Women's Club Soccer

Playing a sport at Davidson takes a certain kind of personality. It demands intricate time management, dedication, and a love for the game that will most likely end after graduation. The Davidson life is rigorous by most accounts and the demands of the athletic win/lose mentality can often be quite high. However, despite these perils, many Davidson students undertake an athletic commitment in their four years here. This commitment can range from being a scholarship athlete with year-long training and dedication to a backup on a Freshman flickerball team. Most people at this school try to understand the beauty of competition, teamwork and sportsmanship. Throughout the rest of the year, the Davidsonian sports section will periodically cover the pursuits of all of our student-athletes, from intramurals to club sports to the varsity. This week we cover the Club Soccer team.

In Davidson club sports, it is all about numbers. If a team doesn’t have enough players, they can’t have practices and they can’t play games. As would be expected, the numbers for club teams are always fluctuating depending on each particular class, who goes abroad and the relative popularity of the sport.

If that is the first criteria for having a successful club team at Davidson, then Club Soccer gets an A for the fall. In the last few seasons, the numbers have been up as the team routinely has over 20 players at any given practice. In some games this year, the team has had to field two different squads in order to allow everyone to play. While preference is given to older players and those who regularly attend practice, the philosophy of Audrey Cundari ’08, the team’s coach and captain, proclaims that this team is about having fun not finding the most talent.

“This is a place for people to just go out there and kick around,” said Cundari. “Obviously we want to compete and play good soccer, but winning isn’t our ultimate goal.”

For many Davidson girls, that philosophy is imminently appealing. The team’s makeup of players is predominantly taken from high school soccer players who decided not to compete on the Division I varsity level. However, within that group there are also former Davidson varsity players as well as girls who hadn’t played the game since middle school. The mix is diverse, but the girls make it work.

“We have an assistant coach/manager in Mark Cebul who really keeps things fun. If a certain drill isn’t working in practice, he switches things up and keeps it lively.”

Another struggle for every club team is the handling of funds. Scheduling roadtrips, buying jerseys and providing food all cost money, and the club teams have to show progress and organization in order to be approved for more moneys.

This year’s Club Soccer team has already played at Virginia Tech and has acquired new jerseys. After starting the season 1-3-1, they will host N.C. State and Wake Forest during Parents Weekend.

Ultimately, Club Soccer provides an environment for girls to still play the sport they love. The infrastructure of the program provides more reliability than any pickup game, but the players don’t have to sacrifice too much in order to gain a lot. For those girls, the game of soccer still goes on, long after they thought it had ended.

College Football: Give it back to the Fans

(published in The Davidsonian, October 4, 2006)

During last Saturday’s football game between Davidson and San Diego, I walked into the home stands 10 minutes before kickoff and sat down amongst an excited group of community families, alums of every age, families of players and coaches and students. Although the stadium filled up, there was room for everyone who wanted to watch the game. Tickets were affordable, and the atmosphere was enjoyable despite the eventual 50-21 outcome.

This scene was quite different from the college football experience of three weeks ago when I went to Death Valley to watch the Clemson-North Carolina game. The entire campus was packed with families and students and boosters, 84,000 strong. There was something very special about being in the midst of so large a social organism rooting for my Tigers.

However, as I look back on that day as compared to Davidson’s homecoming, I wonder whether there wasn’t something missing at Clemson. Or, more specifically, whether there was a little too much of a good thing.

The consensus attitude towards everything in college football these days is that more is better. More facilities, more people, more pageantry, more yardage and more money. As a matter of fact, a lot more money. Over the last decade, revenues of college football have exploded exponentially and universities have become caught up in a spending war to attract recruits.

It doesn’t baffle us when schools like Texas and Michigan pour millions of dollars into stadium renovations every few years, but even schools from smaller conferences are beginning to spend in astronomical increments.

In his Oct. 9 article in ESPN the Magazine, Peter Keating articulates this notion by supplying evidence from various research firms showing no correlation between spending and generating university profits over the last eight years. In other words, expanding facilities and offering a better college football experience isn’t bringing any more money into the program. Perhaps the only real consequence is felt by the average fan, who has steadily had to shell out more and more money for game tickets.

