He is called "Coach." | The Boneyard

He is called "Coach."

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He is called "Coach." It is a difficult job, and there is no clear way to succeed in it. One cannot copy another who is a winner, for there seems to be some subtle, secret chemistry of personality that enables a person to lead successfully, and no one really knows what it is.

Those who have succeeded and those who have failed represent all kinds - young and old, inexperienced and experienced, hard and soft, tough and gentle, good-natured and foul-tempered, proud and profane, articulate and inarticulate, even dedicated and casual. Most are dedicated, some more than others. Some are smarter than others, but intelligence is not enough. All want to win, but some want to win more than others, and just wanting to win is not enough in any event. Even winning is not enough. Losers almost always get fired, but winners get fired, too.

He is out in the open being judged publicly almost every day or night for six, seven, or eight months a year by those who may or may not be qualified to judge him. And every victory and every defeat is recorded constantly in print or on the air and periodically totaled up.

The coach has no place to hide. He cannot just let the job go for a while or do a bad job and assume no one will notice as most of us can. He cannot satisfy everyone. Seldom can he even satisfy very many. Rarely can he even satisfy himself. If he wins once, he must win the next time, too.

Coaches plot victories, suffer defeats, and endure criticism from within and without. They neglect their families, travel endlessly, and live alone in a spotlight surrounded by others. Theirs may be the worst profession - unreasonably demanding and insecure and full of unrelenting pressures. Why do they put up with it? Why do they do it?

Having seen them hired and hailed as geniuses at gaudy, party-like press conferences and having seen them fired with pat phrases such as "fool" or "incompetent," I have wondered about them. Having seem exultant in victory and depressed by defeat, I have sympathized with them. Having seem some broken by the job and others die from it, one is moved to admire them and to hope that someday the world will learn to understand them.

- words assembled by Bill Parcells, condensed from the introduction to: "The Coaches." by Bill Libby. 1972.
 
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And we also request that he not pull out pom poms and cheer wildly when his kicker misses another field goal.
 

junglehusky

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For a second there, I thought Spackler had finally figured out how to avoid run-on sentences.
 
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I don't know how you sum up Diaco's first season as a HC other than saying it was very disappointing. The team was largely ill prepared for games and the turnovers were unconscionable. USF, Army, SMU were all winnable games and the coaching as much as the play accounted for those losses. Now he may have chucked this season to assess talent and build for the future, but there's a school just north of us that will go nameless, and their new coach started putting up Ws right away after taking over a train wreck.

Diaco scares the crap out of me. The reason is that I think he believes a lot of his own bull . I think his emotion is very sincere, but I think it gets in the way of some basic cognitive processes. I really hope I'm wrong......really hope so.
 
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I sum up the first season as a colossal rookie mistake. Perhaps others would hold a different philosophy. There is no absolute. But results matter:

Here is a good philosophy, that I agree with, and makes me look at the entire season as a mistake:

"The players deserve a chance to win, and you have an obligatory responsibility to give it to them." - Mickey Corcoran
 

Bonehead

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I don't know how you sum up Diaco's first season as a HC other than saying it was very disappointing. The team was largely ill prepared for games and the turnovers were unconscionable. USF, Army, SMU were all winnable games and the coaching as much as the play accounted for those losses. Now he may have chucked this season to assess talent and build for the future, but there's a school just north of us that will go nameless, and their new coach started putting up Ws right away after taking over a train wreck.

Diaco scares the crap out of me. The reason is that I think he believes a lot of his own bull . I think his emotion is very sincere, but I think it gets in the way of some basic cognitive processes. I really hope I'm wrong.really hope so.

When you say the team was largely ill prepared - you are including coach staff, correct?
Like those final minutes of the Army game as an example...
 

Dooley

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Those who may or may not be qualified to judge him humbly request that he not lose to SMU next year.

...or Army. Or, hell, Villa ' Nova.
 
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FWIW: Delving into the minds of people that have actually coached and peformed at the highest levels, a constant theme develops in coaching and developing a winning team. Randy Edsall one of them.

The most effective key to turning a losing team into a winning team, is not in offense and defense production, that comes with improved player acquisition - turning a loser into a winner reduces down to development of flawless special teams.
 

CL82

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Condensed version:

He is called "Coach." .

tvcoach.jpg
 
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I'd like to point out that no matter how many 'sacrifices' HCBD makes that:
1. He has chosen that profession
2. He is being rewarded handsomely for his efforts
3. He f'ckin lost to USF, Tulane, Army and SMU in the same season. Let that sink in. Greenwich High goes 3-1 against that gauntlet.

Wait and see is all we can do in Year 2.
 
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I'd like to point out that no matter how many 'sacrifices' HCBD makes that:
1. He has chosen that profession
2. He is being rewarded handsomely for his efforts
3. He f'ckin lost to USF, Tulane, Army and SMU in the same season. Let that sink in. Greenwich High goes 3-1 against that gauntlet.

