This board is, well, dying it seems. Several of you are mentioning the complaints and are stating your disdain for what used to be a lively and active discussion forum. I figured maybe I would try to spice things up and, the best way I know how, is to ask questions that might make people think. Or fight. Or, if nothing else, give the clown another forum to spout incomprehensible one-liners at.
So, my question: SHOULD AN 0-10 TEAM BE ALLOWED TO KEEP ITS COACH?
Mind you, I don't have a dog in this fight, but I am admittedly a young coach always looking for my next opportunity so, this time of year, I start looking around for the bottom-dwellers, the teams that might be looking to throw some new blood into the system, and that starts with the 0-fers.
As mind-boggling as it is, all the factors that have to slide into place, all the dominoes that have to fall at the exact right time, it seems crazy to think that ANY team can go undefeated. In a sport with an oblong ball that can bounce any which way, it seems unlikely that it can or even will bounce your way all the time. But we understand that the bounce of the ball is mostly luck, and the skill it takes to go undefeated takes a LOT more than just luck. That said, I find it just as unlikely that a team can't get even ONE ball to bounce its way. What stars must align? What horrific turns of fate have to happen for you to get defeated EVERY time? You can't luck-up and beat a mediocre team at your home on one of their "off" nights?
The truth is that the only reasonable explanation for an 0-10 season (or at least the only one that can resonate at least some truth in all sports) is that the little things that make a good team "good" are the same things that get ignored in the winless scenarios. In researching this, I came across three such teams in three different scenarios. Lakewood (Sumter), St. James (Horry), and Lower Richland (Richland) High Schools each posted the infamous mark of 0-10 this season. Each school, however, seems to have reached that valley in a different way.
Lower Richland is on year-one of their new coach. Coach Daryl Page spent several of the last few years trying to do SOMETHING with the Diamond Hornets, to no avail. Coach Page is a highly respected coach and a good football mind, and he had to have felt some frustration leaving that program without having turned it around. His replacement (whose name escapes me, forgive me) has had one year in the saddle to fix something that Page couldn't do in four. For him, though 0-10 is far from acceptable, it is at least something that is understandable. But what are the expectations moving forward? Will Lower Richland be satisfied with a 1-9 season next year, just to show growth?
St. James is a different monster altogether; they replaced their head coach in 2014 with Coach Robby Brown, an interim that continued on to take the job full-time. Last year, Maxpreps posted a respectable 7-3 turnaround for the Sharks. This year, 0-10. Lakewood High School hired Coach Brian Jackson as the head coach in 2015; in two years he has gone 1-9 and 0-10, respectively. In the case of St. James, a respected coach earned the job as an interim, put together a respectable 2015, and then the bottom inexplicably fell out. For Lakewood, two years has produced one victory and almost zero results.
I'm not picking on these schools or their coaches; they are simply a microcosm of programs in disrepair. They are each in 4A, each winless. From A through AAAAA ball, there are 10 total schools claiming winless resumes. For each of those schools (and, frankly, the innumerable 1-win teams that are nearly just as fruitless), how do you manage to be THAT bad? More importantly, how do you justify maintaining a coach who would allow a program to get that bad? In what situations do you justify keeping a coach, and it what alternatives do you fire that coach?
Looking for some real, intelligent, focused debate here. Feel free to agree or disagree with me here, but I ask no personal shots or "trolling." Let's try and spark some interest on this forum again, eh?
So, my question: SHOULD AN 0-10 TEAM BE ALLOWED TO KEEP ITS COACH?
Mind you, I don't have a dog in this fight, but I am admittedly a young coach always looking for my next opportunity so, this time of year, I start looking around for the bottom-dwellers, the teams that might be looking to throw some new blood into the system, and that starts with the 0-fers.
As mind-boggling as it is, all the factors that have to slide into place, all the dominoes that have to fall at the exact right time, it seems crazy to think that ANY team can go undefeated. In a sport with an oblong ball that can bounce any which way, it seems unlikely that it can or even will bounce your way all the time. But we understand that the bounce of the ball is mostly luck, and the skill it takes to go undefeated takes a LOT more than just luck. That said, I find it just as unlikely that a team can't get even ONE ball to bounce its way. What stars must align? What horrific turns of fate have to happen for you to get defeated EVERY time? You can't luck-up and beat a mediocre team at your home on one of their "off" nights?
The truth is that the only reasonable explanation for an 0-10 season (or at least the only one that can resonate at least some truth in all sports) is that the little things that make a good team "good" are the same things that get ignored in the winless scenarios. In researching this, I came across three such teams in three different scenarios. Lakewood (Sumter), St. James (Horry), and Lower Richland (Richland) High Schools each posted the infamous mark of 0-10 this season. Each school, however, seems to have reached that valley in a different way.
Lower Richland is on year-one of their new coach. Coach Daryl Page spent several of the last few years trying to do SOMETHING with the Diamond Hornets, to no avail. Coach Page is a highly respected coach and a good football mind, and he had to have felt some frustration leaving that program without having turned it around. His replacement (whose name escapes me, forgive me) has had one year in the saddle to fix something that Page couldn't do in four. For him, though 0-10 is far from acceptable, it is at least something that is understandable. But what are the expectations moving forward? Will Lower Richland be satisfied with a 1-9 season next year, just to show growth?
St. James is a different monster altogether; they replaced their head coach in 2014 with Coach Robby Brown, an interim that continued on to take the job full-time. Last year, Maxpreps posted a respectable 7-3 turnaround for the Sharks. This year, 0-10. Lakewood High School hired Coach Brian Jackson as the head coach in 2015; in two years he has gone 1-9 and 0-10, respectively. In the case of St. James, a respected coach earned the job as an interim, put together a respectable 2015, and then the bottom inexplicably fell out. For Lakewood, two years has produced one victory and almost zero results.
I'm not picking on these schools or their coaches; they are simply a microcosm of programs in disrepair. They are each in 4A, each winless. From A through AAAAA ball, there are 10 total schools claiming winless resumes. For each of those schools (and, frankly, the innumerable 1-win teams that are nearly just as fruitless), how do you manage to be THAT bad? More importantly, how do you justify maintaining a coach who would allow a program to get that bad? In what situations do you justify keeping a coach, and it what alternatives do you fire that coach?
Looking for some real, intelligent, focused debate here. Feel free to agree or disagree with me here, but I ask no personal shots or "trolling." Let's try and spark some interest on this forum again, eh?