was to talk about the College Football Playoff games. The CFP hung heavy over the 2018 Bowl Week.

Another reason that came to mind is there are just too many damn bowl games. The quality of matchup has been diluted to the point of a whole slew of bland and boring bowl games. Case in point for 2018? The 10-7 final, TCU/Cal Cheez-It Bowl. Plus, there rarely were multiple games broadcast at the same time, leaving thumb-happy remote control users like me, stuck with only one game on. Come on, man! I want to click-it action during Bowl Week!

And what’s the deal with all these NFL prospects choosing to skip their team’s bowl game. Okay, there’s always a chance you might break a nail before the NFL Combine but didn’t that school you’re leaving high and dry just sink a couple hundred thousand dollars into your development as a student-athlete? Besides that, how about the three most important things in team sports? Duty. Honor. Team.

Dear NFL prospect, play the damn bowl game.

Am I ready to give up on my lifelong fandom of College Football Bowl Week? Not hardly. But I do feel like Bowl Week is letting me and my desire to study & learn more about the game of football down on a more consistent basis.

And, for me, that is a problem.

Here’s to wishing for better Bowl Week product in 2019. Please don’t let me down, ESPN!

 

 

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December 30, 2015 · 2:28 PM

Crash Course

Bowl Week. It brings a smile to virtually every football fan’s face.  Four, or more, games a day. Teams and bowl games one has rarely heard of before. A football dream (at least to me).

But Bowl Week is more than just non-stop, sports television excitement. It is a chance for a coach to get a crash course in football. During the course of 10-14 days, a coach can watch and study virtually every offensive scheme out there pitted against virtually every defensive scheme in play.

Bowl Week is an excellent opportunity to expand the knowledge base. I don’t quite invest the time, or experience the temporary thumb paralysis from rewinding and rewinding the video with the remote control, as I used to when I was actively coaching, but I still love to watch these college football matchups in order to learn more about the game.

Most of us have heard the old adage, “If you aren’t getting better, you’re falling behind.”. A big chunk of that getting better occurs in the offseason—even for the coach. The players get better by training, by playing other sports, and working toward being better each and every day. Coaches need to do get better in the offseason also. No, take that back. Coaches don’t need to get better in the offseason, coaches must get better in the offseason. After taking a few weeks off at the end of their team’s season, a coach needs to start the process of self-improvement. Bowl Week gives us that opportunity.

I can watch the fast-break, spread offenses, flexbone veer offenses, two-back sets, one-back sets, empty sets and full-house sets all run in unique ways. I can learn how teams use motion to give the QB a coverage read. I can study what these QBs are reading and learn to recognize calls and route combinations. A good defensive coach learns to watch offenses, identify what they are doing and why, and then incorporate that knowledge into your own defensive scheme.

One of my favorite things is to study blocking schemes of all the offensive philosophies and schemes. Two of our most successful specialized blocking schemes were the reverse blocking and the screen blocking. Both came directly from watching college bowl games. The reverse blocking scheme was taken from Glen Mason’s Minnesota Golden Gophers team in the 2003 Sun Bowl and the screen blocking, if I remember right, was from a mid-2000’s Jim Tressel Ohio State bowl game.

Bowl Week. Watch your favorite teams play as a fan, but watch as many of the other games with the eye of a coach.

Always get better.

Your players need it.

Your players deserve it.

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April 14, 2012 · 7:19 AM

Resiliency

Resiliency is  vital in tough situations. Resiliency with a little humor and smart-assedness is my favorite. I particularly like these photos from Fayetteville last week after the firing of the University of Arkansas head football coach Bobby Petrino for “misleading and manipulative behavior”. (For details of this story of the downfall of one of the absolute worst  character coaches in the profession, see here.)

You may not consider a college football coach scandal is a “tough” situation, but for some of us who are, or were, in the eat, sleep and live your favorite teams category, it is a tough situation. At a proud, tradition-rich football school like the University of Arkansas, there is A LOT of eating, sleeping and living Razorback football.  I do like the humor, the smart assedness, and the resiliency shown by these men. I laughed for an extended period when I first saw them. True, it is a sad, embarrassing situation for all involved, but here are a couple guys who have taken the first step to normalcy in their turned-over-on-its-head college sports fandom experience. I would bet these guys are ready to move onto the next coach, the next season; to put on their Hog hats on a fall Saturday afternoon and head to the stadium. That’s resiliency.

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