Great Expectations

[PDad]

The new football coach at Texas, Charlie Strong, laid out his "expectations" to the team.

1. Players will attend all of their classes and sit in the front two rows of all of their classes. GAs, academic folks, position coaches will be checking constantly now.

2. No headphones in class. No texting in class. Sit up and take notes.

3. If a player misses a class, he runs until it hurts. If he misses two classes, his entire position unit runs. If he misses three, the position coach runs. The position coaches don’t want to run.

4. No earrings in the football building. No drugs. No stealing. No guns. Treat women with respect.

5. Players may not live off campus anymore, unless they’re a senior who hits certain academic standards. The University will buy out the leases for every player currently living off campus and put them in the athletic dorm.

6. The team will all live together, eat together, suffer together, and hang out together. They will become a true team and learn to impose accountability on each other. The cliques are over.

7. There’s no time for a rebuild. ”I don’t have time for that.” The expectation is that Texas wins now.

8. Players will learn that they would rather practice than milk a minor injury.

9. The focus is on winning and graduating. Anything extraneous to that is a distraction and will be stamped out or removed.

10. Strong met individually with seniors and key leaders and re-emphasized that the plan is to win now. They can lead the new culture or be run over by it.

11. “I don’t want to talk about things. I’d rather do things. We just talked. Now it’s time to do.”

[Safebyahare]

I like that!!! Very cool. That is taking care of business.

[Safebyahare]

Good luck with that. Watch recruits run from the program

Why?? As a parent I would have loved that for my dd's softball program.
In her assigned dorm romm apartment, she has no athletes!! Room for 4 and 2 are pot heads.
She doesn't care for it. She wanted to dorm with teammates.
As far as grades,,,they still matter. Sitting in the front is just a tool to stay focused, and to let the instructor know your face.
What did you see wrong with this coaches plan?

[PDad]

There have been some highly rated recruits that have uncommitted, but that's also very typical for football. Hard to say what the net effect is right now. Time will tell...

[jonriv]

I wish him luck. Nice to see. Since under 2% of college football players make the pros, it would be great to see the rest get a great education and a degree while they are there.

[exD1dad]

Great point Jonriv, I like this coaches direction but lets be honest when was the last time the TA lecturing in ANY auditorium size class took attendance? All this team will do is run when you got 80+ players in hundreds of classes & what about travel days, sick days etc Stupid IMO. It's a great idea to sit in the front row but what happens when certain majors with certain classes that are full of players (& we know this type of thing happens look at all the exercise science softball players) who gets to sit in front? These rules will be impossible to enforce, are not practical in terms of real life. Lets face it this guy has good intentions but it's a little late in the game to attempt to change almost every aspect of a young adults life.

Now Spazz its not the future payday but the restrictions this coach puts on players in #4 like no earrings & no drugs etc that'll make 30% of the recruits leave who have a choice to go somewhere else, I mean Austin is a great City but this coach seems more than a little over the top in terms of wanting to control things

[Battle]

Great point Jonriv, I like this coaches direction but lets be honest when was the last time the TA lecturing in ANY auditorium size class took attendance? All this team will do is run when you got 80+ players in hundreds of classes & what about travel days, sick days etc Stupid IMO. It's a great idea to sit in the front row but what happens when certain majors with certain classes that are full of players (& we know this type of thing happens look at all the exercise science softball players) who gets to sit in front? These rules will be impossible to enforce, are not practical in terms of real life. Lets face it this guy has good intentions but it's a little late in the game to attempt to change almost every aspect of a young adults life.

Now Spazz its not the future payday but the restrictions this coach puts on players in #4 like no earrings & no drugs etc that'll make 30% of the recruits leave who have a choice to go somewhere else, I mean Austin is a great City but this coach seems more than a little over the top in terms of wanting to control things

You have to realize that he is not working with his recruits yet (for the most part). A few years will tell the real story. He's doing exactly what he should do for now...IMO

[jonriv]

I know it probably does not look like a great example now, but the Paterno era Penn State teams were run in a similar way. They were also very good(before joe got too old). My step brother was ther on a masters fellowship( he was a a TA). He was shocked that players ALWAYs attended class and that the coaching staff kept track

Obviously attendance is different in season, but the coaching staff must take an interest in the academic success of their players. Will it turn off some recruits, perhaps. It certainly should interest the parents. IMO some of the poor behavior seen in the NFL over recent years is a direct effect of undisciplined college programs