ads

Slider[Style1]

Style2

Style3[OneLeft]

Style3[OneRight]

Style4

Style5

Frontline on Football

Posted by: ytttr Posted date: 7:47 PM / comment : 0 ,


My brother sit me right down and he talked to me
He told me that I ought not to let you just walk on me
And I'm sure he meant well yeah but when our talk was through
I said brother if you only knew you'd wish that you were in my shoes
You just keep on using me until you use me up

An episode of Frontline (“Football High”) aired last week and it has been making its rounds through the football interwebs and rightfully so. It touches many of the various issues that have established themselves as the fingerprint of our current era of high school football.  The piece did it’s best in the short time allotted to address a litany of themes in today’s game that cannot be ignored (despite our best efforts in some cases).  Because of time constraints, the editors had to settle for a shotgun-method of presenting these affairs to the public, sacrificing quantity over depth.  I wanted to take a bit of space to highlight and briefly comment (I don’t have any answers) on a few of the concerns presented.
  • Program Building and the influence of pressure
  • Player size consistently increasing to proportions not previously experienced
  • Concussions being taken seriously with increased research addressing brain trauma (see links below)
  • Impact and the role of equipment to mitigate unnecessary injury - Tom Talavage, Purdue University
  • Cumulative effects of small impacts to the head – Dr. Ann Mckee, Boston University
  • Safety Enforcement – absence of trainers to professional evaluate athletes (due to budget / lack of regulation)

Player Safety (and the perspective in which we regard coaches)

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.
“The incentive structure is all wrong.
Coaches are under intense pressure to win games.  It’s the only thing that they are judged by.  So if you have a player with concussion symptoms and you send him back in the game and has a second concussion, which is always worse than the first, there is no penalty as a coach for that.   If you take the kid out of the game and take away the kid’s helmet and you loose the game – there’s a penalty for that.”

Easterbrook makes an astute observation here and it was just worth repeating.  I found the commentary right before this excerpt more deflating (decreasing availability of athletic trainers), but his point about how we value coaches succinctly captured what this epidemic is all about. 

Mega Programs from Mega Churches
At the risk of being offensive and pissing off every reader, I believe there is something here that I feel deserves a closer look.  I don’t think there is some boogeyman conspiracy at play, but there IS a formula available (and being used across the Nation) which is able to tie (affluent) money, cutthroat competitiveness, and shameless ego into a maelstrom of domination.

“In the mid-1990s we decided that we really wanted to become a national football program…..and with that everything began to advance…
image
How do you explain what’s happened here? You have this little football program that has emerged to a national stage.   The only way I can explain it is the favor of god – that’s it”.
- Ronnie Floyd, Head Coach Shiloh Christian
But it takes more than divine intervention. It takes money and commitment.

I felt this except from the special was priceless, because behind these benevolent remarks resides something a little more powerful at work than feel-good rhetoric (politics / money / greed).  It begets a culture that routinely straddles the line of ethics and the cult of personality.  I wrestled with this sort of idea before, where ethical boundaries blur for treatment of players/families through social influence (by invoking the will/perception of the gods).  The culture of ultra-win-at-all-costs-competitiveness can be a monster itself to handle, but adding the trump card of god’s guilt (and the petty social politics within any church) is a recipe for abuse.

For the record, I have nothing but respect and admiration for the Shiloh Christian (and the many private schools built with this same model) Program and I’m not even suggesting that they aren’t doing everything above board.  The Frontline piece just happened to pick them, but there are dozens of other programs that could’ve been the focus for what they were illustrating.

If you had the means and ability to create the best possible environment for your students, why wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be your duty to do exactly that (and why not for your athletes as well)?  I am not even one of those guys who begrudges the disparity between public versus private school programs.  There are many public schools that are run in near the same fashion.  This “formula” that I’m referring to requires a perfect balance which isn’t easy to come by and when lacking oversight from outside parties (away from the self-contained echo-chamber of “win”) it becomes a monster that grows, breeding abuse.

