Well it s as long as many threads.
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Yes, usually I compliment guys because they say what I would have said, in half as many words. In this case MABC said it in 10 x as many words.Well it s as long as many threads.
Yes, usually I compliment guys because they say what I would have said, in half as many words. In this case MABC said it in 10 x as many words.
And he said it so well.
Let me lead with playing devil's advocate. If you hate what I write, skip to the close of the post.
Is Coach Frost's perfect work-life balance what Nebraska fans want? Will our football team achieve what we expect it to despite him protecting his and his coaches' time with family?
His pay is "compensation", and it is sizable. If he's not sacrificing substantial time, what are we "compensating" him for? It's compensation for the opportunity cost of lost time doing other things he could be doing. In my specific field of medicine there are rare people who make seven figures, but it requires sacrifices I've been unwilling to make. I don't begrudge them making an order of magnitude more money than me, because I see their lives, and you'd have to pay me that much to live that life. If you want time with your family, perhaps a multi-million dollar major football program head coaching job with expectations of winning championships is not the right job for you. If our football team is not winning at a high level soon, I suspect patience with objecting to night games so that you get family time will wear thin. Do you have to make the faustian bargain in order to achieve championship football at these high levels? You do have to in order to achieve at the highest levels in my field. The list MABC can provide of coaches who did it without the tradeoff is short.
I led with asking "Will our football team achieve what we expect it to despite him protecting his and his coaches' time with family". Now for whiplash, I'll ask, in the long run might our football team achieve what we expect it to BECAUSE he protects his and his coaches' quality of life? For the good of the team I love and a coach I truly believe in, as well as the good of sport in the broad sense, I surely hope so.
Is Coach Frost's perfect work-life balance what Nebraska fans want? Will our football team achieve what we expect it to despite him protecting his and his coaches' time with family?
His pay is "compensation", and it is sizable. If he's not sacrificing substantial time, what are we "compensating" him for? It's compensation for the opportunity cost of lost time doing other things he could be doing. In my specific field of medicine there are rare people who make seven figures, but it requires sacrifices I've been unwilling to make. I don't begrudge them making an order of magnitude more money than me, because I see their lives, and you'd have to pay me that much to live that life. If you want time with your family, perhaps a multi-million dollar major football program head coaching job with expectations of winning championships is not the right job for you. If our football team is not winning at a high level soon, I suspect patience with objecting to night games so that you get family time will wear thin. Do you have to make the faustian bargain in order to achieve championship football at these high levels? You do have to in order to achieve at the highest levels in my field. The list MABC can provide of coaches who did it without the tradeoff is short.
I led with asking "Will our football team achieve what we expect it to despite him protecting his and his coaches' time with family". Now for whiplash, I'll ask, in the long run might our football team achieve what we expect it to BECAUSE he protects his and his coaches' quality of life? For the good of the team I love and a coach I truly believe in, as well as the good of sport in the broad sense, I surely hope so.
You wrote my response before I could get to it.
College football is not all about winning. If it was, we'd go all $EC and buy a better roster, and we'd be just as proud of it as many of their boosters seem to be. We're paying Frost $5 million per year to build a football program, and we have very high expectations of it. Here's a short list that I'd guess is almost inarguably part of the deal:
- We expect the team to win, to compete for championships. If this doesn't happen, little else matters.
- We expect the coaches to be role models. If we win championships, but the coaches act like a certain WR coach from Ohio State, it's a deal-breaker.
- We expect the coaches to be positive leaders and shapers of young men. If we win, and the coaches are role models, but our players are not expected to graduate or obey laws or respect others, it isn't going to last.
Where's it all lead? Ideally, it looks like what Tom Osborne had. It also looks a lot like Dabo Swinney's staff. Again risking the ire and ridicule of Nebraska fans, it can also look like the spectacle of Bill McCartney at Colorado. For all of the criticisms heaped upon him while he was there, coaching football, recruiting, and promoting Promise Keepers with equal zeal, has anybody else noticed that the farther Colorado has gotten from the McCartney era, the less it looks like they'll ever be back to that pinnacle that they once knew? Of course, he also walked away from coaching at the pinnacle of his career because he said that he was incapable of serving his wife as a good husband while simultaneously investing so much time and energy into coaching football.
There are quite a few folks on this board who are somewhere between uncomfortable and outright hostile to the idea of faith being so intertwined with football, especially at a public institution of higher learning. While I respect their right to hold that opinion, I wonder who they point to as having a healthy life balance between a successful coaching career in football and building and maintaining the relationships that give life meaning? Who am I overlooking? Whether you think their proclamations of faith are sincere or not, it's almost a perfect correlation of those whom I can conjure up from memory who were both successful as college and professional football coaches, and whose wives and children would say that they were winners in life, too. Coaches who value relationships above winning, yet still win, tend to be the most effective recruiters in college football. When Bobby Bowden sat down in your living room with your whole family and said that he was going to take care of you, and that he wanted you to graduate, he typically signed that kid to come to Florida State. Les Miles will get kids to come to Kansas who would never have gone there otherwise. Colorado never got as good of recruits either before or since Bill McCartney was there. It's not a coincidence.
