CoachJ

Okay...I couldn't resist! (this one bugs me too) However, I've had other coaches who do this kind of thing say they do it when they know a DC puts his strength to the FIELD even when you put your offensive strength to the BOUNDARY...so you therefore have a numbers advantage even though you only have 18yds of space to work with. Given this scenario, I can see doing it IF you have a superior run game vs. their run-D AND you're running off-tackle as opposed to running wide. If I DO run though, it's going to be some kind of misdirection like an inside reverse (a base play for us) that always has the potential to be a big play. Even with those scenarios at play, I'm almost always going to have a pass play (or a SLOW SCREEN if I'm worried about a pick) I trust to get 7 on 3rd more than a straightforward or even misdirection run play.

Good idea on this thread. ...but I'm not touching it with a 10-foot pole! (especially one where I might have to second-guess guys better than me like Beatty/Coverdale!) But I will say this...:popcorn:

Great job Panthers...congrats to Coaches Mac, Salyers, Huff and SNAB! Looking forward to watching you bring back ANOTHER one back to the original "title-town."

Good point. Backs up why it would be MUCH better for Kentucky to do what they do in some states and have Semis at neutral sites. My preference would be at stadiums of FCS or NAIA/D2 schools both east and west... * EKU or MOREHEAD for Eastern Regions * MURRAY or LINDSEY-WILSON for Western Regions have games Friday for classes whose state championships would be on the following Friday and Saturday for those.

Would be all for this in Kentucky. I like all teams getting 10 games, but I'm against anyone having 15 games. I'm against starting games in mid August. I'm against 4th place teams vs. 1st place first round blowouts.

Sorry about that. Is it essentially the same program now as it was back then?

I never had a doubt Malik would be special on the gridiron. Great athleticism but also great character kid. Played for us on the freshman team before transferring--was SO glad to hear he went back to football this year...especially knowing the great coaching he'd be getting. Hope he sticks with football as I see a kid with great potential at the next level.

One must understand the lay of the land in Jefferson County to get why Manual has such great potential. 1) Jeff. Co. is the most talent-rich area of the state. 2) Only 4 JCPS schools have the opportunity to accept students from any part of the county and provide them bus transportation: Male, Manual, Butler, and Central. Of those, Male and Butler are "traditional" meaning they are supposed to only take kids who went to one of 3 "traditional" middle schools (though there are ways others can get accepted). The rest of us basically get the kids who live in our 'resides area.' 3) Manual is ranked as one of the highest academic-achieving schools in Ky. because of the high caliber of their magnet programs. Add to that they've recently added a program ("High School University") that can accept kids not in their Math/Science/Technology, Visual Arts, Journalism, or Performing Arts magnets and it really opens the door to many of the best athletes in the county. Kids graduating from there whether in a magnet or the "HSU" get a diploma from "Manual High School" -- one of the top schools in the state. Pretty nice thing to be able to tell a parent who wants the best for their kid. Has helped them pull some of the better kids recently that you might usually see go to a private school (pretty good pitch: come to maybe the best academic HS in the state and save $10K a year). Another plus to a lot of coaches is that your Principal would be a former head football coach (Jerry Mayes).

One of the toughest but most important jobs we have as a HS coach is recruiting...and by that I mean kids in your school. For many of us, it's the only 'recruiting' we can really do and must therefore take full advantage. Yes, sometimes you're going to have to go after kids your players think are 'soft' or 'lazy' or have some other negative...but that's what the OFF-SEASON is to figure out. If a kid we've tried to get play all off-season waits until the summer or spring practice to come out, we make sure he gets the LAST opportunity to win a job. The importance of recruiting the halls is also why it's necessary to have assistant coaches in the building. This is something very often not understood by administrators who aren't really aware of the ins and outs of football.

