Let them play!

A favorite of mine. Go MIAC. From here: link to print

There's a unique level of excitement and anticipation at the start of the (American) football season. To me, it is the unofficial start of autumn. In reality my summer ends a couple of weeks sooner in mid-August when the training begins. Often referred to as "two-a-days" due to the historical two full practices they entail. This time of the season is often the subject of my dreams, or maybe nightmares, due to their intensity. In my college playing days, I think three-a-days would have been more apt due to the couple hours of meetings and weightlifting that happened in the evening as well.  

Two-a-days are an onerous time where players challenge each other for their position on the "depth chart" (top spot on the chart is the starter) and you form and mold the kind of team you are going to be for the season. The lion's share of play installations and coordination are done here. The rest of the season is tailoring and (hopefully) making small adjustments to each opponent's tendencies.

Here I would like to pivot to the depth chart and the actual aspects that go into it. I've seen it done right and I've seen it done selfishly by transactional coaches who are only interested in their agendas. In fact, I'm writing this now as I believe my son's college team has turned into the latter, sacrificing the present and what could be now for the "new future". 

For anyone who follow's NCAA Division III football, Lawrence University has had a long spell of non-success. In fact, they might be solidly one of the worst teams in a conference that has overall not been competitive on the national DIII stage for a long while. If NCAA D-IV football were a thing, Lawrence might still bring up the bottom. There are many reasons for this, indeed there appears to be growing disparity in DIII conferences between top and bottom teams. In fact, maybe some recruiting and roster-size rules would help this but that's not the thesis of this article. 

The point is Lawrence football has had years of low-grade recruiting (highlighted by lack of local kids and poor retention) and iffy coaching. My son is on his third coaching staff in three years. This year's coaching class is a group of old-timer LU alumni itching to get back on track and relive the teams more successful history in the 1980's. They've spent their careers coaching at the high school level and are just getting their feet wet at the college level. Despite being the lowest division of NCAA sanctioned football with no athletic scholarships and at smaller schools where many high schools are bigger, it is very much not high school ball. 

The main challenge is recruiting. High school teams thrive and fall based on the talent near the school and protecting top players from the lures of private schools (or benefiting from luring kids by hook or crook to their private schools, but again a thesis for a different posting). Coaching can have some to do with success, but the best bets are having a lot of "team-minded" players with a lot of depth and occasional D-I talent sprinkled in. 

On the college level, you need to go find your team and convince them to join your program. For a historically bad program, this can be a difficult and compounding challenge. Who wants to play for a bad team that routinely loses by three touchdowns or more? There needs to be something more there that can bring quality athletes. 

Opportunities to play sooner can be a sales pitch, but those are often marketing lies and short sighted at building a quality program. If you do let the freshmen in right away it seriously disenfranchises those who are hanging on and working hard. In high school, I witnessed a mass benching of older players just to get younger guys in for a one-off shot at fleeting "glory". Fortunately, I was in a year with the head coach's kid at QB so got my time, but the year behind me got (pardon the vulgarity) fucked. 

Now I'm concerned, hence my writing this, that the upperclassmen of Lawrence are getting fucked. The new coaching staff is overly eager to prove that they have a decent recruiting class of freshmen and, instead of valuing and honoring the experience that the upperclassmen have, are looking for small excuses to bench these men who have weathered so much.

After the team's scrimmage (a scrimmage with another team generally marks the end of two-a-days) where the first team got very limited play time, rampant depth chart shifting happened; putting in the new recruits. Further changes were made during the team's first real game against Luther College. Luther is another team that is far from its heyday, going 0-10 last year and switching to Lawrence's conference for this season, getting away from perennial powerhouses like Wartburg and Central. 

The result: a 30-7 loss to the Norse. The offense, and the excuses made for the post-scrimmage benching, became apparent. This was about regime change. At the moment I expect fewer and fewer of the upperclassmen to see the field, while LU goes through the hard learning that gap schemes, screens and powers really need to be set up through solid zone play. Even DIII defenses are too crafty and Luther sniffed out the play calls well.  While there was some success in the passing game, protection broke down often and the line only appeared to fare well when engaged in double teams. 

Frankly, I made my peace with Lawrence bringing up the rear a year ago, when it became obvious that the AD at the time made an absolute wrong hire for head coach. I think the new AD did a better job and am hopeful that after some learnings, Lawrence will be on a good course. 

Still, the coaches should not neglect the hard work that the upperclassmen have put in and need to respect what they've gone through. If it's a close competition on the depth chart, coaches need to rotate in players and get everyone who is at the precipice of the top spot some time on the field. This makes everyone better! I played for a Tressel, one of the more storied families in college football and rolling into series when you are ready was a part of that program. The coaches should also look for ways to get the more developing players some field time, e.g. establish a JV schedule. 

At the end of the day, the killer for programs like Lawrence is forgetting that football is supposed to be fun. Yes, work hard. Yes, compete and challenge for a starting slot. However, it is important to keep in mind that the players who opt to join teams like Lawrence and hang around are staying for more than just trying to return to YOUR glory days. If you lose them, success could be hard to come by.