Virginia Tech football thoughts…

Virginia Tech Football only has ~60 sum odd shopping days remaining until all of you are granted a weekend Liberty pass of sorts.

Personally, I, can’t, wait! I do likes me some hometown Pirate Three Rivers seams, and I loves me an epic boxing match all year round. Ditto some soothing Sunday afternoon touring final round golf –where you have no one left to blame for your slice other than yourself.

I for one however, still get a rise from the smell of freshly cut football field grass each and every year before the given training camp opens for business. There is nothing like it as there is still only one alpha team sport in all of America. It’s a rough business this football; it is a terminal contact business. It is not for the faint of heart, it is not bound by message board easily offended and habitually down-voting wannabe neverwasbeen opinions. It is bone-on-bone in the ultimate crucible of truth this side of the squared-circle. Ergo, I’m going to write a bit harder here, I’m going to roll things back to some of more old-school big east black-n-blue articlilzing days. If you are one of those… the tailgate is more important than the actual game softies? Do yourself -and me- a favor; and stop reading this particular article right now… I’ll gladly see you next time.

#I‘llBeYourBestFriendOrYourWorstEnemy

(To find out the coaching source of that quote, subscribe to TSL.com, pay-side message board)

Though suffice it to say… coach-Fu came in and laid down a hard law. Thing is… Alexander and Gaines happened; and very suddenly that very same steely hard law mettle got thrown into the proverbial: “hottest fire”. Way before you would have normally thought it would have been. So that’s a different animal. As the overall conversion process between Staff’s and culture’s is not that far along in sociological terms. And you have to make a very significant disciplinary tone setting call now; very very early…

And to be direct… given the relative thinness of Stud-De and boundary-Cb? It’s a tough call, too.

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So, someone finally got to talk to their two coaching buddies who attend the Virginia Tech coaching clinic each and every year, and have done so since approximately 1986. One of the two, is the big whistle in both boy’s basketball and football at his school –with two state titles to his credit in hoops; the other one has only won a handful of state championships in football and more games than any coach has ever won at his school, so what do they know?

My first question was the most obvious one of them all: “What’s changed?” Almost before I got the interrogative out, one of the two looked me right in the eye with this epic blast:  “Discipline; big time, too.” Coach-Fu is a lotta things… he is plum smack dab in the midst of his orange and maroon honeymoon period; he currently enjoys a very high -possibly even an apex- Q-score and his offensive acumen is alluring, enticing and downright sexy indeed. Coach-Fu has also never L a game at Virginia Tech. Yes, they did drop a few specific offensive nuggets on me as pure X’s and O’s go. Yes, they have a few schematic takes they picked up on and probably pirated to install on the scholastic ships they respectively rudder. Although their main takeaway hands down over and over and over again was: “discipline.” Which they more than posited had slipped at the end of the former rightful Hall of Fame regime. Again; when I asked how much I caught the very same: “big time.”

Pausing for  a moment here, if you’ve never been to a coaching clinic, let me inform you that there are two things that go on at coaching clinics. A lotta teaching/preaching and hardcore back-n-forth X’s and O’s; and sewing circles. As there is a (bleep) ton of gossip, and tall gridiron tales that elicit textbook so-called “value-calming” statements galore, bandied back-n-forth at each other, all, night, long. In particular if you are out with the given cadre of coaches that night where the libations are not exactly found to be in shortage and the desire to be heard above the masses is always in surplus, sometimes even more excessuve than that. Make no mistake, it is an entertaining thing and your ears will be pumping quite a bit of whispering iron. And the stories that suddenly broke free regarding some of the old intra-Staff rivalries in the 24060 were large and in charge. Nevertheless… …to a man, they were all very big on coach-Fu’s sense of installing some new discipline –in addition to an new offense; and they came away extremely impressed with the head-man and the head coach alike. They were likewise extremely impressed with the new Staffers and they were still pretty dang effusive in their praise of the retained two, in particular when the BUDweisers are on tap at their favorite local watering hole. They even went so far as to more than hint that it was that particular holdover coach who had done his best to bunker, revetment and breastwork, what disciple remained and that he had clashed -and rigorously- with the other staffer who had the same surname. Though make no mistake, they truly beamed, when discussing this new Hokie staff. Very high on coach Vice, coach Corny, and coach Scott. Which almost has me wondering if coach-Fu can retain these guys long-term if they really are all that and a snap? As they we’re most impressed by the make-up of the new staff, with regard to toughness and smarts -the good looking and rich of dating- in pugilistic terms. Additional, they were most impressed by the facilities and the improvements (a 2020 football lockeroom technology wise; today); and the seven full sets of 120 count football helmets which would basically fund 14 full Blackburg High School’s as cutting edge state of the art equipment goes.