Limitless Potential for High School Programs
“If you’re in a great high school football program, you will spend more time working in high school than you will in college.
image
Within a full seven day week you have 20 hours to complete all football related activity under NCAA rules.  There is not a great high school program in America that does anywhere near that.  They’re considerably over that.”
- Walt Williams, Sports Promoter
I don’t know who the hell Walt Williams is, nor can I speak for his title, but everything he explained was dead on the money.  This is a subject I’ve shared with my close coaching friends the past few years (especially every time I hear the lazy excuse of “players can’t do such-and-such”).  High school football really is wide open on what we can get away with and how coaches can creatively use their time on campus (and off).  Again, like mentioned above, it straddles the line of being competitive and being unethical.  There are many things we, as coaches, can do to saturate our players with skills and knowledge to build them as players (with little regulation), but finding the right mix between too much and not enough can be a moving target.

This all comes back to Bill Withers at the opening of this post.  The allure and euphoria that is American football is something that really transcends rational thought.  The “football high” (intentional double entendre) speaks to the compulsive nature that is created because these visceral life moments and may not be something we can soberly evaluate like an economic equation.  Football, the game, will eat up players and coaches alike without ever returning the ‘love’ / investment made by the participant.  The fever of “the game” always comes at a price and something we can all easily lose sight of…. it isn’t the stats, the scores, the wins or losses.  It is the relationships with the players and with yourself (what you end up revealing about your own character).

That isn’t to dismiss any of the legitimate concerns presented by this piece (quite the contrary),  but for any person who has played high school or college ball and “got it” (the experience), the decision to jeopardize our health and in some cases, peace of mind, is one we wouldn’t even second-guess.  The thrill and fulfillment of sacrificing yourself for the benefit of those close to you (and those people sharing alike), to create something bigger than all of you combined is ultimately what this game is about.

Faith in Football (Culture)

Posted by: ytttr Posted date: 11:07 AM / comment : 0 ,

* The following is a reprised thread started at the beginning of 2009 on CoachHuey.com. It is reposted here because that thread was later removed, but the subject and content of the discussion was worth preserving.


Apologies ahead of time for anyone I end up offending here in this post. I assure you that is not the intent.

This is a 'religion' question from a different angle, with no agenda, but plenty of questions.

Many times the Christian faith is leaned upon to support the "mentoring young men" approach to (football) coaching. That providing character lessons from scripture, via bible studies, of honoring the tenets of the Faith.....

That the realm of coaching and Christian faith go hand-in-hand, and in many circles, one implies the other.
If you are a devout enough believer, then surely you are a better coach.
Or that if you do not exhibit enough qualities, you are less than a professional coach.
I realize that MUCH of this (these issues) are intertwined / co-joined, based on culture, society, tradition, and faith....and often times the origins or rationale blur together, so providing a definitive answer may be difficult.

My question, and there are many to come, is......Has anyone served on a Jewish staff? A Muslim staff?....a Hindu staff?

If so, what were your experiences? Did you coach the kids differently?
If not, do you think those coaches are missing something quantifiable? Does their (different) faith handicap them from reaching their 'full potential' as coaches?
I'll provide the caveat to this upfront, this is in no way a slam, gripe, attack on the Christian faith, this is just a question about the culture and dynamics at work in the coaching profession.

Upon further relection, I suppose an ancillary question would be, with as much as we put into prayer breakfasts and Coalition of Christian Coaches, how many of us (or our communities) would shit the bed if Crosstown High was being run by a bunch of _(insert contrarian religion)__?
Also, does one HAVE to affix themselves to a 'denomination' to be considered a good person?Could we do chicken-dinner fundraisers with the Sadhu Vaswani Hindu Cultural Center (as opposed to the 1st Baptist Tabernacle)?

providing early feedback in this discussion, bulldogoption wrote;

The question is a good one..............but I would guess that there aren't many who have served on a staff consisting of faiths other than Christianity.
That was kind of the reference point, and maybe I should have just left it as a rhetorical question or something (because I highly doubt any other staffs exist).
The point being the perceived (intentional or otherwise) sanctity of declaring a faith, and/or proselytizing players (not in and of itself) that creates a higher prestige on coaching staffs. ex. The 'sanctioned equity' that is placed on coaches or staffs simply because of claiming a title (religion) or professing a belief, now holds a once ordinary object into a higher esteem.
Again, this isn't a gripe. I know a lot of great staffs that are comprised of Christians. I'm not on a witchhunt. It is merely trying to tie the logic involved with this emotional association.