Three weeks ago, I began to realize what kind of institution college football had become. I had to purchase tickets to the game on eBay because the game had been sold out for months. I ended up paying nearly three times the face value, a face value that was already higher than a comparable seat in Bank of America stadium for an NFL game. When did Clemson-North Carolina become such an exclusive affair?

During the game, I noticed around the stadium that students were the only non-VIPs to have seats that didn’t need binoculars. Many season ticket holders are required not only to pay exorbitant prices for mere upper deck seating, but also have to give more and more money to the school’s athletic foundation in order to remain eligible to season ticket purchasing. That money inevitably goes to building more facilities, which only seem to then increase ticket prices.

When one looks at the elite schools of college football, they are not necessarily defined by excessive spending, but rather generations of success. Schools with losing traditions might allocate incredible budgets for college football and still not find success on the scoreboard.

Certainly, facilities and media exposure as a result of spending help to improve recruiting, but sound coaching, principled administration and commitment to success can go a lot farther. Effective investment in meaningful projects is a required tenet of good administration. In that sense, it is not that money has nothing to do with success, it is rather that spending should have consequence and be seen as investment.

In the end, college football should be about the players, the fans, the coaches and the families. All of these groups are benefited by greater access to tickets through principled pricing. The best seats shouldn’t always go to the highest bidder. Universities should spend more money in player development and community building, ensuring that players are actually educated. Finally college football should be about football. I might seem ignorant to believe that players and fans still believe in the spirit of the game. But I saw it exhibited last Saturday at Davidson, and I know that what is good and right always has the power to succeed.

Enough Davidson Sports To Go Around

As evidenced by the expansive number of pseudo-professional sports blogs that are out there right now, a lot of people think that they know a lot about sports. For many years, I have understood there to be an expanding culture of sports "laymen" (those that invest a lot of time and thought in sports without a professional link) that take themselves very seriously when it comes to their opinions about their favorite sports and favorite teams.

This dynamic has progressed from the days of call-in radio shows (which still exist, I think) to internet chatrooms to blogs to reality shows that take ordinary people and make them sports anchors. For many reasons, this reality can be very intimidating to a young amateur who thinks that he has the gumption to try to make this stuff into a living.

I bring up my own personal immersion into the world of sports dialogues to connect to a growing reality surrounding Davidson sports. Although Davidson sports, basketball in particular, are thoroughly behind the curve in terms of media saturation and auxiliary fan involvement, there are some growing trends that I believe that, although they might be common, are not good for Davidson.

As one who is presently involved in the proliferation of Davidson sports media as well as connected to the voices of leadership that are claiming to speak for students and local alumni, I believe that Davidson has become a monolithic entity in many people's minds.

In this light, I look at the Davidson basketball program and the way in which different people and groups tend to see it. There are different groups of students on campus that want to claim ultimate fandom of this "unheralded" team. Last year, student groups attempted to outdo each other with cheers from different parts of the stadium, often refusing to join in with a cheer started by a different group. Different figures of local alumni are often in disagreement over what their team needs to get to the next level. Even the athletic department itself has a particular agenda over how fandom should progress and who should know about Davidson.

Everyone thinks they know what's best for "their" team. They all claim ownership in different ways, whether it's owning season tickets, or starting student fan groups with T-shirts, or riding to so many away games, or even being paid by the school to make the season function. Just like callers on a weekly radio shows, Davidson fans can express different opinions on the message board in everything from "Night with the Cats" to starting lineups to fan conduct.

Usually, I would end this by saying that this is all OK because a plurality of opinions are good for us, and it's helpful to hear everyone else, once in a while. But there is "something in the water" at Davidson. We don't like to think that there is a differing opinion about something we so dearly cherish in a unique way.

Well, perhaps we aren't all that unique after all. Maybe Davidson can get some things wrong sometimes, and maybe we aren't the coolest little school that is so perfect at everything. Maybe there never was a "secret" because it wasn't that important if we told someone.

