4 Hard Downs: Familial, Transactional & Snowed In
Two Different Concepts That Get Confused, Chillary getting us to the store and kids kids kids
My parents are teachers, that’s what coaches should be, not money grabbers, and their goal wasn’t control over me it was to equip me to make good decisions. I was raised to earn responsibility and by making good choices I got more privileges and more freedom.
Doing my schoolwork, chores both inside and outside were how I got to go to parties and hang out later and later. The better I did the later my curfew. I am not trying to get on a soapbox about parenting or teaching, but this:
You should create a shared experience to earn your place and build camaraderie which adds value into your program. When I was at UNC we started from scratch every year because every team is a new team and has to come together to do the right things. No stripe. No interlocking NC.
So fawning over something a lot of teams do feels like a lot of people don’t know much about college football. Ohio State literally makes you earn your stripes for the helmet and they make a big deal of it.
I really like what he seems to stand for but he didn’t discover fire or invent the wheel with this like peole are talking. It isn’t noble and it isn’t new, he is doing a thing he probably learned from another employer or clinic; so let’s SPOT THE BALL!!!
1st Down: Transaction not Transfer
Deion Sanders, excuse me, Coach Prime, wants to fine his players and has been adamant about not recruiting just going into the portal.
We can blame the portal.
We can blame NIL.
That’s your God? That’s your leader of men? That’s how you build a relationship by jumping into the portal to get a guy who, if he doesn’t cut the mustard, you’re done with?
You’re not paying them, the collective is doling out the cash. You used the collective to get them to your school. You’re not creating a genuine relationship with his high school coach, parents, grandparents. You’re not recruiting his teammates in high school to try to get him to enroll.
This is a me first, from the coaches, because it makes their job less bothersome than having to go to high schools, high school games and make house visits or scouting visits at camps.
This is a transaction. You sell your body to me, I get to use that body to make more money and oh, by the way, no profanity (which is insane to me).
2nd Down: I Don’t Have Friends, I Got Family
Meanwhile:
This is what it is suppposed to be. You play for your brothers and that can only be built through time and a shared experience, which I mentioned off the top about the stripe and interlocking NC.
I spent so much time over the course of the last few weeks with my teammates from 03-06. Look those years up, we weren’t that good but we loved each other. Bringing in a team of guys who don’t know each other didn’t take the recruiting trips together, didn’t go through the fire together, again, makes it transactional.
And you’re robbing them of these lifelong relationships. I’m 41, I still talk to guys who got me out of scraps or helped me into scraps when I was 18-22. Guys I can call right now that love me and care about my wife and daughter. A coach who recruited me and knows my birthday and I know his kids and we spent time together.
That’s a family.
3rd Down: Bruh, We Outside
And by “WE” I mean my kid because I don’t do snow and I don’t get any joy from being out there despite being better equipped than most of my neighbors after 4 years in Chicago.
I did, however, take Chillary, our 4Runner, to Harris Teeter to get strawberries
I will check my privilege. I live next to two country clubs I don’t belong to but who do use their grounds crews to salt and shovel. Trip was easy work while the rest of the city is still frozen over.
We did have to call our electrician when our dryer stopped (More About This On HITDPod) because we were running so many loads we had a thermal break. That’s because between 2-7 kids were going in and out of my house and having their snowpants, pants, gloves, jackets dried for the last 4 days and the breaker was like, “So goddamn hot.”
And I wish milk the children’s choice because they want Simply Mango.
4th Down: We Got Beef
Literally and Figuratively
In a literal sense we are having steak tonight and she’s a big girl that I am going to turn into a little ribeye for everyone with loaded baked potato and broccoli.
In a, I guess also literal since, neighborhood beef where my wife is standing on business and is being ducked. In the words of another, third party mom, “I don’t think she wants your smoke” My wife has tried to explain an incident multiple times and to no avail.
That’s life. She showing up there with bad intentions.
We got another snow day. These kids gonna be in my bouse. One already said he wants to stay for dinner. Breh. Let’s Grow.
Cheers!!!