Article in the post this morning

[Duff Man]

Stanford also recruits players better suited for development (athletic and tall). That has to start happening here. Taking a bunch of undersized players with "football speed" is not working.

 

[Buffs@5345']

Your quote shows you're missing a key HCMM concept: Make full use of your practice time by having double and even triple the reps per player during practice! No more of 6-8 guys standing around for long periods of time watching only the starters get reps. "Extra time" is not allowed by NCAA rules, but well-organized, well-run practices are. Also, the players are coached to practice "fast" all the time, so the no-huddle and response to it, becomes second nature, unlike that disasterous experiment of Water Bottle's during last August's drills.

As for your "scary part', go read the articles about how Stanford turned it around. Its based on player buy-in. If you have smart, well-coached players you get more competitive, which translates into more wins. CU's players haven't been well coached as college FB players for the last couple of years. I'm just looking to hear that opponents no longer laugh at CU during warm-ups and the team doesn't give up upon leaving the bus, ala Fresno St.

I reread my original and I guess I was pretty unclear. I am in favor of what HCMM is doing and, as I understand it, I am a big proponent of his philosophy. Were it not for the past decade I would be gulping it down in the full variety of Kool-Aid flavors. History being what it is, I do have skepticism and a show-me attitude - but I do like what I am hearing if they can convert it into wins on the field.


As for the specifics: 'extra time' was meant to reflect the time they assign to specific topics within their allocated practice time. By being more efficient and generating those additional reps they in effect do create 'extra time', but it does fall within the allowed practice window. For S&C - they are not spending as much of the available time focusing on increasing max weight reps, that time is spent with less weight, refining technique. Once the technique is 'burned' into muscle memory they can move forward on increasing weight and eventually the results exceed those that would have been attained if improper technique was used. Result oriented individuals will be prone to become impatient in that initial period, but if they can be coached into patience the rewards will come. I am a huge fan of the practice 'fast' - that will in effect slow the game down between snaps -and as I said prevent drive killing procedure penalties. Clearly anything that can address those penalties, general mistakes, and games lost to injury will help us.

Scary Part - my concern is not about player buy in - it is that what I believe to be a sound philosophy will be scrapped by a contingent of fans and alumni who want to prove Mike Bohn wrong, long after he is gone, and get 'revenge' for the Embree short leash. I completely agree with your statement, but no matter how bought in the players are, building up from fundamentals with relatively less talent may still not translate into immediate wins. No matter how sound the philosophy, if they drop a couple of the early should-wins (and I use 'should' loosely) they are going to be left with the long stretch of likely losses to conference opponents and be staring at a 2 win season. If that is the case HCMM may lose player and alumni buy-in, before all the effort to create second nature behavior show results. I guess at this point when I hear all the ‘right’ things that I want to hear I question if it is too good to be true for this program. Previous coaches have talked about RTD, building a new history and breaking with the past, and returning to the values and traditions that brought us success in the past, each in their turn. All have promised results down the road, and two of the three even sounded good at the time. They all ultimately failed, that is the scary part. No two years to see if this plan is any better, and nothing we as fans can do about it if it isn’t.


I am confident. I get the concepts from HCMM that I have read or heard. I like them, I really do. I love the FFFF message. For college athletes or working professionals having a singular vision from which your philosophy is built, and back to which all your messages can be tied is worth GOLD. That message has to stay consistent though - if (and I don't believe it will be) it is scrapped for something different each time HCMM reads a new book we are in trouble.

It is the idea that this may or may not work that will make it so much better if it does in the end, but still remains scary as hell until the fall.