When I asked them to tell me something else, something other than all this rah-rah sis boom bah coach-Fu’paloza praise (perhaps something they did not like); one paused and said it may take him a few years to win a championship. I said: “A.c.c.?” He said: “No, national.” I know I know, I thought that to be a little Fu-drunk my ownself. Though that’s how high they were on the new Staff; in particular the new Staff members. As they said Virginia Tech had undergone a major coaching (the active verb) upgrade at Rb Coach and a o-Line coach alike. They were also impressed by some of the newer things over on the defensive side which in good conscience -and in keeping true to my word which has been given- can not be specifically divulged. Though there are new wrinkles in the bow and in the stern of this stop-unit alike. Damn the Tennessee torpedoes, FULL speed ahead!

However, and after several seasons of slippage -that only one, sports writter that I know of called before it happen (thank you coach God praise insert _____ here; check)! However, there is this little nugget…

“Squares don’t’ die round.”
-Cus D’Amato-

So, and accordingly, how do you un-A.c.c. Virginia Tech and put the now round and recently flaccid peg back in the first-school big east formerly uber physical square hole; if you are coach-Fu?

Probably does take cleaning house to bring in new highly clinical shock-treatment physical or heavy hitting oriented culture in full. (Or at least in part; as we did retain Wiles and Bud, which is most curious in so-called: “residue” textbook terms; is it not?) Although to be fair, their play-style hygiene was never recriminated as being: “soft”.

As it is easiest thing of all to go soft in the game of life.
That -quite literally- requires…………….nothing.

However, getting tough all over again can be a real bitch. In particular for the former Staff’s returning refugee players who have known the “kinder gentler” times. Why? Because in all my years of balling and covering the same; the next time I hear a player request more laps, more grass-drills, more punishment; will be the first. I’ve never ever seen that movie before. So the proverbial F5-keystroke, fresh start or even a full orange and maroon CRTL+ALT+DEL pigskin cultural reboot would indeed seem to be in order.

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I myself like to think of this as: “reversing Frank”. Recall, that when Frank came in and kiboshed 3-a-day practices under Bill Dooley, the refugee Bill Dooley players could not believe just how soft Frank was. Yes, along the way Frank figured some of that out and he learnt how to coach tough –just to survive and keep his job after the staffing purge which brought coach Elmo’ and his frothing at the mouth much needed style of lead-pipe hardcore tactics into vogue. Then our environment got a lot tougher in the sometimes great and yet always salty big east football conference  –where the penultimate brand of intensely physical football just short of Big-10 football was still being played. Hell, you had to be tough to take 60 minutes worth of big east top rope dropkicks right in the mouth. Mind you, that was no easy side of the street to work and if you did not work it hard we had a name for that: we called you, Temple.

Nevertheless, somewhere along the way to the always pleasing, though seldom edifying, much less healthy …orange and maroon candy-store, something went soft. Leaving this former entry level A.c.c. lunchroom former big east bully; deflated, and in quest of some sporting Viagra. There, I said it, and folks, go right ahead, you can down-vote this all you flippin’ want …we (finally) got what we wanted and got into the A.c.c. and then we finally got soft –we Templed.

However, that is the problem and to present a problem without marrying the problem to a solution is to do no better than to complain.

So what’s a coach-Fu to do?

Because per the textbook Dunning-Kruger effect: “People don’t know what they don’t know. ” Or in other words the last Staff did not know how far things had begun to slip; right as they began to slip. And by the time they figured put the suddenness of the three to four game slide per season; and the nearly instantaneous or overnight alacrity of the slip itself, Jason in Arlington had pretty much already happened. And that call had pretty much already put them on point with a extrinsic moment of clarity that could have just as well been summarized in response as…

“This ain’t our first rodeo.”
-So said the former Staff at their second, rodeo-

Things had fallen as uncoachable talent went, and likewise the same as coachable toughness goes and they barely got the 23 year bowl streak back up. Although again, and from above, how do you fix that as the “you know it when you see it” subjective and yet highly tangible quality of mental and therefore physical toughness goes?

Or in other words Hokie Nation… …you tell me?

So what’s an inherited toughness fixer-upper like coach-Fu to do?

And happy 240th B-day to my favorite Uncle Sam!!!

 

 

Virginia Tech=hard in the big east, Virginia Tech=softer in the A.c.c.

“LETS GO!”

“Hokies!”

bourbonstreet**

V.A.D.A. approved