Davidson basketball and Davidson sports in general will help provide me with distinctive and unforgettable memories of my college life. It is special in that sense. But we need to be careful of making our understanding and opinions be about something so special that we don't accept its differing importance in others. We should all be a little more supportive of that this year, and if we are, we might actually become as special and unique as we have already imagined.

Some Memories Can't Have Asterisks

(published in The Davidsonian, 9/20/06)

Back when I was in high school, I participated in a program called Youth in Government. I acted as a lawyer in a mock court, and had to try several made up cases. As one might imagine, the scope of the cases were limited to only several pages of background and written testimony. As a result, my team learned of a very important strategy that many lawyers use to influence the jury: Say some objectionable things. The judge might strike it from the official record, but the human jury could never get it out of their minds.

It is through this example that I bring up a very important issue in the current national sports scene. What really counts for greatness now? That which we witness, or that which is ultimately kept in the record books?

The developing controversy surrounding Reggie Bush brings this issue to the forefront. Bush and his family are facing allegations that they wrongly accepted over $100,000 in gifts and cash from two marketing agents. While Bush has adamantly declared that he is innocent of the charges, there is some substantial evidence to the contrary.

If this whole thing goes down and Bush is fully implicated, his Heisman and the Southern California national championship could be taken away. However, I will never be able to believe and accept that USC was not the best team in the country for that season. You can take those trophies away from them, but that National Championship season exists in its own right in our memory.

The NCAA has a lot of power, but they can’t control our minds. Not yet anyway.

When pertaining to issues of unrelated grievances, such as illegally taking money, the issue seems relatively cut and dry. Guys like Pete Rose and Reggie Bush might not be upstanding citizens, but they are still incredible athletes. In their own right, their accomplishments affected the sports world in an irreversible way. We might try to have them tainted in the name of justice, but their memory will never be erased.

This argument starts getting a little more hairy when we run into athletes whose “cheating” actually had a direct influence on their athletic accomplishments: Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis and practically everyone in the NFL.

Barry Bonds has hit home runs unlike any in our generation, and yet I’m told that I have to ignore it. It’s kind of not really supposed to count. Or something. As a sports fan, the present conundrum with steroids has handicapped our ability to recognize accomplishment and garner strength in victories and records.

For my part, I still remember watching Bonds’ 73rd home run of the 2001 season. I won’t be able to forget Floyd Landis’ incredible one-day comeback putting him in first place in the 2006 Tour de France. This is like asking me to forget the Bills’ 32 point comeback in 1992 playoffs because Frank Reich and Don Beebe shot up before the game.

Our nation’s sports watchdog institutions need to better understand what they are getting themselves into. Surely it is a noble cause to try to maintain the amateur status of college sports.
However, just last week, the NCAA opened itself up to further problems by having a sense of sympathy. They allowed for the creation of a trust fund for Clemson CB Ray Ray McElrathbey, who had gained custody of his little brother over the summer. McElrathbey is trying to raise his brother in a positive environment and the NCAA ruled that it had no problems with a member institution sponsoring this personal endeavor.

But what if an athlete is married in college and is struggling to support his spouse? What if one has lost all of his familial and personal belongings in a natural disaster? Can an NCAA institution allow an athlete to receive charity then?

Lines are becoming blurred, and our tangible entities, like championships and records, are the only things that we can use as collateral and punishment.

Ultimately, however, all that these institutions can do is to put an asterisk in the record books. In trying to punish the offenders, the sports fans and their culture are also punished. All of a sudden, the historical map of champions and records has become blurred and ambiguous. For all of our passion and support, we, the sports fans, deserve better.

