Recall, did we not just hear this very some “set the tone” pre-spring practice edict from coach Beamer this very same time, just one year ago?
A TSL reader wrote me a week or three ago, and quite sagely (and correctly) pointed out to me that Virginia Tech did not get mentally and therefore physically soft overnight. Nor did Virginia Tech get all fundamentally sloppy all at once either.
None of this occurred all in one game folks, or all in one spring practice or August camp, or even all in a foul vacuum of single season of mental retreat. This gridiron sporting diminishement gradually, and gradually is the operative word here people; that some would have me posit or substitute as actually hidden or well cloaked- this gridiron sporting diminishement set in *gradually* over the course of a 3-4 season span.
Think about it for a moment everyone, as you’ve still got kids in the program who were part of this softening up and slopping around affair. And it will take them the most amount of reps to successfully recondition themselves into their former loaded for bear black-n-blue imported Big East pigskin sporting mentally in the habitually mentally and physically soft confines of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
On the other O&M hand, the new(er) kids will (hopefully) never need any measure of severity as the classical Pavlov model of conditioning or re-conditioning goes in Bull-in-the-Ring or Oklahoma Drill terms.
As heretofore any hard-hitting, fundamentally sound, Virginia Tech football mantra should be their practice-field and therefore game-day life blood from day one until day none.
Or in other words …people (or players) typically get away with precisely and exactly ever how much as they are allowed to get away with; such is the inherit nature of the Human beast.
***
Now observe that we are officially just entering into year#2 of this 3-4 year softening now turned re-conditioning or mental clean-up process. Is this a pure proportional or one to one classical textbook re-conditioning relationship? Can you re-toughen a football team back up under the very same regime that allowed the softening to take place?
Can you do this in less time than it took to soften that formally very tough football team up in the first place??? You do the maths…
Loading ...Years of softening=3 to 4, years of toughing back up=2 or more
“LETS GO!”
“Hokies!”
bourbonstreet**
Are bowl games and season openers going to be taken seriously? Seeing the team show up unprepared to win a bowl game again is unacceptable. The reward isn’t supposed to be a day at the beech. It’s supposed to be winning.
More seriously? yes. The Vacation/Rewards mentality has ended by 2-3 bowls.
Methinks the Bowls actually really unmask how sorry A.c.c. football is in physicality terms. We/VT get used to being the littlest bully on the Atlantic Coast block. Kinda pushing around the other 1st-3rd graders. Until a high school bully turns up and that (mostly) ends badly for us.
b.street