Message to Bret Bielema, “Don’t Whine … Deal With It”

By Posted on: June 19th, 2013 in Football 8 Comments »

In case you haven’t noticed, there has been an increasing          Bret+Bielema+z-u30ZUSz7nm      
number  of calls from some college football coaches to
slow down or neutralize the fast paced offenses played at
places like Oregon, Texas A&M, and Auburn University.

The latest to add his voice to the debate is Arkansas’s
new coach, Bret Bielema. While not the first coach to air his complaints, his voice may carry more weight than  some of the others.

The fact that he has taken his position is of more significance than when others have complained. You see Bielema is on the NCAA’s Playing Rules Committee. This week he submitted a proposal to change the rules to give the defense 15-second substitution periods after each first down – even if the offense doesn’t substitute.

The Ex-Big 10 coach wants to slow down the hurry up offenses ostensibly to make it a safer game for the defensive lineman.

But there is no evidence to support his position that hurry up schemes result in more injuries to defensive players. Besides the offensive lineman are on the field just as long as the defense. Since they don’t substitute in and out, the only thing that can be surmised from his proposal is he wants to take away the competitive advantage of teams that run a HUNH (no huddle -hurry up) offense.

The HUNH offense is the biggest nightmare for opposing coaches to deal with since the wishbone was used so effectively by Texas, Alabama, Auburn, Oklahoma and others during the 70′s and 80′s.

One can only imagine the headaches it causes for a defensive coordinator. The HUNH offense not only makes it hard to substitute fresh players, it makes it difficult for defenses to huddle between plays; both of which throws the defense off balance. After awhile as the offense keeps showing different formations, the defense not only gets physically worn out but also becomes mentally fatigued. In short, the faster the snap, the more the offense can foul up the opposing defense.

However the answer is not in changing the rules. The answer is in making sure your defenders are better conditioned. The teams that run a fast paced attack spend a lot of time making sure their guys are conditioned for the 80+ plays they run per game.

So teams they face can neutralize the HUNH’s advantage by doing a couple of things. First, make sure their defense is conditioned to stay on the field for longer periods of time. Second, stop the HUNH on third down, get them off the field and then let your offense control the clock. The HUNH offense can’t do any harm if they are not on the field.

Besides, one of the best things about the game of football is the battle of wits between what advantages the offensive coordinators try to take against opposing defense verses the strategy of the defensive coordinator’s to neutralize those advantages.

What might be a better strategy for Bielema is to stop whining about the fast paced offenses and deal with it. Work to come up with a way to defend it without asking for a change in the rules.

That’s what coaches did in the past when the wishbone craze was sweeping the college football world or when Steve Spurrier was using his “fun and gun passing game” at Florida to dominate the SEC.

If a coach comes up with a way to run an offense that is hard to defend – good coaches find a way to defend it. Always have and always will.

To Know Where You Are Going You Have To Know Where You Have Been

By Posted on: June 18th, 2013 in Featured Article, Football, Memories 5 Comments »
Jordan-Hare Players Entrance

December 2, 1989 as former Coach Pat Dye put it,  “It’s going to be the most emotional day in Auburn history.” It was the first time Alabama played a football game in Jordon Hare Stadium and it was just that, emotional!

Once the series was resumed in 1948 after a 41 year break all the games were played in Legion Field in Birmingham. Both the AU and UA stadiums were not the cathedrals they are today it made sense at that time to use the much larger venue in Birmingham. The problem with that for AU was that it was a de-facto home game for Bama. They played 3 to 4 games a year there and it was only an hour from campus. Morris Savage, a former player and trustee said the field was “as neutral as the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.”

Bear Bryant was not willing to give up any competitive advantage he held and Bama dug in. Even after he retired, coach Ray Perkins said, “Alabama will never play in Auburn.” He even said he would support dropping the series before played on the Plains.

The pieces of the puzzle on how to get the game on campus started falling into place when Auburn hired Wyoming coach Pat Dye in 1981. He met with Bryant and the first words out of Bears mouth was, “I guess you’re going to want to move the game”, to which Dye said, We’re going to move the game.”  Bryant responded, “Well not as long as I’m coaching” Well, you ain’t going to coach forever, “ said Dye. Bear replied with, “Well, we’ve got a contract through ’88 to which Dye said, “We’ll play ’89 in Auburn. Little did either of them really know that he was dead on.

Alabama came into the game at 10-0 and aiming for a Natty after ruining the first game on the plains but things did not quite go as planned. Dye said, “We had a better football team than Alabama, they just didn’t know it.”

