Something about the whole Arkansas football situation doesn't sit right. Okay, Bobby Petrino messed up, got fired, end of story. But nope, the A.D. then goes out and hires John L. Smith away from Weber State, a school Smith had only been at for four months. What about the kids and coaching staff he just left behind? He just got done with spring practice. Far be it from me to be judgmental, I've made my share of mistakes, but it leaves me uncomfortable with the Weber State situation.
Tony Kornhiser and Mike Wilbon debated it on ESPN's Pardon The Interruption (I really enjoy that show) nd Kornhiser said it was a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity for Smith. Wilbon argued that it smacked of selfishness and the college coaching profession is questionable at times. I tend to side with Wilbon although I realize a guy needs to take advantage of presented opportunities.But was this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Smith was the head coach at Louisville, a DI program that could be called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Then he got the Michigan State job in the Big Ten, certainly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most football coaches. And then to really make things questionable, he's only keeping the Arkansas job for one year? He’s doing all this for a one year job and is leaving his Weber State alma mater high and dry?
And what of the Arkansas A.D.? Is Arkansas football so big and important that you gotta have a big name interim coach? There was no assistant qualified to be the interim head coach? There are a lot of outstanding young assistant coaches out there who will be the next wave of talented football coaches. Big name does not always equal big results or vice versa. And this is the same A.D. that lured Petrino away from the Falcons a few years ago before the season was over. That didn't seem right either. Now, here's the same A.D. luring Smith away from Weber State after just four months.Perhaps I'm being too hard on Arkansas. Maybe this is how it should be, but I hope not.www.chiefpigskin.com
Friday, April 27, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
My First Campout
When we weren't playing football, baseball, Army, or just riding our bikes around, we were off in the woods exploring. We had what we called the "little woods" and the "big woods”. Now, the little woods were just a little stand of trees just behind a small field at the edge of our subdivision. Of course, they seemed bigger to a seven-year-old. Beyond the little woods was another small field and then behind that were the big woods. When we walked into those woods the path was narrow and dark. These were woods that made us feel like Daniel Boone when we went exploring. It was like hiking in the Appalachians to us.
My buddies and I had been itching to head out to the big woods one night for an overnight campout but all of our parents insisted we have an adult with us. Well, somehow we talk my dad into volunteering. My aunt and uncle were living with us at the time and my uncle Dave volunteered to go also. At the time dad was about 30 years old and uncle Dave about 24. You have to know my uncle Dave. He was a pure all round athlete, loved all sports, and would try anything. He was a joker, boaster, and just plain fun loving. I really thought he was cool. The details of this campout are sketchy, but here is how I remember the highlights. (It was, after all, 53 years ago).
We tramped into the big woods around 6 PM. I was anxious to show my dad where my buddies and I hiked. After about ten minutes we came to a little clearing on a sloping hill that had an old fire pit dug out in the middle. Perfect campsite. All we brought to sleep on was one blanket and pillow. Dad and uncle Dave brought the food. The idea was to lay on one half of the blanket and cover with the other half. Everyone picked their spot to sleep and then we all gathered wood. No tent, no sleeping bag. We were men! We got a fire going a little and as I looked at our fire pit I saw my dad squirting lighter fluid on it and pretending to be peeing on the fire! All my buddies roared with laughter but I was a little embarrassed. Come on, dad! After roasting some hotdogs we settled into our blankets on the hard ground. Isn't it something how you can sleep anywhere on any surface when you're a kid? As soon as it got dark and things were winding down a blood curdling cry echoed from the woods. OCK’aWA’ka ! OCK’aWA’ka ! It scared the daylights out of us all. Two minutes later appearing out of the darkness and into our camp like a ghost walks my uncle Dave with a big smile. "I shore scared you guys, huh? Heh, heh, heh”. Yeah, he did.
That morning I peeked my head out of my blanket and saw about 10 bodies wrapped up like mummies. We had all gotten so cold we just wrapped ourselves up. Pillows were scattered everywhere and no one was even using their pillow. But you know what? It was fun back then. I don’t think I’d find sleeping on the hard ground on a cold night with just one thin blanket much fun now. But when you’re seven or eight years old, what an adventure! As we came out of the woods that morning I envisioned old Dan’l Boone himself coming home to his wife Rebecca after a six month outing. Life couldn’t be much better.
Chiefpigskin.com
My buddies and I had been itching to head out to the big woods one night for an overnight campout but all of our parents insisted we have an adult with us. Well, somehow we talk my dad into volunteering. My aunt and uncle were living with us at the time and my uncle Dave volunteered to go also. At the time dad was about 30 years old and uncle Dave about 24. You have to know my uncle Dave. He was a pure all round athlete, loved all sports, and would try anything. He was a joker, boaster, and just plain fun loving. I really thought he was cool. The details of this campout are sketchy, but here is how I remember the highlights. (It was, after all, 53 years ago).
We tramped into the big woods around 6 PM. I was anxious to show my dad where my buddies and I hiked. After about ten minutes we came to a little clearing on a sloping hill that had an old fire pit dug out in the middle. Perfect campsite. All we brought to sleep on was one blanket and pillow. Dad and uncle Dave brought the food. The idea was to lay on one half of the blanket and cover with the other half. Everyone picked their spot to sleep and then we all gathered wood. No tent, no sleeping bag. We were men! We got a fire going a little and as I looked at our fire pit I saw my dad squirting lighter fluid on it and pretending to be peeing on the fire! All my buddies roared with laughter but I was a little embarrassed. Come on, dad! After roasting some hotdogs we settled into our blankets on the hard ground. Isn't it something how you can sleep anywhere on any surface when you're a kid? As soon as it got dark and things were winding down a blood curdling cry echoed from the woods. OCK’aWA’ka ! OCK’aWA’ka ! It scared the daylights out of us all. Two minutes later appearing out of the darkness and into our camp like a ghost walks my uncle Dave with a big smile. "I shore scared you guys, huh? Heh, heh, heh”. Yeah, he did.
