don't know if this guy is a um fan or what?
By Matt Hayes -
SportingNews 4 hours, 33 minutes ago
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This is uncomfortable for me because it’s something I prefer to steer clear of.
I don’t like to take college players to task for one basic reason: They’re not paid. For me, it doesn’t get beyond “played poorly” or “struggled” or “blew an assignment” because frankly, it’s not appropriate.
Besides, coaches are an easy target. They get paid to run the team and get paid to take the criticism.
Only now, I must take exception with Michigan offensive lineman Justin Boren. Earlier this week, Boren said he was leaving Michigan because “family values” he had grown accustomed to had “eroded in just a few months” under new coach Rich Rodriguez.
Before we go further, let’s get a few undeniable things out of the way:
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• Some players don’t like new coaches; some bitch and moan about them.
• Some players persevere, others walk away.
• And some—the few—take their ball and whine all the way home.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is where we find Boren. Coaching changes aren’t easy on anyone—not the coach leaving, the coach hired and most certainly not the players recruited by the previous coach. It is, as much as anything, the first real life experience for college kids.
In the real world, we call this turnover. We have a job, we love our job and now all of a sudden we have a new boss. And the new boss is different.
Not all bosses motivate the same. Some motivate with positive reinforcement, others with fear and still others with goal-oriented benchmarks. Some use a combination of all three.
Now here’s what’s important: Nearly
every new boss is not like the old boss. Boren’s comfort zone that felt so easy and so right is now gone. Of course, that comfort zone included losses to rival Ohio State in six of the last seven years.
Rodriguez was hired to win football games; it’s just that simple. He was hired to beat Ohio State—not placate 18-, 19- and 20-year-old kids who don’t like change.
Every new coach goes through this; just like every new boss goes through it. It’s a process: Weeding out those who don’t fit. Some don’t like to work hard, some are malcontents.
The big buzz in the first few spring practices at Michigan was offensive linemen adjusting to the no-huddle approach in Rodriguez’s scheme. Translation: You’re running your ass off.
Those who fall behind will be pushed harder and longer, mentally and physically. That’s coaching, people.
Any dime store psychologist will say you can’t motivate through fear. Well, a guy named John Wooden—who won a few championships in his career—says a coach’s best friend is the bench. In other words, play hard or sit.
“I’m not going out there and running people off,” Rodriguez told the
Detroit News. “I’ve been running these kinds of practices for 20 years.”
Those are the same practices he ran at West Virginia, where his first team in 2001 won three games while working through the transition. Those players were used to Don Nehlen, a Lloyd Carr clone if there ever was one. Both Nehlen and Carr are good men and good coaches, but they lost their ability to motivate players to maximize their abilities.
Listen people, Rodriguez won 32 games over the last three years. You don’t do that by coddling your players.
And anyone who watched the Fiesta Bowl three months ago knows that West Virginia team—when healthy—would beat any in college football. If you’re Michigan, that’s what you hold onto.
Not the words of a departing player who took his ball and whined all the way home.
