The #FootballFam Mailbag: Will Charlie Strong Have Enough Time, And Are Shorts Okay?

charlie strong
Getty Image

What’s your favorite part of the fall? I don’t mean football or anything like that. About the season itself. There’s this harvest, death, rebirth, start anew thing I really appreciate. Whatever is pulling you down, shed it, steel yourself against the winter, then use the spring to start over. There’s a beauty in that, and as I watch the leaves fall every year, I try to pick one thing I want to do differently when the next year starts.

The fall is my chance to think, consider, decide, and then really put myself in a position to make that thing stick while I’m shivering away the next few months.

Okay, see, now we’re talking about football again, aren’t we? Most teams are who they are now. There’s still room for growth, but not enough to turn a season around if it has gone south already. There’s no way in-season to have enough “Come to Jesus” moments to turn your team into something else entirely. So you’re stuck with it, at least until the new year starts, and the spring brings with it change (and new players in the form of Signing Day). Hopefully you like what you see.

Anyway, let’s answer some questions.

@NEOhioSports: Will Charlie Strong make enough progress in installing his process to change the Texas atmosphere before an alumni revolt?

Charlie Strong is up against it, if only because of the athletic director situation. Now that Steve Patterson is out of the way, Texas is going to hire someone else to run the show, and that someone is going to be a strong personality who the Longhorns believe can get things right. They can’t afford to screw up again. And that person may believe in what Strong is doing – or that person will want their own guy entirely. And that’s something Strong doesn’t have a whole lot of control over.

The best thing he – and Texas football – can do is try to salvage the season with as many positives as possible. They’re not coming in the form of wins, but staying out of the news for negative reasons, identifying tangible improvements that are made by the end of the year, and trying to pull out at least one big upset that fans can point to as a sign things are turning around. Wins in recruiting wouldn’t hurt. Strong’s a solid football coach. He’s been well respected everywhere he goes, and he did a heck of a job at Louisville. But this was never going to be an overnight success. Texas wasn’t move-in ready. He’s had to gut the house and start making serious renovations. The good news is the bones are terrific, and this can be a beautiful program again. But will Charlie Strong have enough time to make it his own?

@PatWODonnell: We’ve had five weeks — which fanbase has suffered the most this season already and what is their ceiling?

Suffering is an interesting term, and I’m curious how Pat wants me to identify it. Is it a team that has lost in heartbreaking fashion a bunch of times? (Hello, Arkansas.) A team that’s not necessarily living up to its potential? (Georgia Tech, perhaps.) A really, really bad football team? (UCF wins here.) Or a team that’s used to doing so much that just isn’t who they used to be? (Oregon.)

From a sheer suffering, as in, hope turned to running the risk of becoming dead inside, I have to go with the Volunteers. I wanted such great things for them this year, and they’re a couple plays away from being a real contender. There’s real suffering there because there was something to suffer from. And you’re left with things like this:

That said, the ceiling is high because they were so close to having a special season. The foundation (bricks and such) is in place, and there are some really talented players here. I’m not saying Tennessee is going to beat Georgia and Alabama back to back and suddenly run the table, but they might be able to get hot at the end of the year and enter next year with a lot of momentum. The problem? We’ve heard that refrain before, and they might be right back where they started next year the second a soul-crushing loss happens. But I don’t want that for them. They deserve true happiness, like we all do.

@ChrisBunn21: Is Duke’s defense enough to win the Coastal and, maybe, possibly, the ACC?

It very well might be! The Coastal is a delicate ecosystem and it’s hard to figure out what will survive when certain elements are introduced into the mix. Too much oxygen, and North Carolina could somehow find a way to come out on top. A little less rain, and oh hey, look at Pitt. What a beautiful Pitt we have!

I’d say Duke has the best chance because of the team the Blue Devils have built. The defense, as you mentioned, is really dang good. And it keeps them in most games, even the ones where the ground game isn’t going or Thomas Sirk can’t figure it out. Winning the ACC would be a bit tougher as I still think both Clemson and FSU are better overall football teams, but stranger things have happened – in the ACC, no less.

@arobertsg: Is Nick Sabin a lizard man who may slither away from Alabama once they go bad?

I am pretty sure Nick Saban is just a normal human being like everyone else. I can’t predict his motivations or the decisions he’ll make, but he’s a very good football coach who has done great things at Alabama, and he’s one of the best college coaches of all time. We have this thing where guys who are extremely dedicated and successful and singularly focused get harped on for being too focused or too monomaniacal or too process-oriented or too strange, but it’s exactly what makes them so good at what they do in the first place. They obsess and obsess and obsess.

Saban has his quirks, and they’re endearing in a lot of ways, and he has his flaws, and people like to point those out as often as they can. But he’s a complex human being, like many of us are, and I find him fascinating as both a coach and a person. I’d really enjoy the chance to get to know him someday. My guess? His time in Ohio is what made him the way he is. A lot of coaches who have spent time in Ohio have this gene embedded somewhere inside. If I ever do a doctorate, it will be on this subject.

@kylepatrick88: Is football good?

I don’t know the answer to this anymore. It certainly has good things – people like it, it makes them feel good, a team atmosphere is good for kids, and there are a lot of jobs because of football. But there are so many bad things too. It’s a sport so it can’t really be good or bad innately, but I think the way football is constructed from the top down isn’t really good anymore at a variety of levels. It’s maybe too far gone to make any real cataclysmic changes, but it’s worth trying. I want the people who play it to be safe and lead happy lives.

shorts
Getty Image

@ChrisMottram: Why don’t some people like shorts?

This is a good question. Some people just like wearing pants. And that’s okay. The thing that I get upset with is when people who hate shorts decide they have a right to tell everyone who does like shorts they’re the ones who are wrong. This is a thing that happens with a lot of stuff in general. People can have an opinion. Opinions are great. But most of us don’t want to hear your opinion about everything all the time, especially when your opinion is “what you are doing is different from me and I disagree and not only do I disagree but I want to tell you I disagree and that you are stupid for not sharing my belief.”

If you like a band, good for you! Even if I don’t like that band, I’m glad you get enjoyment out of something. If you like a certain way of preparing a food, cool! It is good you found something you like doing.

Instead, so often people want to snipe at others based on their personal taste because it’s different from their own. Why? What’s the benefit here? If you want to wear shorts, wear them. There’s so many bad things happening all the time, the last thing we need to do is stop ourselves from enjoying what we enjoy or try to stop others from enjoying what they enjoy as long as they’re innocuous things like shorts or ketchup on a hot dog. Just live your life the best you can, and hope the person next to you is doing the same. But what do I know, I just make bad puns on the internet.

×