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 Coaching, parity helped lift Aggies
Posted: Wednesday September 22, 1999 11:29 PM
To submit a question, click here. Most people were shocked by the Wisconsin loss to Cincinnati. But what about New Mexico State going into Tempe and spanking Arizona State in its back yard? New Mexico State plays in the Big West Conference. Just last year, the Sun Devils were a preseason Top 5 team and had both QB Ryan Kealy and Heisman candidate J.R. Redmond returning. This was such a big win that before the team could even return home, Aggies fans broke into the stadium and tore down the goalposts. To be able to pull it off says worlds about what coach Tony Samuel and his staff have done there. What he did was assemble a bunch of former Nebraska players who wanted to get into coaching but couldn't penetrate the regime in Lincoln. And while a lot of the big-time college coaches are struggling with scholarship limits and kids who aren't getting enough playing time to keep them happy, there are coaches like Tony Samuel jumping up and down saying, "Come to our school. We can guarantee you playing time right away." You know what? It's great for college football. Who would have thought Title IX -- which decreased the scholarships -- would actually benefit college football? As for the Aggies, the talent level has increased somewhat, but Samuel told me the main thing is actually getting these guys to believe they can win. What separates great coaches form average coaches is that great coaches get average players to believe they're actually pretty good and can get it done every week. I know, because he was my position coach at Nebraska! He took a small-town kid out of Iowa and actually made me believe I could attain things I had no idea I could attain. In fact I told him again yesterday when I called to congratulate him, "Thanks for the Butkus, coach!" In all honesty, Samuel's not going to be there very long. With the number of big-time programs struggling already in September, look for Samuel and his staff to be highly sought-after for a big-time Division I post this off-season. Out of this week's mailbag, it would be no exaggeration to say two-thirds of the questions involved this former Husker's take on the news coming out of Nebraska this week. So I had to choose one.
If you were the coach of Nebraska, how would you react to an upset and unsatisfied starting I-back? Would you try to calm him down or give him his release from his scholarship?
Frank Solich absolutely made the right decision regarding DeAngelo Evans. As a head coach, you have a difficult task but a necessary one of making sure the players understand that you run the ship. If you leave a DeAngelo Evans on your team who speaks out against you, they can end up becoming a disease in your locker room. They become a real distraction. There were issues even before this about DeAngelo Evans that were never, ever discussed publicly. This team will be better off without him on the team.
Do you think the Notre Dame glory days are gone for good?
I don't think the Irish glory days are gone, but what people have to understand is that 10, 20 years ago, when there were no limits on scholarships, Notre Dame could go out and horde the top players. Now, restrictions have just evened the playing field. The Irish continue to play one of the toughest schedules in the country week in and week out, and it's shown up. It's not the time to panic, it's not like the program's gone down the tube. They lost a coupe close games. There is great young talent in the freshman and sophomore classes, and let's face it, the team could easily be 3-1. It's a down year for them, but with such high expectations, if you're going to continue to play Michigan and Michigan State each year, you're going to continue to struggle.
Why hasn't Chafie Fields from Penn State gotten any Heisman attention? He has numbers comparable to Peter Warrick's, and in the two biggest games of the year so far (Arizona and Miami) he has come up with huge touchdown plays.
Fields didn't get the attention at the start of the season, but believe me, people know who Chafie Fields is. You're right about one thing -- to be a Heisman candidate, you have got make the big plays in the big games, like Fields has done. He's just had further to go than anyone else because he wasn't on the list at the start of the season. No one thought of him because Joe Paterno runs such a conservative offense normally, but if he continues to run the reverses and call the big plays, Fields is going to be top five before you know it.
At my age it is almost embarrassing to ask, but to what does the term "redshirt" refer?
It's not a dumb question, Glen. You're the kind of person we want to draw into college football. I didn't know what a redshirt was either when I went to Nebraska. When Tom Osborne asked me to redshirt as a freshman, I though that meant I'd have to wear a red shirt in practice every day. But the NCAA allows you five years to play four. So at any point in those five years, you can redshirt, meaning you take a year where you practice with the team but are not eligible to play. That's why you hear about many freshmen redshirting their first year, because young guys need a year to learn the system. Also, if someone gets injured before the third game of the season, they can save a year of eligibility by redshirting.
Do you think that Army (or Navy for that matter) can ever regain prominence on a consistent basis? Army finished the '96 season in the top 25 but has quickly dropped down to the sub-.500 level.
I don't know why not. They're really no different than any other college program -- trying to convince young men to come to their school and play football, and trying to get stability out of a head coach. One of the things that's made Air Force so good is Fisher DeBerry has been there so many years. As a football payer, it takes a much higher level of commitment to go to those schools because of all the extracurricular things they have to deal with. But regardless of their record, you can always count on those schools to be competitive and play you tough for 4 quarters, which is what football all about.
Why don't college coaches play more kids, not just more QBs, both in the general course of the game and when the outcome has already been decided? The rule limiting the number of players dressing out to 60 is bad enough, but not routinely playing the 60 is a disgrace.
That's a good question. I think some schools do, like Florida. You look at the first two weeks, statistically, they were horrible on defense, but their coordinator John Hoke told me they literally played all of their players. So it was kind of deceiving to people like me, who picked against them going into the Tennessee game. If you're a smart coach, you do play all of your players, because you never know when you're going to have to call on one of those kids because of injury. The programs that win a lot do play the young kids because they have a chance to when they're winning big, but when you're just trying to keep the game close, you don't have the luxury.
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CNN/SI college football analyst Trev Alberts answers your questions weekly during the season, including on-air during 