We do a written anonymous evaluation that asks for things like: 'Were there issues on the team the coaches wouldn't have known about that hindered our success?' ...we tell them to feel free to name names and be specific about the issues; then we bring these up when we do 'prescription' meetings. 'Which coach did you feel taught football the best?' 'Which coach do you feel needs the most improvement?' 'Which underclass player would you most want... '...with you in a street fight?' '...to help you study for a test?' '...to get you to work your hardest in the weight room?' "Name 5 kids in this school who didn't play football this year we need for next year." I ask the coaches to do a 'strengths/weaknesses' for each player at their position which I then turn into a "prescription." I write out what is needed from them between December and Spring Practice to give them the best chance to win their position and meet with them for 3-5 minutes going over the highlights. Usually will involve something about weight gain/loss, areas to focus on for specific strength training outside what we do as a team, skill work needed (pass catching, long snapping, etc.), and academics.

Came on here to post respectful comments about T's coaches AND players after being taken to the woodshed. To say a team plays above the level of their aggregate talent is, I thought, one of the biggest compliments one could pay to both that team's coaches AND players. Am very sorry it was taken as anything but a compliment. Rather than pick at nits, I'll go back to work on us and refrain from any further comments. Good luck the rest of the year.

Meant zero disrespect toward the KIDS at Trinity. They assuredly are VERY good 'football players' even though they won't empirically have the number of D1 signees as they have on their past teams. Shocked actually it was taken in any other way...meant only to emphasize how great a job their coaches do getting their very good kids to do what they know needs to get done.

Not the most "talented" Trinity team I've seen--that's NOT meant as an insult--because it's maybe one of the best T teams I've ever seen execute vs. one of mine. Have had many good battles with them over the years...but this one was over immediately. They had theirs ready and I didn't have mine ready despite weeks of hard preparation. To get more out of less is the sign of a well-coached team. "Well"-coached is an understatement about what happened last night. Their kids and supporters are fortunate to have what they have there. Going to be interesting to see how the rest of the season plays out--fortunately on our end, while I can't say the same about our 'supporters,' I know our kids won't quit and they'll work hard to improve on our mistakes going forward.

There's a lot more than just Friday nights for these guys. They are also asked to do lower level games (Freshmen and JV) and they have weekly or bi-weekly meetings where they do 'professional development' by watching film and critiquing each other...at times I've had our director of officials (when it was Matt in NKy or Don now in Louisville) call me and, after scrutinizing the film say, "yeah, we blew that one." More often, there are things I send in to get reviewed (they ask us to send in clips that will help them get things right in the future) and what I THOUGHT was something that was wrong was actually called correctly. Both Don and Matt would go through an extensive explanation of why what was called was called -- this goes a long way in helping me not argue things in the future that aren't what I thought they were in the past. I'm also in the group that is amazed these guys are willing to do this job (unless they have aspirations to get into college or NFL officiating -- to which, we have SEVERAL great Kentucky officials at both of those levels who started their careers on Friday nights in the bluegrass). I'll always let them know when I think things get missed by these guys -- but as I tell them when they admit they 'blow it' -- I make MANY more mistakes in the game than they do. But I hope that doesn't belie the respect we have for what they do -- after all, would be tough for ME to do what I love if there aren't enough of them doing what they do.

Sounds like a good showing for East. I'm ExCITED about what Coach Champlin is building.

Jason does a GREAT job -- especially considering it's an area where HS football has a LOT to compete with on Friday nights. The idea of a 'media day' is something much appreciated by our coaches and kids.

A list should be made public of any team actually playing an older kid DOWN a level, unless maybe SUGGESTED by a program like T to encourage another team to be willing to play them.