Other coaches provided insight, featuring the following;

As a Hindu, I plan to coach football really soon and always ask myself will I be discriminated because of my religion or race. Would people judge me differently and would I be teaching the game in another way than majority of coaches do? The answer to that is that as coaches, we do not teach hatred towards others because thats setting a bad example.
wingtol asked;

I would ask this: Does having NO faith effect coaching more than having faith/religion/beliefs different from the religious norm in the community?
...and that is essentially what the original question was about.
If you go to church and are the biggest SOB.....
If you don't go to church (hegemonic faith group not supported) and are competent.......
What is it that makes us endear honor to the church-goer?
If I am inclined to share the Gospel of Christ during a lesson, would you mind if your other coach is delivering readings of the Koran during Indy?
If so, what is the difference?
This isn't about self-righteous rants of Christian vs Presbyterian vs Lutheran vs Catholics......
.......because none of those even define a person, or as this thread is indicating, their worth.THIS guy is a 'christian' and THAT guy isn't (and WHO defines this?).......why should one be looked at with higher regard (in the coaching profession).

khalife offered this gem;
True or not... the masses won't know until its too late, but instant credibility can be established through religious affiliations, simply due to the strong history of religion within this country...And of course... in America, the religion of shoice has been christianity.... hence buddism, hindu, Islam, can not be utilized to garner such legitimacy, and therefore, those that practice said religion don't shout it to the world, because there's no leverage to be gained.
smartfootball contributor, 'coachinghopeful';

I grew up in a very conservative part of the country where I know that any coach who would merely talk openly about a different faith than the rest of the population would be run out of town on a rail. As a kid I got a lot of flack from my classmates because I didn't attend church--my parents just didn't want to go for their own reasons--and because I didn't know how to recite or conduct myself during prayers at school events since I'd never prayed before. It's still that way. We had no Muslims, no Jews, no Hindus or anything else in our schools.

The handful of Catholic and Mormon kids had to put up with teasing, though as far as I know it rarely got too serious. I am embarrassed to say that some of my teammates enjoyed bullying the atheist, gay, goth, and punk kids (basically anyone who was "different."). A couple of our then-assistants, one of whom became HC my senior year, knew and condoned it. I'm not sure if their religious beliefs played a role or not, though. That and a $17 million sexual harrassment lawsuit probably contributed to their firing a few years later.It's not been that long ago that my hometown made the national news because a very small, very vocal group of parents claimed that using fairy tales to teach elementary school children to read was secretly an evil plot to corrupt their good Christian kids and turn them into little satanists--no, I'm not exaggerating. They were actively telling their kids not to do their school work and to disobey their "anti-Christian" teachers. Every so often people here still make very public scenes demanding that religion be actively brought into the schools and government.

Just about any local community here would have a fit if any non-Christian (or even a non-specific-and-accepted-denomination-Christian) became a coach or teacher and started talking to kids about his religious or spiritual beliefs. There would be a few overprotective parents who would literally jump at the opportunity to file a lawsuit in the name of sticking up for Jesus, even if the coach was being respectful of everyones' beliefs and never did anything wrong.

This is about the cultural significance placed on claiming the hegemonic religious association. I believe it has been made clear several times that this is NOT about if witnessing is important, justified, or debatable.
I think Khalife really hit the nail on the head with regards to political associations / usage of these titles to imply trust/competency equity ("instant credibility") - I was hoping to explore not necessarily HOW this is, but WHY we (as a profession) fall for it to vouch for coaching efficacy and/or why this formula isn't applied to other faiths.
Imagine Dan Reeves or Tony Dungy (instantly associated men of faith) professing Allâh throughout their coaching career, would they be revered differently, more/less competently?
My point being, these guys are seen as their coaching record + (something else)

The blind, spiteful, rhetoric that we use to classify groups (thereby lauding prestige on like-minded circles), only further fuels this kind of back-slapping, carte blanche good-ole-boying. If Kurt Warner's story wasn't palatable to the majority (if he was of a different religous persuasion), would he be seen differently? In that same regard, in the coaching profession, we do the same thing. "Coach John David's Wing-T" is entirely superior to "Coach Piyush's Wishbone", so when you go to the clinics, one of those guys is much more marketable.