Over 20,000 Auburn fans lined Donahue Drive, fullback James Joseph was hyperventilating in the locker room afterwards, and now sideline reporter Quentin Riggins said, “That was the most electric, emotional Tiger Walk I’ve ever been a part of.” The AU faithful surrounded the Bama buses and rocked them so much, Curry had them pull inside the fence to off load the Bama players.

I will not go into the fine details of the game itself because everyone now knows Auburn won the game 30-20, and sent Bill Curry off to Kentucky. Stacy Danley ran for 130 yards and the AU defense held Bamas star running back Siran Stacey to only 53 yards rushing.

Then Athletic Director, David Housel put it all into perspective when he said, “Like the children of Israel entering the Promised Land, Auburn fans felt they had completed a journey they’d never imagined they would make, to Auburn to see the Alabama game. The children of Israel waited 40 years, Auburn fans had waited longer.”

Stop me if you have heard this one

An Alabama fan walks into the doctor’s office one day with a hat on.  He takes off his hat, and the doctor sees that there is a big frog sitting right on top of his head.  The doctor looks at the man and asks him why he has a frog sitting on his head.  It was the frog who replied “Actually doc, I was the one who wanted to see you. Can you remove this wart off my butt?”

Is Auburn Turning the Corner?

By Posted on: June 17th, 2013 in Baseball, Other Sports 4 Comments »

sunny gollowayThe hiring of a softball and baseball coach hardly signifies the return of a once great athletic program. But there’s little doubt that last Friday’s announcements sent a loud and clear message to the rest of the SEC.

Athletic Director Jay Jacobs’s job will not be saved based on the results of spring sports. Like every other person in his position, his future will be determined by what happens on fall Saturdays.

Still, it takes nothing away from the magnitude of the hires Jacobs made in both sports. While more attention was given to the hiring of Oklahoma baseball coach Sunny Golloway, the real statement was made when Clint Myers was pulled from Arizona St. to lead the softball team.

He’s arguably the top coach in the game. He’s won two national titles in the past six years and left a program that’s expected to be a preseason top five team next year. Despite the pedigree, his success is far from guaranteed.

He’ll be expected to compete against an Alabama squad that’s become a perennial power, claiming the national title last year. Within the state, both South Alabama and Jacksonville St. qualified for regional births this year.

There can be no argument now that Jacobs didn’t go out and hire the best coach available; he deserves a lot of credit.

Maybe the group brought in to evaluate the athletic program earlier this year is paying off. I say Auburn should hire them  back every year. Jacobs has always preached that he intends on hiring the best coaches available; for the first time it wasn’t just talk.

Pulling Golloway out of Norman was a bigger headline and no less impressive. It’s not every day that Auburn goes out and hires a name coach from a traditional sports powerhouse. In fact, in my lifetime I can’t remember it happening.

It will be shocking if Golloway fails. In 15 years as a head coach, he’s led his teams to 14 NCAA Regional appearances. This year’s Oklahoma team won the Big 12 Tournament and advanced to a Super Regional for the second straight year.

Golloway’s teams have won 40 or more games in each of the past four seasons. He also led Oral Roberts to Regional appearances in his six seasons there as coach.

Jacobs knows Auburn must compete in more than just football and men’s basketball. Across the state Alabama claimed four national titles last year (football, softball, gymnastics, women’s golf) and have added another in 2013 (men’s golf).

The Auburn program has yet to turn the corner, but after the events of Friday, they can clearly see it now. Give Jay Jacobs credit. He could have easily become defensive and shut down. Instead, he’s chosen to up his game.

It’s all any of us can ask.

Consecrated Ground

By Posted on: June 16th, 2013 in Featured Article 3 Comments »

Photo courtesy of farm9.staticflickr.com/8014/7497321358_99429108b4_z.jpg

The echo of a low and constant rumble comes to us from the far horizon. Is it difficult to determine if it is a summer thunderstorm or a ghostly cannonade. Dimly heard on the wind is the mournful mutter of a far off battlefield. Spectral voices call back to us from a century and a half ago, hollow and distant.

On a sunny July day.

Two former colleagues, now opposing generals, meet when one is captured. The man in blue greets the other in grey,

“Good morning, Archer! How are you? I am glad to see you!”

To which the man in grey replies,

“Well, I am not glad to see you by a damn sight!”

