Apathy is a program killer. You’ve heard it before. The signs of apathy have been covered at length. Players stop giving a hundred percent. Losing doesn’t seem to bother members of a team that much. The losses begin to get easier for the fan base to accept. You begin to hear players say “we’ve just got to keep our heads up.” Fans reply with “I probably won’t even watch the game.”
There is nothing that creates a culture of apathy faster than not allowing athletes to earnestly compete for positions.
Apply this to everyday life. Most of us have been in situations where a boss gives an assignment to a less suitable coworker. It is simply a matter of time before the project collapses and the organizational talent is called in to clean up the mess. By that time, if the project is salvageable the final product is typically less viable than it should be. Lost time is money.
From everything we are hearing, Lane Kiffin is ready to make up for lost time. He delivered a singular message to his new football team to get his point across. If you want to compete on Saturdays you have to show me something on the practice field. Every position on the field is up for grabs.
If the athletes on this team take him seriously, and they truly came to college to play football, this should immediately improve the moral of the playmakers on this team. It should also be an apathy killer.
Much has been made of Kiffin’s recruiting run over the last week. The Tajh Boyd situation ruffled a few feathers. It tells me one thing about Coach Kiff. He is ready to take these players to football 101. If he doesn’t get his quarterback in this recruiting class, he is confident that he can teach one of the current quarterbacks progressions, reads, and quick decision making.
With all the talk of freshman coming in and immediately competing, Kiffin is going to need an all star teaching staff. He is also going to need a great deal of patience with this young bunch. If it is done correctly Vol fans should expect immediate improvement on the offensive line, in the receiving corps, and most importantly from the quarterback position.
We will never really know what the Vol’s have been taught over the last several years. The decline in the football program has made it painfully obvious that there has been a lot of “going through the motions” on the practice field. That ended after the whipping that UT laid on the UK wildcats.
Going forward, if Lane is ready to open these positions up he is going to slowly strangle the apathy that has surrounded this program recently. More importantly, it proves that he is ready to come in and teach this team how to win. If he is consistent in his philosophy of putting his best athletes on the field, UT will be on the road to championships within the next few years.
By this time next year hopefully Volnationals will be familiar with some new playmakers in Orange. Go Vols!
1 response to “Guitar Shots to the Head: Kiffin is Ready to Teach”
A very good blog, Lexvol! Your writing is very professional and clearly presented, and the subject is right on the mark.
One thing though. I’m thinking Kiffin will bring about a faster success than winning championships within the next few years. He better show marked improvement next year, and by year two, he better put us in the top ten at least. Maybe you think that’s a little too much to expect? It can be done as it’s been done many times before with other teams, and it can be done here.