It seemed poignant and appropriate that I had to stop typing that response to put my kids to bed. My youngest, who's not quite four, said, "Dad, you can have your computer, too, if you sit on the chair in the bedroom." So that's where I'm typing this now.
Back to the DiNardo clip, I've been mulling over McCartney and his decision to leave coaching ever since I saw that clip. Probably even the most ardent Husker fans might not recognize how appropriate that would be: guess who was Bill McCartney's Offensive Coordinator for Colorado's sole national championship team ('90)? DiNardo coached under McCartney at Colorado from '82 through '90, after which he took the head coaching job at Vanderbilt, which he turned into a winner, which was why he was offered the LSU job. Les Miles was his O-line coach at Colorado under McCartney, too. Besides those guys, McCartney cranked out a small army of assistants who became head coaches: Gary Barnett, Bob Simmons, Rick Neuheisel, Jim Caldwell, Ron Dickerson, Jon Embree, Lou Tepper, Steve Logan, Ron Vanderlinden, Scott Wachenheim, and Danny Rocco, plus Mike Hankwitz, who was long-respected DC in the model of Brent Venables, today, who could have been a head coach several times over had he wished. Maybe I've just not been made aware, but I don't know of any of those guys ever criticizing Bill McCartney. When McCartney retired after the '94 season, DiNardo was in the process of going from Vanderbilt to LSU. Hankwitz (Kansas) and Simmons (Oklahoma State) pretty clearly left Colorado because McCartney was no longer coaching there.
I know it hurts for Nebraska fans to say nice things about Bill McCartney or Colorado coaches, but that's an impressive amount of talent that McCartney had assembled. I hadn't realized that Bill had followed the Bobby Bowden Plan to that extent.
I know it hurts for Nebraska fans to say nice things about Bill McCartney or Colorado coaches, but that's an impressive amount of talent that McCartney had assembled. I hadn't realized that Bill had followed the Bobby Bowden Plan to that extent.
What the heck are you talking about with the faith thing? You make it sound like the only way you can have balance is by having faith intertwined. Is that what you’re saying?
Much harder without it.
Sorry MABC you lost me. I will definitely admit that McCartney was a good coach, a good recruiter, a good motivator and has a good coaching tree.
That’s about it. IMO he is a hypocrite. I just don’t think he practices what he preaches all the time. Your perfectly welcome to have a different opinion, but don’t think you are going to change mine.
Someone triggered by the thought? I am amused by how even the subject of faith coming up on a college football fan site is somehow controversial or odd. Quick, name the top ten atheist football coaches of all time! Top five? Top three? Anybody? Bueller? Bueller?
I'm not saying that it's impossible to be a successful college coach apart from some semblance of faith being present in your life, but it's certainly a lot more rare. I am saying that a huge percentage of top-level college football coaches who are also family and relationship-oriented tend to also be religious people, especially if you include the hypocrites who talk the talk without walking the walk. Want proof? Time for a Google experiment.
Let's look at the coaches who have won national championships in this millenium--all of whom appear to be happily married, fwiw--and let's look at what shows up in a Google search when I use their name plus something anodyne like "faith." Click on the NC-winning coaches' names below to see what ten minutes on Google shows:
[Trigger warning for people who are opposed to Christianity]
Bob Stoops
Larry Coker
Jim Tressel
Pete Carroll
Nick Saban
Mack Brown
Urban Meyer
Les Miles
Gene Chizit
Jimbo Fisher
Dabo Swinney
That's ... unanimous. Wow! Based on the available data, it is irrefutable that Nebraska's best chances of winning a national championship this millennium would come from having a faith-based, family-oriented coach.
Well, aren't we lucky!...
Tom Osborne approves of this message.
I can absolutely see that perspective, and I've held it at times. McCartney was a hypocrite at times, but it's without question that he fits the profile of a successful coach whose faith came before football.
Why?
Since most, if not all, coaches are religious I find it nonsensical that you’re listing coaches who’ve won NC’s as some sort of proof. I’m not triggered by it, it is what it is. But I don’t find, as an atheist myself, it difficult to hold my family above everything else. I’m a stay at home dad so you could say I’ve even forgone my career at this point to care for my children. I didn’t need faith to make this decision, nor would it have made it any easier for me.
Something that applies to us as fans as well....Husker FB, win or lose, shouldn't rule our life or make grownups behave rude, abusive, or intolerant to rival fans, family/friends, or fellow HuskerMax posters - something that happens far too often.
