I’ve been listening to Coach-speak for a long time. When I heard Curry talk about “a natural progression toward championship football” after a loss, I had already been listening to such BS for 20 years.
So there are words and thoughts that perk your ears when you hear them.
Rule No. 1 of Coach Speak: never over-sell your possibilities pre-season.
This rule is simple common sense: Rocky Felker in the mid-eighties was briefly the HC at MSU, and at SEC media days voted for State to win the conference, admitting he had done so in humorous interviews. He was fired at the end of that season when State came up about 6 wins shy of the professed goal.
Hence, Coaches like to talk about “the process.”
Schnellenberger announced a “Five-Year Plan,” his first year at U of L, drawing some laughter from the coaching fraternity . . . but others admitted they wished they had come up with it.
And this preseason, there are some hints that hopes and expectations are high: Coach Wolford led off a response with “We are getting ready for a big season, here . . . .”
Multiple Coaches have made the same remark about many players at various positions: “This is very important to him/them.”
The little, sometimes unnoticed words, seem to point to
hope/expectation of something special.
I might be reading too much into it, but it all beats the Hell out of . . . “In Five years, we’ll be hard to handle!”
So there are words and thoughts that perk your ears when you hear them.
Rule No. 1 of Coach Speak: never over-sell your possibilities pre-season.
This rule is simple common sense: Rocky Felker in the mid-eighties was briefly the HC at MSU, and at SEC media days voted for State to win the conference, admitting he had done so in humorous interviews. He was fired at the end of that season when State came up about 6 wins shy of the professed goal.
Hence, Coaches like to talk about “the process.”
Schnellenberger announced a “Five-Year Plan,” his first year at U of L, drawing some laughter from the coaching fraternity . . . but others admitted they wished they had come up with it.
And this preseason, there are some hints that hopes and expectations are high: Coach Wolford led off a response with “We are getting ready for a big season, here . . . .”
Multiple Coaches have made the same remark about many players at various positions: “This is very important to him/them.”
The little, sometimes unnoticed words, seem to point to
hope/expectation of something special.
I might be reading too much into it, but it all beats the Hell out of . . . “In Five years, we’ll be hard to handle!”