Week 2 Results and Standings

Overall Standings

1. Will 22-10
Chris 22-10
3. Phil 20-12
Suzie 20-12
5. Jenn 16-16


Week 2 Results

Will 12-4
Chris 12-4
Jenn 10-6
Phil 10-6
Suzie 10-6

Week 2 Picks

Week 2 Picks

(S, W, C, P, J) Carolina at Minnesota

(W, C) Buffalo at Miami (S, J, P)

(S, C, J) NY Giants at Philadelphia (W, P)

(S, W, C, J, P) New Orleans at Green Bay

Houston at Indianapolis (W, S, C, J, P)

Detroit at Chicago (W, S, C, J, P)

Cleveland at Cincinnati (S, W, C, J, P)

(S, J) Tampa Bay at Atlanta (W, C, P)

Oakland at Baltimore (W, C, S, J, P)

(S) Arizona at Seattle (W, C, J, P)

(S, C, W, J, P) St. Louis at San Francisco

Tennessee at San Diego (C, W, S, J, P)

(S, W, C, P) New England at NY Jets (J)

(C, J) Kansas City at Denver (S, W, P)

(W, P) Washington at Dallas (C, S, J)

(C, S, P) Pittsburgh at Jacksonville (W, J)

Week 1 Standings

1. Will (10-6)
Suzie (10-6)
Chris (10-6)
Phil (10-6)
5. Jenn (6-10)

NFL Pick'em (Week 1)

For this year's NFL pick em, I have decided to include the picks of several friends of mine to make it more interesting. I hope to find time to publish some more original writings, but this is all I got for now. Here is the key (W=me; S=Suzie Eckl, my Davidsonian co-editor; C=Chris Burton; J=Jenny Jenn; P=Philthy, my roommate)

(S, C, J) Miami at Pittsburgh (W, P)

(S) Baltimore at Tampa Bay (P, W, C, J)

(C) Atlanta at Carolina (P, S, J, W)

(C, W, P) Denver at St. Louis (J, S)

(W) Buffalo at New England (P, C, S, J)

(C, W, P) Philadelphia at Houston (S, J)

(C, W, S, J, P) New Orleans at Cleveland

(C, W, S, J, P) Seattle at Detroit

(S, C) NY Jets at Tennessee (J, W, P)

(S, W, J, P) Cincinnati at Kansas City (C)

(S, W, C, P) Chicago at Green Bay (J)

(S, C, J, P) Dallas at Jacksonville (W)

San Francisco at Arizona (C, W, S, J, P)

(W, C, P) Indianapolis at NY Giants (J, S)

(S, C) Minnesota at Washington (W, J, P)

(W, P) San Diego at Oakland (S, C, J)

A Negative Perception

(published in The Davidsonian, 8/30/06)

Fall is upon us. A new school year has started. The days are beginning to get shorter, and the leaves will soon be turning. For the past 20 years of my life, this has signified one thing: it’s football season. Somehow, that fact always seems to get overlooked at Davidson. Maybe it’s because we don’t have all the pageantry of our neighboring Southern colleges and universities. Maybe it’s because we don’t have to actually go to the football games, but can rather watch them from the union while we do our Saturday afternoon studying. Or maybe it’s because somewhere along the line we collectively agreed not to care about Davidson football.

When Tripp Merritt agreed to become Davidson’s head football coach in the summer of 2005, he knew that there was work to be done. It had been five years since Davidson’s perfect 10-0 season, and a combined record of 5-15 over the last two seasons had created a pall over the program. Merritt knew that his football squad needed to establish a positive image both on and off the field.

“I talk the guys all the time about our image,” said coach Merritt. “There are certain things they should be doing on campus to put this team in a positively light, both academically and socially.”
Last season, Coach Merritt re-ignited the ride-in program where football players had to ride alongside campus police for their nightly patrols. Not only did players garner a greater appreciation for the responsibilities of law enforcement on campus, they were also able to cultivate a greater sense of community and better image.

This season, the ‘Cats will unveil a new helmet design that references the design from several decades ago while still being trendy and energizing. The white helmets with the block D will be a bold statement that this team embraces Davidson’s rich football history while at the same time looking forward and not accepting an image of mediocrity.

“The design harkens back to the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, but it’s also us putting a physical mark on this program and on this campus,” said Merritt. The uniforms serve as physical reminders that Davidson football cares about image and the success that is required to cement that image.

