Friday, September 09, 2005

Football Coaches

Watching my Raiders get dismantled in the second half of last night's game as well as the start of football season throughout the nation's high schools and colleges, I am reminded of the days that I spent on the field and the lessons learned.

Football coaches are great! They just put everything into it and therefore some of the funniest things come out of there mouths. Most, however, are very specific in what they want no matter how absurd it may be.

On blocking: “I want the hole to be so big…I can drive a semi-truck through it.”

On defending a receiver: “Wherever your guy goes, you go. If he goes to buy a hotdog, you hand him his change”.

On winning: “If we score more points then they do, we’ll most likely win.”

Coach Hatch said something to us that has stuck with me. “All I ask from you is perfection. You give me that, and I’ll be happy.”

And we would try to give it to him. I swear I would do the same pattern over and over again, and they seemed to look the same to me, but he would see slight imperfections and would drill us over and over again until we could see them too…and correct them.

To Coach Hatch, it was the small things that made the difference and he would not settle for “close enough”. Do you?

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