4 Hard Downs: Close The Door, Recruiting As A Family, Turkey Stock Time & More

Going to NYC for Rankings, Letting Good Teams Hang Around Means You Lose & Thanksgiving Initiative

By the time you read this I will either be on the way to the airport or in the air for the Bleacher Report stream, on the app, and MAX, for the CFP Rankings. It is going to be fun to work with Paige who you know from the No Punts Allowed Pod she does with my guy Adam Kramer.

My mom and wife teamed up against me to make sure I leave early for the airport and for a flight that boards at 3:08, they want me to leave at 12:30 or whenever my wife gets home from work, whichever comes last. So probably 12:45. If it was up to me I’d be getting into an Uber at 2 and walking from security to the flight.

But you have to make the women in your life happy.

Speaking of making folks happy, let’s go ahead and SPOT THE BALL!!!

1st Down: Recruiting Is A Family Affair

My guy Yogi Roth posted a very important and cool video explaining how the bright lights and cool ideas shouldn’t be what govern your recruitment. It should be about what matters to you (the player) and your family.

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I lived this.

This is the part of recruiting that a lot of fans and a lot of media do not understand. So let’s break it down and why/how this matters, and is hard:

-First generation college students

-First generation scholarship candidates

-Parents not prepared for this next step

-College coaches selling a dream that is incongruent with reality

-Coaching changes, not just head coaches but positional moves

Setting expectations is huge.

I am, and this is very rare as a black man, a third generation college kid. Both of my parents went to college, my dad’s parents both went to college as well. My parents were also teachers whose job was getting kids to college.

As Yogi mentions, outlining a plan and executing it with discipline is important. However if you start that plan in your junior or senior year as you’re getting recruited heavy, you’re already too late.

I knew I wanted to go to UNC. So when I was in elementary school my parents laid it out for me with respect to grades. Then in middle and high school it was that I had to take this, this and this to be able to get into the University of North Carolina. You take Calculus AB and not Discreet Math or Statistics. You do Chemistry and not Earth Science.

But if you’re a first generation college kid, you don’t know about those building blocks because your parents don’t know about them either. My mom proctored SATs, meanwhile there are other parents of better players than I was who don’t know when their kid should take the SAT.

I was through Clearinghouse by the end of my junior year.

None of this is a brag.

It is privilege of coming from a family that worked in education and understood how to get to where you wanted to be. I truly can’t imagine it now, when everyone has a cell phone, social media and endless contact.

Getting letters was nice.

Getting DMs seems like a nightmare.

Getting DMs that your parents have no control over is overkill.

My mom basically told every coach, “we eat dinner at 7, if you call between 7 and 8, we won’t answer and if you call after 9, you’re done.”

That doesn’t seem possible now.

I had an active and involved mom and dad who ran me up and down the highway to visits and two parents who set me up for success. If you take away those factors it is an uphill battle that I probably can’t win.

And that’s why recruiting is a family affair.

Hell, not just family, a “family resources” affair where you have to ask for help on things you don’t know. Where you have to call in the big guns from another guy to talk about a coach or a school.

Which leads us to…

2nd Down: Kirby Smart Also Takes Recruiting Serious

Why did he do this to Florida?

Cause he could?

Nah, because he had to.

He brought out the big guns.

This man buried Florida. As I said in the moment:

He is not here to play. He wants to mash out rivals. It is cute against Mizzou or South Carolina but when it was a battle, they muscled up. Without their best offensive weapon in Brock Bowers. Just went full Hulk.

So when he calls that kid on Tuesday and asks if he watched the game, or if it was a kid who went to the game on a Florida visit, he can say, “so what did you think?”

3rd Down: Closing The Door Matters

What’s the difference between Ohio State, Washington and Oklahoma?

Two teams closed the door. The other one, Oklahoma, has a loss and is now on the outside looking in.

Let’s flip it over.

Difference between Kansas, Indiana, Arizona and Georgia Tech?

Indiana couldn’t close the door. KU, AZ and GT did.

I’m a door closing psycho.

My wife knows it. My kid knows it. I do not like open doors in our home. I’m not hiding anything thing, I just think when you leave a room or open a cabinet you should be closing those doors. It matters to me.

And in this context, watching teams leave the door open is how you get losses or how you don’t close out wins.

Another analogy, we all have cars that make insane noise when you leave the door open.

Slam it shut to make sure your family is safe.

Indiana couldn’t do it. Oklahoma also couldn’t do it.

If you don’t close the door, your system is going to malfunction. UNC’s defense couldn’t close it out, Tennessee’s could. USC somehow got a 2-point mistake from Cal to get the stop. JMU’s defense didn’t have the best night but the Dukes showed up when they had to.

You gotta close the door.

4th Down: You Got Your Turkey Stock Stocked?

Homemade stock is undefeated.

This is no tea, no shade, no pink lemonade if you don’t have the time.

But if you’ve got the time on a weekend or week night after work to just throw some stuff in a pot and wait, very little active time, I highly recommend.

This is the remains of a turkey breast that I smoked with veggies, herbs, bourbon, jalapenos, seasonings and it is going to go into ziplocs and frozen for Thanksgiving. Get a head start.

I am assuming 99% of the folks reading this are football fans (Shout out to Ashley M. my 1%). If you are going to be at home on a Saturday or a Sunday watching football, just throw butter, onions, garlic, celery, jalapeno, rosemary, bay leaf, a little beer or whiskey, water, tarragon, salt and pepper with maybe a carrot into a pot and just watch football.

Let it cook down a few inches and then take it off the heat, put it in the fridge and the next day, ladle it out into bags or ice trays, freeze it and you have stock that is better than Swanson’s Broth.

Watch football all day. End up with a thing you can’t buy from the store.

The definition of “Do Less” while getting more.

Try it, you’ll like it. Your dressing, your gravy will appreciate it.

Cheers!!