Like all sports at Davidson, Wildcat football has always fought an uphill battle with financial support. Several teams in Pioneer Football League have recently opted to supply scholarships for their players and move up to D-I scholarship football. With every one of our football players essentially being a walk-on, one has to wonder about the success potential for this program. How much can they really achieve?

When major college football is plagued with excessive scandal, bribery, and sanctions, perhaps playing good football for its own sake is good enough.

“Davidson needs to be the beacon for non-scholarship I-AA football,” said Merritt. “Our kids do it because they love the game and the academics. That’s something that is hopeful and appealing in and of itself.”

Underneath all of the talk of image and ideology, Merritt knows that his team will speak for itself when it goes on the field this year. With 15 returning starters from a team that upset Georgetown in its final game last season, the Wildcats look to link their off-field images with on-field improvement.

“You don’t change negative perceptions overnight. We’re just trying to put ourselves out there a little bit at a time.”

If the pre-season confidence and image can translate into victories on the field, those perceptions might be changing more quickly than we thought.

JJ a prospect

Len Kosmalski. Brian Winters. Dell Curry. Could Michael Jordan be next? Everyone knows that Davidson has a tradition of attracting the sons of former basketball players. We just have one of those "coach's sons" type of program. According to this, MJ's son Jeffrey is considering Davidson. This would not be surprising considering the Jordans' ties to North Carolina and now the Charlotte area.

Wouldn't that be something to have MJ show up in Belk Arena. Does he have secret service?

Panthers Preview

The Carolina Panthers started their 2006 season with a 14-13 victory over the Buffalo Bills in front of 62,000 fans at Bank of America stadium on Saturday. Jake Delhomme went 5-6 for 64 yards including a 14-yard TD strike to Drew Carter and two completions to newcomer Keyshawn Johnson. The Panthers' other TD came on a 23 yard interception return by Ken Lucas.

The Panthers are the "trendy" pick to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl this year, and since everyone in North Carolina has written pre-season Panther previews, I figure that I might as well join in.

Much has been made of Jake Delhomme's tendency to have tunnel-vision at key points of the game. With such a foursome of receivers as Smith, Johnson, Carter and Colbert, he will have a hard time justifying not looking to secondary routes. The focus of the passing game this year needs to shed a glance at the tight ends. Marty Hurney has always tried to utilize Kris Mangum and Michael Gaines in deceptive seam routes and late releases that take advantage of zone coverage. With secondaries focused on multiple threats on the outside, the middle of the field could be wide open for these tight ends. Let's hope that Jake can find them.

For the last several years, the name DeShaun Foster has been synonymous with potential, injury, explosiveness, and "maybe this year". With DeAngelo Williams lurking in reserve, the pressure will be on Foster to become a solid NFL running back. However, in this sense I am not using solid in reference to staying healthy. Foster is going to need to continue to hone his ability to be all types of backs in all situations. Last year, he demonstrated fantastic growth in not waiting to juke people in the backfield, but rather diving into holes to take the 4-5 yards that was created for him. If Foster can continue to commit to holes while utilizing his cutback ability on toss plays, the Panthers won't have to worry about bringing in the inexperienced Williams or Eric Shelton to diversify the running game.

On Defense, the Panthers just better not get hurt. The depth isn't really there at linebacker with Dan Morgan being the only remaining starter and Keith Adams being more fit to a special teams slot than a starting weakside linebacker. If Thomas Davis can learn the position the starters will be solid in the Panthers weakest defensive area.

Overall, this group of Panthers better lose some games and early on. The Panthers have never played well as the favorites. They have an underdog mentality. We aren't the Patriots or the Seahawks or the Colts. "We dont have quote stars," Delhomme famously states in the 2003 Super Bowl highlight video. With Steve Smith going first in most fantasy drafts and Keyshawn's "give me the damn ball" fame, this group isn't hidden anymore. Maybe this year they can learn to play as the favorites.