Wait and see is all we can do in Year 2.

I just posted that for some perspective. I've been trying my best to find some sort of level of patience. it's real easy for lots of people to dish out all kinds of crap. Think about it a little broader, the excerpt that comes from is actually a book that crosses all sports. Look at guy like KO. I feel awful that the guy is losing his marriage, but it's the life of a coach. At least he has a championship under his belt. Coach Jackson left football a little over 2 decades ago. Diaco is a young guy with a family, and he's undoubtedly gone through it already.

Coaches are real people too, and they make a lot of money, and if you really read those words and think about it, it's meaningful.

Coach Diaco did a horrible job at putting the players in position to succeed on the field in year 1 as a head coach. I hope he gets better at it.

The easiest way it will happen, is if the guy really starts focusing on the only thing that matters - and that is that his job depends on putting the players in the best position to succeed on the field and narrow down the primary goal as the next game. Last season, the primary goal always seemed to be some publicly unknown point in the future. He's got to demonstrate that he's learned that can't happen anymore.

I'm looking for major improvement in kick and punt returns and coverages next season. The turnaround starts there.
 
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I just posted that for some perspective. I've been trying my best to find some sort of level of patience. it's real easy for lots of people to dish out all kinds of crap. Think about it a little broader, the excerpt that comes from is actually a book that crosses all sports. Look at guy like KO. I feel awful that the guy is losing his marriage, but it's the life of a coach. At least he has a championship under his belt. Coach Jackson left football a little over 2 decades ago. Diaco is a young guy with a family, and he's undoubtedly gone through it already.

Coaches are real people too, and they make a lot of money, and if you really read those words and think about it, it's meaningful.

Coach Diaco did a horrible job at putting the players in position to succeed on the field in year 1 as a head coach. I hope he gets better at it.

The easiest way it will happen, is if the guy really starts focusing on the only thing that matters - and that is that his job depends on putting the players in the best position to succeed on the field and narrow down the primary goal as the next game. Last season, the primary goal always seemed to be some publicly unknown point in the future. He's got to demonstrate that he's learned that can't happen anymore.

I'm looking for major improvement in kick and punt returns and coverages next season. The turnaround starts there.
I'm just looking for a reason to buy a ticket. This program has beaten all the excitement out of me.
 
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I'm just looking for a reason to buy a ticket. This program has beaten all the excitement out of me.

LOL. This is football business in a nutshell. Unfortunately, UCONN football, as a sport in 2015, is much more similar to a professional sports franchise rather than an intercollegiate athletic program when it comes fan following. A losing team isn't going to something people will spend money on. I was in the Civic Center for some recent basketball games, the attendance has been remarkable. There is social equity built up there. Football? Slippery slope when management starts looking at generating fans as decision maker. The bottom line is winning.

Unfortunately for UCONN, the athletic department under Hathaway compeltely gaffed on building the same kind of equity with a fan base through the successes generated by Edsall's program from 2003-2010. A better job from the athletic department from 2005-2010, and we perhaps have weathered this storm of the past 4 seasons better, but it's not the case.

This is why, going into 2015, we are down to a core fan base that consists mostly of UCONN alumni that have direct connections to the football program, or alumni that were fans of the program when it was successful. It's people like us, that will fork over the money, even though we suck big monkey balls and there is nothing really to look forward to except the hope that it will turn around.

The reality is that there are not that many of us. The number of season tickets sold this year will be telling.

The UCONN brand is very strong though, a winning program will bring fans back, and hopefully sustained winnign will give the athletic department the opportunity to build up the equity. I believe that, and will continue to believe it until reality proves me wrong.

For now, season ticket sales for 2015 are going to be very, very bad I think, and actual attendance in the fall? All I can do is hope that as the season progresses, performances on the field will be such that attendance has a reason to grow back to filling Rentschler again. The last sellout other than Michigan I believe, was the final game of the 2010 season against Cincy. UCONN fans had reason to attend that late season game in 2010.

The sight of the stands against SMU in December - is something that I hope that Diaco remembers, as he begins his preparation for the 2015 season.

Winning matters.
 
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I'd like to point out that no matter how many 'sacrifices' HCBD makes that:
1. He has chosen that profession
2. He is being rewarded handsomely for his efforts
3. He f'ckin lost to USF, Tulane, Army and SMU in the same season. Let that sink in. Greenwich High goes 3-1 against that gauntlet.

Wait and see is all we can do in Year 2.

Greenwich's Coach Al "forced out" after seven-win season. Eighteen years averaging nine wins/per. Now, that's tough.
 
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"All want to win, but some want to win more than others, and just wanting to win is not enough in any event. Even winning is not enough. Losers almost always get fired, but winners get fired, too. "

OP. Paragraph 2.
 

CTMike

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To remain relevant in national circles. Nothing worse than irrelevance IMHO
I hate to say it but we are already pretty irrelevant. It's the apathy that really fooks us.
 
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