Puerto Rican coach, 'acard78' provided one of the most succinct illustrations of this at work when he wrote;

was cassius clay viewed different than mohamed ali?..... was lew alcindor viewed different than kareem abdul jabar? thats were the answer to this question is... (does religion cause the public to have a preconception about a person, do they lose respect if they are not christians?) but yeah there is still ignorance out there. it is also more prevelant in some places than others.
coachweav88

I feel the same thing is happening in America.

People think America is a "Christian nation" , so therefore being American=being a Christian. Not true.

and that captures it right there.
The converse is true, as well.
Christian = American.............
.................not Christian?..... well, you can't be American, then can you?
And again, not saying ANYTHING against the Gospel or faith. This is entirely about perception and using these backdrops to present something as more than it is. The same calculus could be applied to a 'gun-owner' vs 'non-gun owner' if you live in a hunting community. But because religion is so predominant in these regions (and implies so much about character) it would appear to be the least common denominator.

I'm going to go off the deep-end here, so feel free to bail out, but....If a coach is "of faith" and feels the need to share it with his players, obviously, that is okay.
However, if a coach does not believe in religion, would we feel the same if he shared his views against practicing superstitions?
Just thinking aloud, but are 'evangelical' coaches more inclined to believe in "systems" as the saving grace, (ala substance of things hoped for) rather than believing in that which they can teach? Whereas, I am going to run the Rice Krispy offense, and that alone will give us wins (ala, I just need to pray and God will take care of things) rather than taking the attitude of doing it all yourself (if I don't ensure this happens, it won't happen).
All I am asking is - does this way of thinking lend itself to less accountability, less rational approach to getting it done?

Even everyone's favorite gridiron academic, 'spreadattack' chimed in with;

The one thing that interests me is why is faith, and specifically christianity
so tied up with football, such that this topic would even be asked and
attract anyone. My very amateur guess there is that it is cultural: football
is universal of course, but very heavily influenced by the south and
southwest, and similarly faith is very prominent there (for a variety of
reasons). Basketball is more east and west coast, and I hear about this kind
of "faith" stuff and its importance less frequently with respect to it.
Just pointing out that if one follows an irrational path (superstition), will that irrational attitude carry over to how they view impartation of material (things happen without effort being put forth)?
And I agree, it IS completely cultural (not that that is a bad thing). And I think, by and large, that is part of the question posed at the beginning of this thread.
Separating culture and tradition from actual "faith" or true belief. It is like separating Nationalism and Christianity in America....they are so intertwined it is difficult to distinguish where one starts and the other begins. I started this thread / posted the question just to receive feedback, I am not sure there actually is an "answer" out there for what I was asking.
coachweav, this thread specifically is NOT presenting a question of sharing faith / yada yada. I think you hit on a good point, though, whereas "doing all you can....with all your heart" is more of an emotional response than an actual rational one. Spiritual = emotional, and are kind of at odds with pragmatic real-time solutions. And this sometimes clouds the issue of actually 'coaching' (teaching) because we are really, really emotional (but that doesn't mean we gave the kids anything they can use.....How-to)

The analogy of this hypothesis is, "everything I do, I hit with a hammer. All day long, I hit things with a hammer and they get fixed.So when I am presented with a nut and bolt, do I just bang away with a hammer?"

Do I believe if I say "AllaKazaam!", good things will happen (rather than me going out and making good things happen) - am I more inclined to just believe good things will happen (without me really ensuring that things/works are done to make it happen)?
Earlier posts touched on this topic as well;
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
Copyright © 2014 BLACK
⬆
Top