That morning I peeked my head out of my blanket and saw about 10 bodies wrapped up like mummies. We had all gotten so cold we just wrapped ourselves up. Pillows were scattered everywhere and no one was even using their pillow. But you know what? It was fun back then. I don’t think I’d find sleeping on the hard ground on a cold night with just one thin blanket much fun now. But when you’re seven or eight years old, what an adventure! As we came out of the woods that morning I envisioned old Dan’l Boone himself coming home to his wife Rebecca after a six month outing. Life couldn’t be much better.
Chiefpigskin.com
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Oxford Professor Defends Resurrection
As husbands and fathers we are called to teach our families in all matters and to teach the truth. I ran across a little article that I thought was worth passing along. It seemed appropriate at this Easter season. It may help some of you to teach and defend the main truth of the New Testament. That is, Christ’s resurrection.
In April 2002, the well respected Oxford University philosopher professor Richard Swineburne used a broadly accepted probability theory to defend the truth of Christ’s resurrection. He did this at a high profile gathering of philosophy professors at Yale University.
In a New York Times interview, Swineburne said, “For someone dead to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable. But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because He makes them operate.” Swineburne used Bayes Theorum to assign values to things like the probability that God is real, Jesus behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after his death. Then he plugged the numbers into a probability formula and added everything up. The result: a 97% probability that the resurrection really happened. (Preachingtoday.com, Group Magazine, July 2002)
Interesting, isn’t it?
Chiefpigskin
In April 2002, the well respected Oxford University philosopher professor Richard Swineburne used a broadly accepted probability theory to defend the truth of Christ’s resurrection. He did this at a high profile gathering of philosophy professors at Yale University.
In a New York Times interview, Swineburne said, “For someone dead to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable. But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because He makes them operate.” Swineburne used Bayes Theorum to assign values to things like the probability that God is real, Jesus behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after his death. Then he plugged the numbers into a probability formula and added everything up. The result: a 97% probability that the resurrection really happened. (Preachingtoday.com, Group Magazine, July 2002)
Interesting, isn’t it?
Chiefpigskin
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Playing Hard
I heard a college coach the other day talking about his first spring ball scrimmage. He told his players that the only thing he would be evaluating is how hard they play. Not how well they knew their plays, or how correctly they lined up, or even how well they executed, but only how hard they play. That just shows the importance of getting your guys to play hard. But what does that really mean? Does it mean playing hard 75% of the time? 100% of the time? Or getting most of your guys playing hard all of the time? Of course, that would be the goal,100% of your players 100% of the time.
So it just got me thinking about this subject (it seems like I do that a lot), just thinking about things. I started thinking about the overall goal of playing hard. In my mind that would be when all eleven guys are playing hard on every play of the game. Let's say your team has seventy five plays in a game, half on offense and half on defense. Of those seventy five plays you evaluate how many times in that game you actually got all eleven guys playing as hard as they can. Now I realize that could be very hard to measure. It would have to be subjective as you watched the game tape. But let's say after watching the tape you determined that of the seventy five plays, you found that there were ten plays that all eleven of your players played as hard as they can. How good is that? Maybe just getting eight or nine to play hard every play is pretty good, I’m not sure. Then, those three guys that kind of “took the last play off” played like crazy the next play, but two or three guys that played hard the last play took this next play off. There were also ten plays that ten out of your eleven players played as hard as they can. Or, let's say you had five plays in a row that only six or seven guys played as hard as they can. What is actually realistic? So I guess what I'm asking is what would be a realistic goal to determine how hard our team is playing and how many of you out there actually put a number on that? Heck, high school coaches can only watch so many hours of film, we have a full load of classes to teach. When I was coaching I never really sat down and evaluated this number. So, I would be curious as to what the norm is out there. Have any of you ever evaluated this number and determined how it can be quantified?
There are tons of great resources on www.chiefpigskin.com but I don’t recall anything on this subject area. Perhaps some of you can share your ideas here or on Chiefpigskin. Anyway, I’ll just keep sitting around thinking about things and in particular football. That’s what I love anyway!
So it just got me thinking about this subject (it seems like I do that a lot), just thinking about things. I started thinking about the overall goal of playing hard. In my mind that would be when all eleven guys are playing hard on every play of the game. Let's say your team has seventy five plays in a game, half on offense and half on defense. Of those seventy five plays you evaluate how many times in that game you actually got all eleven guys playing as hard as they can. Now I realize that could be very hard to measure. It would have to be subjective as you watched the game tape. But let's say after watching the tape you determined that of the seventy five plays, you found that there were ten plays that all eleven of your players played as hard as they can. How good is that? Maybe just getting eight or nine to play hard every play is pretty good, I’m not sure. Then, those three guys that kind of “took the last play off” played like crazy the next play, but two or three guys that played hard the last play took this next play off. There were also ten plays that ten out of your eleven players played as hard as they can. Or, let's say you had five plays in a row that only six or seven guys played as hard as they can. What is actually realistic? So I guess what I'm asking is what would be a realistic goal to determine how hard our team is playing and how many of you out there actually put a number on that? Heck, high school coaches can only watch so many hours of film, we have a full load of classes to teach. When I was coaching I never really sat down and evaluated this number. So, I would be curious as to what the norm is out there. Have any of you ever evaluated this number and determined how it can be quantified?
There are tons of great resources on www.chiefpigskin.com but I don’t recall anything on this subject area. Perhaps some of you can share your ideas here or on Chiefpigskin. Anyway, I’ll just keep sitting around thinking about things and in particular football. That’s what I love anyway!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)