His misgivings are well founded. The Confederate officer will languish for many months in a POW camp, costing him his health and eventually his life soon after being exchanged late in the war. A day later the Union officer will be relieved of command to his enduring shame. His relief is despite starting the first day of the battle as a division commander and finishing it commanding a full corps in a desperate situation. His timely actions likely saved the Union Army from defeat, but his commander is unimpressed and annoyed by the timing of his retreat. The general’s fear at the time is that his legacy would be that of an incompetent and dilatory leader and no credit will be given for his valuable service.

His fears are unfounded as he is destined to be remembered for neither. Instead, he will enter American myth as the supposed inventor of the national pastime of baseball.

A day and a night follow.

A soft spoken Abbeville Alabama lawyer standing on the lower slopes of a steep rocky hill  witnesses his brother fall mortally wounded beside him. He hoarsely shouts the same word he has shouted five previous times in the last thirty minutes; “Charge!”  Unbelievably, the boys from South Alabama follow him once more up that bullet-swept slope, past their fallen comrades from the previous fruitless attempts. Men from the small towns of Loachapoka and Auburn, urged forward by their own officers, follow on his extreme left.

A professor of rhetoric from a small rural northern college standing wearily on the hillside above the lawyer gives his own command in a fatigued shout, “Fix Bayonets!” His boys from Maine along with two of his brothers follow his command too. In the next fifteen minutes, he will earn his nation’s highest honor for valor.

A night and another day follow.

“Up men, and to your posts,…” says an immaculately dressed dandy who was the ‘goat’ of his West Point class. His perfumed ringlets drip with sweat in the summer heat as he raises his voice, “Remember today that you fight for old Virginia!”

“Steady, men,”
says a mounted officer in blue as he rides slowly along a three foot wall. Shells burst and round shot ricochets off the top of the stonework, spraying the huddled ranks behind it with rock chips. Answering another officer who begs him to take cover he states calmly, “No. There are times when a Corps commander’s life does not count.”

Half a mile away, under white oak and hickory trees along a small intermittent stream bed, his lifelong friend steps out from under the shade and into the blazing July sunlight. He and 13,000 other men begin to cross a whirlwind of shot and shell that will result over half their numbers lying bleeding and dying on the wide fields between. He will also receive a mortal wound less than a hundred yards of the spot where the mounted officer encourages the Union men, in a place known forever afterwards as the ‘Bloody Angle’.

There are other places here too, given names by the soldiers who fought there on those three long days and remembered as such forevermore.  They are small, quiet places otherwise unremarkable on all the days before or since that fateful meeting: The Devil’s Den, the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, Seminary Ridge, Cemetery Ridge. Small shallow streams meander through this ground: the Plum Run, Pitzer’s Run, Rock Creek.  Those streams are crossed or paralleled by roads with names from more peaceful times: The Fairfield Road, the Emmitsburg Road, the Chambersburg Pike, the Baltimore Pike. They all meet at a tiny hamlet amid the quiet fields of rural Pennsylvania with a name forever engraved in the annals of American History.

Gettysburg 

continue reading

Jay Jacobs Hits Homerun With Sunny Golloway Hire

By Posted on: June 14th, 2013 in Baseball, News 10 Comments »
790557- Sunny Golloway

After evaluating over a half dozen coaches to replace John Pawlowski, Auburn AD Jay Jacobs hit a home run tonight when he announced the hiring of Oklahoma’s Head Coach, Sunny Golloway.

Under pressure to deliver, Jacobs said he was looking for proven winners who could contend for championships. He got his man in hiring Galloway away from Oklahoma.

The Sooner skipper took over a down program in 2005 and rebuilt/restored Oklahoma to a nationally recognized program. This year OU won the Big 12 Championship and posted their fourth consecutive 40-win season. Although they swept through the Blacksburg Regional they lost out in the Super Regional to LSU.

In nine seasons in Norman, Golloway took the Sooners to 8 NCAA Regionals, 4 Super Regionals (hosting 3)  and one College World Series. His record at Oklahoma is 346-181-1 and his overall record is 638-316-1.

As an OU  assistant from 1992-95, he helped lead the Sooners to three trips to the College World Series in four years and win the 1994 National Championship. Before taking over at Oklahoma, he was the Head Coach at Oral Roberts University where his teams went to six Regionala amd won an average of more than 46 wins per season, for a .731 winning percentage

Having faced some of Hal Baird’s teams in the NCAA Tournament and College World Series, Golloway said he’s, “Always held the Auburn baseball program in very high regard. The history of the Auburn program was a huge factor in making this decision.” He continued, ” With our location, we are in a hotbed of talent. We will be able to hit the road recruiting right away, and we look forward to recruiting the best student-athletes to represent this outstanding university.

