It ain't the kids (football)

[hawkeye]

The kids play their hearts out and do what they're told if they want to play. It has to be demoralizing to go out each week and follow the orders of your coaches and come away with an L. It's not just the L, but the way it happens each week. Your coaches tell everybody we're going to fix it and the same kind of things happen again and again.

There's gotta be a change.

[Aggie9195]

I concur!

[aggypryd]

Our special teams are absolutely HORRIBLE!!!!

That's a direct reflection of poor coaching.

There is talent on this squad.

[DOOMS]

I said this a while back about what I felt were the unrealistic expectations people had coming off of last season:

Even if the coaches are good at coaching a particular area, they are almost all overworked and/or out of their league. So they'll just continue to look like bad coaches until somebody does something about it or they get over the learning curve.

We have the least experienced staff in the worst conference in I-AA. Howard's head coach is less experienced but his staff has experience and he ain't head coach and o.c. combined. By rights it should take years before this staff could rightfully be expected to learn to work successfully within the constraints placed upon them. There really is no reason to expect them to do better than they are because the only one that had a half-decent resume coming in was the o-line coach.

What we have ended up with was not wholly surprising. Anybody expecting a rapid turnaround just isn't paying attention. There are numerous other schools in this conference and every one of them expects more. And none of them even bothered to let us play them close. Unless our athletes are that much superior to theirs (and they aren't) we really don't even have the right to expect more. We are playing teams with more experienced and less-overburdened coaching staffs across the board.

I said when Fobbs was hired if he got good solid coordinators or he realized after a year he needed to take a pay cut and get an offensive coordinator my opinion on his hire would change. I wouldn't necessarily think he was a better coach nor do I think he's a worse coach because he neglected to do so. I would think he had enough common sense and humulity to say "this ain't working." If he's not quick enough on the draw to make the changes everybody knows he needs to make, how quick on the draw will he be getting in a decent play on fourth and one with the game on the line? George Small quick or Jim Tressel quick? Probably not even George Small quick. Not yet anyway. That's probably another three seasons of coaching experience off.

Given my understanding of the situation, the experience of the coaches and how last season turned out, to me a fair expectation is 0-11 with some nail biters. Anything else is gravy. I ain't calling for heads anymore because nobody picks up the phone. I hope for far better than I'll accept but in looking at the situation to me it's not fair to expect huge leaps and bounds (i.e. 2-9).

That's really it in a nutshell. If we look as bad the rest of the year as we did last night then there will have to be some changes. George Dubya Bush would make changes in the face of this level of duress.

I'm absolutely embarassed right now. Financial scandals, low grad rates, fighting over a logo whose sanctity you don't even bother to protect a mere five days later, 0 and forever...

[JeffAggieFan]

You can't blamed coaching for a muffed put and on kickoff. The guys just dropped the ball. The punt was big because we had stopped Norfolk and was leading 13-10. Fobbs made some great calls in the first quarter and Ferguson was running hard but if we can get Herb to step up.

[DOOMS]

You sure can't blame coaching for a muffed punt. But I guess we forgot that even after that punt we took the lead.

I guess we can't blame coaching for being shut out the whole second half either.

[Aggie77]

I'm starting to like the LC Cole idea now!

[JayBee]

Hell, after last night's 2nd half, I'm blaming coaching on everything!

[Aggie77]

I'm even open to a "Guest Coach" every week. You know, have a guy come in run the team Sunday through Saturday. Have another guy come in the next Sunday.

[TOPPDOGG]

I'm probably one of the last supporters of Coach Fobbs. My support of him is more about what happens to the program if we fire yet another coach, and much less about Coach Fobbs' merit or ability. A better coach and coaching staff would have yielded at least a few wins over this past season and a half.

If we fire this man, kids will leave the program. We're going to be hit next year with scholarship penalties anyway. Relationships with recruits, parents and high school coaches will be further damaged.

There is improvement. I think we need to give the man another year to see if he can't get us to a respectable level. If not, then I think we can fire the man with a clear conscience.

[Aggie77]

How about a Coaches Roundtable? We bring all former Aggie Coaches back (maybe a fan, we raffle that spot off each week), during practice they sit at a big roundtable on the sidelines and bark out instructions for drills and etc. On gameday they do a similar thing from the roundtable, this time it's the offense and defensive plays. They can do it by commitee or take turns. To make it interesting for the fans they can broadcast the their final decision our the stadium's PA system.

[JeffAggieFan]

I agree 100% Topdogg.; Dooms kids got to start making play. I believe if we had Campbell at QB we would have beaten NCCU and Praire View.

[aggypryd]

jeffaggiefan said:

You can't blamed coaching for a muffed put and on kickoff. The guys just dropped the ball. The punt was big because we had stopped Norfolk and was leading 13-10. Fobbs made some great calls in the first quarter and Ferguson was running hard but if we can get Herb to step up.

Oh, but you can...

The Aggies performed like they weren't prepared. And that's a direct reflection of poor coaching.

You mean to tell me that out of all the scholarship athletes we have on the team, no one can catch a kickoff or a punt?

[Aggie77]

Speaking of the kids, how about player coaches? What have we got to lose. They can recruit their friends, the $500k in salaries would be saved. We could bring back Mens Tennis and give more money to the basketball programs. Plus, it would be obvious that it’s not coaching. To get fans in the stands we could invite 10 to 15 bands on gameday to play throughout the game like a Mega Band Fest. We schedule times to do the wave, reverse wave, slow-mo wave, Section, Section, Section 1, etc. Man we could have a good time.

[Striktly]

I really feel like our football team is only prepared to compete, but not prepared to win. L's & W's are usually obtained based upon what you're accustomed to. I don't have anything against Fobbs, but I'm not confident that he knows how to influence them to do what it takes to win.