No problem...sometimes it's good to be an insomniac. Tough for anyone outside a program to know the "why's" and who better to explain them than the guy who deals with it every day. Incidentally, I can't disagree with any of the points here about how we should be more prominently mentioned in the 'big 3-4' discussion. Talent at our place IS very good...haven't always had all the pieces in all the right positions and sometimes we had to recruit the halls to get the 'talent' to play FOOTBALL, maybe their Soph or Jr year (why one year we struggled mightily first 3 games but almost upset Scott County on their field in playoffs). Fortunate to have a bball coach in Chris Renner who doesn't discourage kids from playing football -- actually pushes some TO football to help their toughness! Feel like now we might have the right schemes on both sides of the ball I feel comfortable with (took some time and some tough decisions to get it there) AND good "6A depth" at each position as well. Definitely don't have the 'burners' that Male has or the 'crazy depth' T or X have but we're thinking this year we might be able to compete with the top guys pretty well. I tell our guys that despite how hard they work in off-season, great numbers, hard-working coaches, etc., it ultimately ONLY comes down to execution and until we're done with camp, there's no way to predict what kind of 'execution team' we'll be. Until then, we're even honored just to be "in the conversation."

...and I'm all for scheduling tough (go back if possible to see who we played at 3A Oldham Co. & at 1A Pikeville) but I don't think it would be smart to schedule all 6 of your nonDistrict games against teams you'd likely not be favored no matter what your district is. Our roster numbers aren't terrible (will dress 75-80 for varsity--non-FROSH--this year) but if we added Bowling Green, Highlands, & Elder to Male, Manual, & Desales I think I might go up for child abuse!

Not sure whose schedule you're looking at. Our non-district games (only ones we have control over) are Oldham Co, Male, Desales, Manual, Western & Doss. Include Trinity (district game) & we are playing 3 of the previous "super district" and a reigning state champ of a lower class. I think that would compare pretty favorably to any other Jeff Co public for strength of schedule (kudos to Central who has similar scheduling philosophy). I think it's true to say "couldn't get MOST Ky teams;" we didn't go along with the "boycott the privates" nonsense many chose to engage in. My philosophy has been if you want to ever beat them, you must get more familiar with them. I don't remember it being late in scheduling cycle when I called Coach Lampley about a home-and-home, but I think we had someone cancel on us to open up a week so they were who I called but the only week they still needed didn't match up with the week we needed.

Absolutely no different than most of us have been doing for years. Camp is not an issue as long as you get them up VERY early, you do your late practice VERY late, and you keep the practices pretty short (all things that should happen at camp anyway). Easy to get 3-hours rest between practices if you do it that way.

:sssh: ...will say I have been watching a lot of "Knute Rockne All-American" this off-season! Why go 'old-school' when you can go 'old-old-old-OLD school!'

No problem! ...you were 100% right on what matters most in this thread anyway.

I'd say it's true that on our (and maybe every other) staff, those who are not 'coordinators' would often complain they don't get the input they want and then gripe to others it's b/c the HC didn't entrust THEM with the responsibility instead. That doesn't mean the head coach took that away, just means they weren't in the coordinator's seat and thought they could've done better. Totally understandable -- I remember feeling that way too...wasn't selfish, I really thought our team would be better off doing things my way instead of who was in charge. I would freely admit that one of my biggest downfalls as a HC is loyalty to those I delegate major responsibility; what goes with that is sometimes you make angry those subordinate to those entrusted as coordinator when things don't go well. Sometimes the answer to a needed change is to change a coordinator, other times it's a change in overall scheme that is needed. Either way, SOMEONE on previous staff is going to be unhappy and vent to those outside the situation. Totally understand that -- it's human nature to do that. It's also something I willingly take on when making tough staff decisions. Can't always make everyone happy when major changes are necessary. When it comes down to it--despite (with only a couple exceptions) having TREMENDOUS men assisting on our staff--I did not allow "consensus" or "committee" decision-making when game-planning. Final decisions came down to a man who'd earned my trust by his work ethic and I didn't pull that away from them without significant cause--and in spite of some people's objections, didn't feel it was right to do in the midst of a season. Maybe some can make that (or the 'committee-style') work, but doesn't seem the best way to me. Thanks for your comments on the combine -- labor of love and hopefully is beneficial for both kids and small colleges. Good luck to you guys this year.

I concur with the sentiments about Central Hardin as well. Got to another level with a pass-happy offense, then new coach comes in with a more run-first attack and didn't miss a beat. That's pretty impressive and shows DISCIPLINED, COACHABLE kids.