KUDOS to the N.H. Register...

[coachcap]

I'm sitting at work & had a chance to check out the Register over my morning coffee. Today it went overboard. Great article on T.J. Weist with input from Bill Curry & Butch Jones. Listing of current recruits with a short blurb on how they're doing in the current season. Then an article by Jim Fuller on how the recruits are dealing with the UConn coaching change. Nicely done!

 

[ShakyTheMohel]

Bill Curry spoke at my company a month ago. I have to admit he was pretty impressive. He is a good mentor for Weist to have.

 

[sportsart]

Recruits dealing with coaching change article.

http://www.nhregister.com/sports/20131005/uconn-football-recruits-dealing-with-coaching-change

 

[huskymedic]

I'm sitting at work & had a chance to check out the Register over my morning coffee. Today it went overboard. Great article on T.J. Weist with input from Bill Curry & Butch Jones. Listing of current recruits with a short blurb on how they're doing in the current season. Then an article by Jim Fuller on how the recruits are dealing with the UConn coaching change. Nicely done!

Fuller has done a great job replacing Malafronte in this regard. This is on top of his UConn Women and HS Football responsibilities. They even had them out on Twitter late last night.

 

[Dooley]

Good reads indeed.

 

[Carl Spackler]

Curry has one of the best football stories I've ever heard somebody tell. Great guy, great football guy. He reported as a young center to Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers training camp. He said that Vince sat him down, one on one, in a classroom with a blackboard and spent the next several hours of the day, breaking down the famous Lombardi Sweep running play for him, and pointing out every single detail that he - the center - was responsible for. He then went to his first day of camp, and Lombardi put all of his new offensive linemen through a pit drill with linebacker Ray Nitschke. If Nitschke approved of the OL, Lombardi kept him, if not, they were cut. The new OL's didn't know this of course.

Curry had come out of Boddy Dodd's Georgia Tech program, and was a solid, clean, smart and disciplined football player. He lined up with Nitschke, and Nitschke started kicking the tar out him. Over and over. He got kicked, grapped, punched - beaten up. Curry, reached the point where he didn't want to take it anymore. THey lined up one more time. Instead of taking a good position with his hands, head and shoulders, he squared up with Nitschke, let him get in close, got low, put his face mask into Nitschkes' numbers, got his feet under him, and lifted the crown of his helmet up as hard as he could right into Nitschke's chin. THe drill ended (Nitscke didn't go down) with the both standing, and Nitschke walked off straight to Lombardi, and said - this one stays.....he just broke my jaw. Nitschke played with his jaw wired shut for most of that season.

It was at that moment, that Curry realized that you got to be able to stand up for yourself, and fight, at the highest levels of this game. Lombardi's teaching in that classroom that one day, was so detailed and done well, that to this day, he can break down that single play to every single detail of every player's body position on the field.

 

[warbler1055]

Bill Curry of course, became of of the greatest OL of the NFL.!!!! What a story, Carl.

 

[Carl Spackler]

Bill Curry of course, became of of the greatest OL of the NFL.!!!! What a story, Carl.

It's all true. Curry was a very good player and IMO a hall of famer at the Center position. He did benefit greatly from having to go up against two of the most ferocious competitors at the inside linebacker positions in practice each week for most of his career in Ray Nitschke with Green Bay, and then Mike Curtis in Baltimore. He'll tell you straight up that his easiest days in the NFL - were on Sundays. He's got to be in his late 60s or 70s by now, and I don't know if he's still coaching or not, but if not mistaken, he was the head coach at Georgia State recently, at the same time that one Susan Herbst was a head honcho in that neck of the woods.