The Business of Basketball, part 2

So we are left with the NCAA. I think that it's pretty apparent to everyone that people like T.J. Gassnola are out to screw our kids and our high schools in return for some power and success. But in the end, as long as parents see him getting their kids signing on the dotted line and helping buy them a few nice things along the way, who are they to argue with the system. Besides, if you can make money, who needs education right?

Well I think that for all intensive purposes, the NCAA has its hands tied when it comes to dealing with people like Gassnola. He is not giving gifts in order to get kids to come to a certain college and who's to say that someone out in the world can't give you money. Plus, the NCAA is already obtaining a reputation for overreaching too much. Just look at Oklahoma's Rhett Bomar. While getting paid money to do a nothing job seems in line for rules violations, there are more than a few whispers out there that maybe we shouldn't tell these kids that they have to live in a bubble and never talk or do anything but study, practice, and play.

The problem is that the culprit in that situation wasn't Bomar, it was the auto dealership. But we can't punish them. All of this is to say that NCAA compliance officers have enough cases on their desk to be worrying about what high school kids are doing.

During the summer, I heard the suggestion of levying policy against coaches who recruit from certain leagues, coaches, sponsors, what have you. One Davidson coach suggested that NCAA coaches shouldn't be able to recruit at these money-tinged summer tournaments. That was quickly rebuffed by the observation that those tournaments are great timesavers for small schools with limited budgets and manpower.

The other approach, or lack of approach, is to do nothing. Where no laws exist, no crimes are committed. It's a free country and if parents and kids choose to go with the sketchy guys who pull them off their high school teams, then that's their problem. Because for so many Americans, especially minorities, basketball is the way out. Basketball can get you the money to get out. Education doesn't even factor into the equation.

This is where we are left with William C. Rhoden's new book: Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete. The post on that one might be long in coming, I have enough books to read already.

The Business of Basketball, part 1

The state of college basketball recruiting has changed immensely in the last decade. With the advent of lightning-fast technology, it has become easier for players to be interested in a wider range of schools, and for schools to have more information on a wider range of players. However, the most important new factor in all levels of American basketball is the growing number of "recruiters" who use money from shoe companies to entice young players to let them be their "agent," so to speak.

Widely thrown into the pot of AAU basketball (in the same way that a soda is called a coke), these teams, leagues and recruiters are becoming the mainstream approach for a high school basketball player to get into college or the NBA. Players join regional teams for summer play where they travel around the country, play at shoe-sponsored tournaments and catch the eyes of college coaches and NBA scouts.

At first glance, the system seems helpful. Coaches at small colleges like Davidson are able to see hundreds of players play in one place at one time. Also, young athletes get to play against top competition and get to travel the country and widen their horizons.

After that, things begin to get iffy. With so much money pouring in from shoe companies to sponsor travel, expenses and gear the line between professional and amateur athlete begins to get skewed. In a recent Boston Globe article by Bob Hohler, he describes the "business" of amateur basketball and lays out the nasty truth of egomaniacal recruiters who claim to represent the interests of young athletes.

These recruiters have become important due to their "connections" and influence and so more and more athletes are committing their souls to summer basketball instead of winter basketball. They routinely skip high school games and practice to travel to winter tournaments with their teams. High school coaches, who used to be able to have so much positive influence on a poorer kid with bad schooling and parenting, are now being replaced by money-hungry recruiters who manipulate and con impressionable kids into making decisions that are ultimately not in their best interest.

These recruiters' financial well-being is directly tied to their ability to find the next LeBron James and convince him to give some money back to their leagues and tournaments. One such coach actually worked in operations for the Boston Celtics and had numerous kickbacks after several of his former players signed with the team. Although this stirred up many NCAA and AAU officials, nothing has been done about it.

Basketball has become a business, there is no doubt about it. However, within that business are organizations like the AAU and NCAA that are still trying to maintain high standards of amateur athletics. The question has become whether these organizations should try to exert more power on things that are ultimately out of their jurisdiction or shore up more isolation with what they can control. Come back for part 2.