Some other amazing stats on the new Auburn Tiger Head Coach :

* He has coached  88 all-conference honorees at Oklahoma and Oral Roberts. In the last eight years, 55 Sooners have garnered All-Big 12 accolades.

* The number of players taken in the MLB Draft during Golloway’s 16 seasons as a head coach and as an assistant coach at OU – 82 including a program-best 11 players in 2011.

* His .671 winning percentage ranked  No. 15 in the nation among active coaches in Division I baseball.

The Auburn Athletic Director promised to hire championship contending coaches to fill the vacant baseball and softball positions. Many doubted whether he was up to the challenge. He delivered today in a big way with the hiring of Galloway to replace John Pawlowski and Clint Meyers to shepherd the softball program.

Yes Jacobs hit a home run with these hires; now we will see if Golloway can get the Tiger Baseball program back to the glory days of SEC legendary Coach Hal Baird’s teams of the nineties. He certainly has the resume and appears to be ready for the challenge.

Welcome to Auburn Coach Golloway and War Eagle!

Oklahoma TV Reports Galloway is New Auburn Baseball Coach

By Posted on: June 14th, 2013 in Baseball, News Comment »

The Channel 6 news in Norman, Oklahoma is reporting breaking news that Oklahoma coach Sunny Galloway has accepted the job at Auburn University.



Quote: “After nine seasons, four super regionals and a College World Series appearance, Oklahoma baseball coach Sunny Golloway has decided to leave Norman.

Sources are confirming that Golloway has accepted the vacant head coaching position at Auburn after flying out to Alabama on Friday for an interview.”

More at: http://www.newson6.com/story/22597699/breaking-ous-galloway-takes-auburn-job

Story to follow here at Track ‘Em Tigers

Auburn Hires Clint Meyers – One of Best Softball Coaches in College Sports

By Posted on: June 14th, 2013 in News, Other Sports 5 Comments »
lockwoodsoftx-large- Clint Meyers

Auburn has hired Arizona State Head Coach Clint Meyers to become the Tigers’ second head coach in program history. Meyers is considered one of the top coaches in the country.

While at ASU he has taken his team to eight straight Super Regionals and seven appearances in the College World Series, winning two National Championships in 2008 and 2011.

The Sun Devils have averaged 53 wins per season, giving Meyers an overall record of 427-102 in eight seasons in Tempe.

Before coming to Arizona State, Meyers had a .678 winning percentage in 19 seasons at Central Arizona College’s baseball and softball teams. From 1996-2005, he was the head baseball coach where he took CAC to the Junior College World Series twice, winning the National Championship in 2002. As the head softball coach from 1987-1995, he won six national championships and was named National Coach of the Year six times.

Meyers who will be bringing his two sons along as assistant coaches says he is excited for the,” Opportunity to become part of what I feel is a total community family in the town of Auburn was one I absolutely could not pass up. Thank you for giving me and my family this … “Adventure.” We hope that you will enjoy the ride with us for years to come.”

Auburn AD, Jay Jacobs said, “When we began our search for a new softball coach, the goal was to find a proven winner who could help us compete for championships. We could not have found a coach who better fits that criteria than Clint Myers … Anytime you can hire a coach who has won two National Championships and been to the Women’s College World Series seven out of eight years, it’s obviously a huge win for your program.”

It clearly is an outstanding hire. One that shows Jay Jacobs is serious about bringing in top coaches to compete for championships. Now if Jacobs can bring home the bacon for the baseball team it will definitely be “a huge win.”

Editors note:
Reports out of Auburn is that Oklahoma Coach Sunny Galloway was on campus today interviewing for the baseball opening and may be offered the job in the next 24 hours.

College Football’s Renaissance Part 2

By Posted on: June 14th, 2013 in Featured Article 5 Comments »
Crossroads

College Football Playoff LogoPart of the BCS’s appeal was that one could look at rankings and forecast a team’s final destination under an assumed scenario. Not anymore. With no solid framework for a selection process, the playoff committee has the potential to make completely arbitrary decisions. If there’s one thing college football needs less of, it is old men having secret meetings to make decisions of great importance that mostly benefit those who stand gain a profit from it.

That is not necessarily going to be the case, but there has not been any single bigger enemy to the college football postseason outside of the major bowl committees and there have been no postseason formats that didn’t feature them prominently. To a large extent, there is no way to avoid their presence (the major bowls and their influence).

So where does this send college football over the next decade or so? How well will the sport hold up with so many people depending on it?

continue reading