One of my many sports pet peeves is when people talk about a team's coach. For the most part, I feel like the coach has very little to do with the failure or success of their team....again, for the most part. Granted, this depends on the sport of course - football probably being the most important. Even so, the coach doesn't miss a tackle, jump off-sides, fumble, shank a 25 yard field goal, grab a facemask, or drop a pass. If your players are simply not on the same level as your opponent then what chance do you have? A college football coach essentially needs to do three things:
1. Recruit good players
2. Get their players prepared for game situations during pracice
3. Make in-game adjustments
I can't decide whether Rich Rod deserves to return for a 4th year. I mean, how much of Michigan's failures lie with their coaching and how much lies with their lack of talent? How do you determine if a player missing a tackle is a skill issue or a coaching issue? If a freshman misses a tackle is it ok, but if a senior misses a tackle then it's on the coach? Don't know. Our high school baseball coach would always say that he could accept a physical mistake, like striking out or booting a grounder, but what would really make his forehead vein explode were the mental mistakes, like throwing to the wrong base or not knowing how many outs there were. One of the more useful things we would do in practice was not taking batting practice (obviously necessary though) but was responding to real game scenarios set up by our coaching staff and having to respond to those situations. 'Ok, runners on first and third, one out, coach hits a double in the gap, what are you gonna do?' Knowing how to respond prior to the hit elevated our teams' ability. This, I believe, is where we can most easily separate the good coaches from bad coaches. Good teams, especially in college football, DO NOT BEAT THEMSELVES! Now again, you could make the argument that good players are less likely to make mental errors, and I suppose that's true to a certain level. I'm not sure how to judge that.
But in college football especially it seems like the outcome of the majority of games are based on who makes less mistakes, not who makes more great plays. Take teams like Iowa and Wisconsin. No top 10 recruiting classes recently, yet they're consistently competitive. How is that possible? We all remember and talk about the great one-handed catch, or the 30 yard gain that should've been a 5 yard loss. However, the plays that are not on the sportscenter highlights are often the plays that determine the outcome. And it's these plays that have virtually nothing to do with talent level and, in my opinion, more to do with coaching. Is a drive kept alive by a bonehead penalty, like when a player running full speed towards the sideline instead of pulling up prior to hitting the opponent running out of bounds decides to lay into him for a 15 yard penaly? This is not a matter of skill-level, it's a matter of coaching. Has the coach driven home that exact play and prepared their players for it or not. Is a drive ended by a a dropped pass? (I know, I said earlier that a coach never drops a pass, but it's my opinion that dropped passes are a game preparation issue at least as much as a talent issue. You don't need to be a 5-star recruit to catch an open pass) Is there a fumbled snap?
Take the Michigan-OSU game today. I'm definitely not saying UM should've or even could've won the game, but if we simply take away the mental mistakes then who knows how the game plays out. At least it would've been competitive longer. Coaching can't improve a player's speed or his height, but it can improve a player's football IQ - and right now Michigan's football IQ is as low as the Ohio State student body's regular IQ. Not good. A player's desire is another tough one to nail down. The coaching may be able to add to this, but I think that's almost all on the individual. The game got out of hand and then it didn't really matter. But I thought the first quarter was pretty darn telling of a team that when momentarily matched a superior team play for play, they couldn't capitalize b/c of mental mistakes. Focusing on the little things in practice matters. Yes, you can run the same play over and over until it looks just the right way, but if you neglect the little things then it's moot.
The ultimate way, in my opinoin to judge the ability of a coach is if they make games competitive that otherwise shouldn't be. The current Michigan team does not do this. The teams that are supposed to beat them, beat them with relative ease. Jim Harbaugh's Standord teams, prior to becoming nationally ranked and prior to inching closer in talent level to their conference counterparts would on occasion battle as underdogs and occasionally win; you do that by not beating yourself.
Ok, good talk. See ya out there.
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