New Age approach to football
I heard Heupel say something about using the new age approach to football in his introductory press conference and I think I heard Golesh use the same or similar remarks. So the first thing that comes to my mind is hippies. Right? I mean what the hell is new age football? The very words made me cringe. smh.
Having no idea what that even means I figured I’d better look into it and see how weird it really was. I mean it’s who we are now, like it or not. I’d rather not be completely ignorant about it. I was imagining crystals or something. How would that work? Is Astrology involved? I needed to find out.
So this is what I’ve found so far. Pete Carroll. It’s his fault. At Seattle they don’t chew out players for making mistakes. In fact, cussing isn’t even allowed on the field. Are you serious? What happens if our players aren’t as big as Alabama’s players? We can’t shame our guys? What if they piss off a coach? Is he not allowed to threaten to cut them from the team?
That’s it. No more Mr. Badass coach. As best I can tell, that’s all it is.
Positive instruction and guidance, being empathetic I guess you might say when a kid doesn’t live up to the standard. Encouragement to continue working. Now both he and the coaches know that the best 11 guys are going to be the ones on the field but he isn’t going to be punished or treated sort of with negative reinforcement if he’s not in the 11 or gets replaced in the 11. It’s going to be pointed out what he needs to work on so he can get back into that 11 man unit.
Lest you get the wrong idea, it’s not a license to reject discipline. Accountability is maintained. It’s more about creating a positive environment and a sort of shared trust and commitment to the team’s goals between the coaches and the players. It’s not the coaches team and it’s not the player’s team. They all share “ownership” in the team and its success or lack thereof.
That’s my interpretation based on what I can find. Obviously, Heupel still has the responsibilities of a head coach and the other coaches have their responsibilities. The new age approach is how the coaches go about interacting with the players and presumably the way the players go about interacting with each other. I’m doing my best to explain this in a way that doesn’t freak you guys out. Let’s just say that after doing a bit of research I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that our coaches are probably NOT hippies. jmo.
Like I said, Pete Carroll’s Seattle Seahawks is the model for this New Age approach to football and it’s gaining increasing interest across the country, especially in NFL ranks.
In researching this I discovered that our local writers didn’t even bother trying to figure out what Josh was talking about. It appears that they assume it’s fast tempo offense and aggressive defense, like no one has ever done that before. smh. I’m pretty sure they don’t know what they’re talking about but they’re pretending like they do. They pretend a lot I think. jmo.
