BLACK

This fall will be my 15th year to coach football.  I have had a good run here in Denison and professionally I have come a long way.  I would have to say that technology is the #1 factor in me improving as a ball coach.  However, that is sort of a trick answer.  Here are some of the technology tools I am talking about in no particular order.
1. HUDL
2. DVD duplicator
3. coachhuey.com
4. blogspot
5. camtasia
6. snapit
7. webinars
List could go on and on.  The reason I say its a trick answer is this.  All of those technological tools lead back to relationships with people.  Having the ability to communicate with other coaches ANYWHERE and having the ability to functionally exchange thoughts and ideas have changed me as a coach.
     Greg Wright came to Denison in the fall of 2007.  He brought with him about 10 dvds that he let me watch.  Among them was the Gus Malzahn coaches choice set.  This was right about the time Gus had left the HS ranks and went to Arkansas as the OC.  I asked Greg where he got them at and he told me that he got them from a guy in Wisconsin.  He told me that he traded a couple of things he had and sent him some game cut ups and before he knew it he had dvds laying around all over the place.  Relationships....
     I then became a member on coachhuey.com.  My member handle is bigballsincowtown.  I couldn't tell you why.  I tried a couple of normal names and they were already taken, so there it is.  Here is where I met Brophy.  As you all know, my man Brophy is as sharp as they come in this business.  His knowledge level about the game is on another level.  Reading his posts on huey.com (and later this blog) have made me a better offensive coach.  Seeing things thru the eyes of a defender, specifically Cajun eyes that will hold nothing back, helps me daily strive to get to his level.  Relationships....
     So from Texas to Wisconsin and on to Louisiana, I became hooked.  It was like swapping baseball cards when I was a kid.  The Gus stuff got me going and carried me up to close to 200 dvds.  Then I hit another gold mine.  My boss had 6 hours of Rich Rodriguez talking ball to his former staff, when Rich Rod was at Clemson.  This was the spring after his offense took of with Woody Dantlzer as his qb.  It started with the beginnings and took off from there.  I transferred those from vhs to dvd, put em on huey.com, and they took off like firecrackers on the 4th of July.  Relationships....
     I still swap, but not like I did.  I am at 1200 dvds now and I am always looking to add to my collection.  If you are interested, lets start building a relationship and get on the Brophsters level!!!  The quest for knowledge in any profession is what its about.

My "off season project" is near complete. I have essentially burned my physical video library of DVDs to a 1.5 Terabyte external hard drive as a backup against scratches or loss.

It may seem like a lot of unnecessary work, but searching, organizing, and keeping up with over 453 NCAA/NFL game film DVDs (plus a few hundred clinic discs) can be tedious and subject to error. I had no real feasible method other than to store the discs on large disc spindles, which began taking up more and more physical space. It was herding cats to find a disc (even after having grouped spindles by categories), then to go through the process of creating a copy was worse.


Now, once I receive a disc, I just pop it in the drive, rip the ISO image to my portable hard drive and store it away as a master disc.

It also makes providing copies for other coaches that much easier, too. I just pull from the ISO image catalog, pop in a blank disc, and burn....done. This way, the bookshelf full of DVDs, the entire collection is available on a paperback-sized drive, available to take with me anywhere and burn (dvd-ready discs) anywhere with a DVD-RW drive.

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/guides/dvd/extract-audio-from-video-to-mp3.htm




Now I'm talking about bring up the point of the AUDIO / LISTENING aspect of clinic presentations.Yes, video is nice, but watching AND listening requires your full attention, and may not be practical in all scenarios, plus the added file size of hour long vids. Loading video onto ipods and mobile devices is nothing new.....

I am specifically talking about ripping off audio from clinic talks and listening to them while you do other things (it beats listening to the radio, or music, or the wife ramble on).



So, instead of having a 4G file, and instead of compressing it down to 2G, you can have a 125M audio file that lasts an hour or so.....and you can throw a dozen or so of those bad boys on your player and listen while you are drawing stuff up, writing practice plans, or doing whatever else, without having to WATCH anything.






I bought an iPod years ago, but it completely crapped out on me after 3 months for no reason at all. I bought an 8G Sansa to replace it, and it works like a champ with video,audio, recording, and a radio.



Sansa is MS compatible so you just plug it in (as a USB device) and it loads everything up, you just drag and drop files into the folder (rather than getting iTunes and converting everything to the PITA aac / m4a...it is a little bulkier than any of the iPods, but the thing is tougher than nails, is expandable, can replace the battery (if needed) and cannot be scratched.