Practice shouldn't be hell

I'd like to take a moment and retreat from my recent criticisms of the press and team organizations, as well as my mutterings on social ideologies and talk about a subject that has always been close to my heart: football. I read an article today about how summer camps in the NFL are universally cutting back on practice time and the strenuousness of practices.

Having played football all through high school, I can testify to the mental and physical toll of two-a-day practices. Two and a half weeks with 6 hours of football a day can really wear players down. Although I can only remember two or three season-ending injuries happening in training camp, there were certainly mental prices that were being paid in October and November.

While the NFL is justified in cutting back practice time to preserve player health, high schools should also realize the importance of player psyche. The NFL spends the entire year getting its players in shape and there isn't much difference between a six year vet and a 4 year vet in terms of football knowledge. Players really don't get that much better in those camps.

While high school is different in the improvement aspect, there is certainly more of a psyche factor for 15-18 year olds. After my team lost a heartbreaker in the first round of the playoffs, nearly half of my senior class rolled into the locker room proclaiming that they wouldn't ever have to run sprints anymore. How on earth can you justify having players that could possibly not want to win in the playoffs because they hate practice so much? Now certainly you might say that the team just is full of wimps who don't love the game. But if these guys are skilled and willing to play, there is some responsibility on the coach to get them to love the game. These guys aren't getting paid. They also aren't fully matured. But there has to be a finer line between getting players in shape and making them hate the game they are playing.

I think that a lot of that would emanate from the attitude that once camp begins in the summer, fitness has to be remarketed. Coaches and teams promulgate the sensibility that two-a-days are hell. Football is hell. Somehow in November it will all be worth it. Unfortunately, my teammates had had enough. They didn't care anymore. For that I blame the coach and his approach to the game. Practice has to be informative, skill-building, fit-building and fun. I know it sounds cliche, but watch every football movie on the planet. Practice always looks like hell, but then something happens and it's fun. When it's fun the players magically do better. Somehow that's always lost on people. Maybe because the football gods would curse them as being pussies.

I spent one week at basketball camp this summer and saw all of this play out in little microcosms. Every morning my league of 10-year olds had to go outside in the morning humidity to do basketball drills. The first couple of days involved a good bit of yelling, telling them not to do something, and pushing them to complete the drills. I will be honest and say that their performances were pitiful. By Wednesday, I was trying to be as positive with my group as I could. I made my drills competitive instead of draining. I repackaged the experience for them, while essentially making them do the same things. As a result, my group was throwing better passes, hitting more shots and running harder than any other group out there.

Don't come away from this opinion with the impression that here's another pussy who's sour over having a losing football team, probably being out of shape, and certainly is a lily-livered liberal (don't know why I threw that in there, maybe because of that picture of Kerry not being able to throw a football). Fitness can't always be fun, and yet it is integral to being able to play the game well. But in practice situations, fitness has to be re-packaged and re-integrated. Players shouldn't spend the entire practice scared at how many sprints they will have at the end. When that's the case, they will never practice loose and pick up the skills that the scrimmages and drills are meant to teach. When coaches can establish a different mental approach to training - especially with younger players - they will be able to reap better results from their guys.

World Cup Final


The World Cup that supposedly changed everything is finally over. For the last month, Bono has come on commercials and previews and told us how much this mattered. On Sunday, over a billion people simultaneously watched the World Cup final. That is more viewers than any event in the history of the world. An excellent game that was marred by an outburst of anger by Zidane, the World Cup final crowned Italy in PK's and brought soccer to the US for good. With U2 ringing them in, the United States has finally joined the rest of the world. We needed it to be flashy, and we needed it to be self-important like everything that is American. And in many ways the World Cup was all that, and in many ways it wasn't. Somehow it was simply two lines of men that walked onto a field with shirt, shorts, cleats and one ball. We didn't need ESPN to have high-tech graphics to make these warriors into pseudo-men. Highlights of their bending shots and incredible moves did that for the editors. They didn't need for the stadium to blow up in smoke before the game, everyone knew how important it was. I just wish we didn't have to wait four more years.