I always took great pride in playing with heart and passion, leave it all out on the field. I tried to express that to my teammates because it’s really the players; the coaches can yap all they want, but it’s really the players who take control of the team and should lead the team because it is their team and it stems from the players so much more than anyone else.
Unfortunately, 9 wins has become "good enough". 9 wins was never good enough when i was growing up
imho the increase in the number of bowl games since 1995 has resulted in the "9 wins are okay" philosophy. In 1995 36 teams worked to get to the highest number of wins possible to be eligible for one of the 18 bowl games, as the number of bowls increased the win totals went all the way down to 6 and now lately 5 games to become bowl eligible, everyone now is eligible for a participation trophy. Right now teams can get an F on the season (win 50% of their games) and still be allowed to go to a bowl. Today's football players are rewarded for an average season and unless you are playing for the NC why should they put forth so much effort to achieve greatness we are going to reward them even if they are mediocre.
I do highly recommend coaches rotating players in and out a lot to keep them fresh. Here's something I've never said publicly. My senior year we would sub quite a bit on the D line. But before our first game my D Line coach John Blake pulled me aside and said, I'm not going to sub for you. There will be 3 guys running in the game and 3 guys running out, you will just stay out there 95% of the time and that's just what he did. I'll never forget when we played Kansas that year, we won in OT. But on defense that game we played 107 snaps, I played 99 of them. Now I'd be lying if I said I went 100% every single one of those plays. But my point is this, it's a mentality, it's an attitude. There were things I was good at and there were definitely things I could have done better on the football field, but it always meant a great deal to me leave it all on the field, because that was something I could control. Btw, I hate it when I see guys tap their helmets and come out of the game. I always thought it was the coaches job to sub people in and out. I always looked at tapping out of a game like saying Uncle to your sibling or a professional wrestler tapping out in a major match. I'd rather be exhausted and in pain than do that. To me that was admitting defeat. I will say this, sometimes digression is the better part of valor and I may not have been that smart at the time, but that was my attitude then, right or wrong.Adam I have a question for you. When you went 100 percent like you did did you ever get tired enough that you "tapped out" and came out of the game for a play or two to catch your breath?
Sometimes simple solutions are the most elegant! Agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. But a few additional comments/questions:In my mind it's simple:
1- Recruit athletes. Develop them. Find advantages schematically with your personnel.
2- Attitude and Championship Expectations.
3- It's now time to find our coach. Evaluation starts now and ends in 2 seasons.
4- Find an identity. On offense, defense and as a team.
5- Elevate the Walk On program. This should be a big advantage for us.
My brother in law walked on at Nebraska because that was his life long dream. He had offers from smaller schools but he turned them down. I look at it like pro wrestling, if the champion keeps losing non title matches then the championship belt means less. But there are also things you can do to elevate the championship belt to make it worth more. It's the same with the walk on program. It's all in how you handle it and present it. In short, it's a PR move, which is what a lot of recruiting is, and you're basically recruiting guys to walk on to Nebraska, rather than guarantee themselves an appearance in the Poinsettia bowl every year somewhere else.It will be harder to get Walk On players due to Craig Bohl at Wyoming. He will entice many a player to come play for him, that in the past would have walked on at Nebraska.
I have an idea for the walk on program. Eply brought back the "performance index" explained in this prophetic (concerning the OL) article below. Perhaps the Huskers need to set up a walk on try out day and guarntee that any athlete that scores a 1500 (or some slightly lower mark determined by Eply) on the performance index has a walk on spot. They could tailor the score levels to specific positions, if deemed necessary. This would give local kids a goal to work toward and might up the quality of walk on athletes. The University could make a big deal of the try out with the help of local media. Just a thought...My brother in law walked on at Nebraska because that was his life long dream. He had offers from smaller schools but he turned them down. I look at it like pro wrestling, if the champion keeps losing non title matches then the championship belt means less. But there are also things you can do to elevate the championship belt to make it worth more. It's the same with the walk on program. It's all in how you handle it and present it. In short, it's a PR move, which is what a lot of recruiting is, and you're basically recruiting guys to walk on to Nebraska, rather than guarantee themselves an appearance in the Poinsettia bowl every year somewhere else.
To your point though, you're absolutely right. I think the target would be to get Nebraska boys to walk on. It'll be much tougher with kids from out of state. But in state kids, achieving you're childhood dream sometimes means much more. I've seen that first hand. Also, in state tuition vs out of state tuition makes a big difference too.
The Performance Index is what I was referring to. As for your idea, I love it! It would probably have to be a slightly lower mark to be fair, but besides that, like I said the walk on program has been and can once again be a huge advantage for us. I don't think it would be that hard to do things like this to elevate it once again.I have an idea for the walk on program. Eply brought back the "performance index" explained in this prophetic (concerning the OL) article below. Perhaps the Huskers need to set up a walk on try out day and guarntee that any athlete that scores a 1500 (or some slightly lower mark determined by Eply) on the performance index has a walk on spot. They could tailor the score levels to specific positions, if deemed necessary. This would give local kids a goal to work toward and might up the quality of walk on athletes. The University could make a big deal of the try out with the help of local media. Just a thought...
http://www.omaha.com/huskers/boyd-e...cle_1a7c4940-a387-11e5-9643-0bc10d4a2c5d.html