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Taking Names and Keeping Score
There are some of you reading this right now who might wonder why the coach and now I would focus on such an obvious statement. Sure any team that advances from one week to the next must survive the game they are in before they can advance. After all that's not exactly rocket science. But before you write the coach and myself off as simple and redundant in our thinking you might want to consider that there could be a little more to it than initially meets the eye and things that directly affect every team's chance of advancing. First let's consider expectations. As anyone who is truly knowledgeable about high school football will tell you, any team that has aspirations of winning a state championship must first have coaches and players who believe in themselves and expect to win every time they step on a field. They then must take those beliefs and expectations and support them with their preparation and execution. If they do, more times than not it turns into a formula for success. And as the old saying goes one success leads to another, leads to another and so on. That's all well and good but success can also be a two edged sword. Too much success sometimes becomes a breeding ground for over confidence and complacency which in turn could lead to having expectations that aren't supported with proper preparation and execution, a trap that the greatest of teams would have a hard time escaping. Next let's consider injuries. With football being a full contact sport and one that is very physical by its nature, it goes without saying that every team must prepare themselves for the inevitable likelihood that at some point during the season there will be a player or players who will have to be taken out of the line up because of an injury. Unfortunately it seems the injuries always come at the most inopportune times such as late in the year or in the playoff season when a team can least afford to loose the players. That's one reason coaches talk so much about depth and spend so much time trying to develop it. Then there are the intangibles. What do I mean by intangibles you might ask? I am talking about a team that relies heavily on speed and quickness finding themselves suddenly faced with torrential rains that make the playing surface well suited for plodders but a night-mare for a race horse. Perhaps it's the sudden onset of a stomach bug that has the majority of a team sick at their stomach five minutes before kickoff. I'm talking about the unlikely and totally unexpected bounces that the oblong sphere we call a football takes. Maybe it's the lights in the stadium going off in the middle a potential game winning drive and staying off just long enough for the momentum the team on offense had to slip away. Of course we can't leave out the possibility of human error. It may come at any time and from the least likely places. Maybe it's the greatest quarterback in school history and the valedictorian of his class losing track of the downs and spiking the ball to stop the clock on fourth down. Maybe it's a celebration penalty that takes a team out of extra-point range for a kick that could win the game. It could be an official who is out of position ruling a pass in the end zone incomplete when the receiver clearly had possession of the ball and one foot down in bounds. It could be a bad snap, a mishandled punt, jumping off sides, and so on. Last but certainly not least is the fact that everybody playing in the playoffs has the same goal and most if not all of them are a good team that also expects to win and will play the game accordingly. When you take all things into consideration it's really not hard to understand why survive and move on are the buzz words for the first four rounds of the playoffs. Let's hope all of our favorite teams can do just that and be in Birmingham four weeks from now playing for a State Championship. Until next time..........................be safe!
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