I just got done reading this. And I’d just like to call Shotgun on the “Support Tenuta’s Coaching Style Bandwagon” since BlueAndGold.com has apparently taken the driver’s seat in the “Gosh He’s Mean!” clown-car. I wont quote the text because I’m not sure they didn’t mean to keep that article available only to subscribers, but suffice it to say that the author, Todd Burlage, is an unmitigated sissy and thinks that Tenuta’s glorious coaching style might be a bit too harsh. For Football Players. Football Players who play the game of Football. At the collegiate level.

He’s looking into your soul
and knows you couldn’t crack a f-ing egg.

Ugh.

I often call Football the “terrible game.” Not sure if I read that somewhere or what, but it’s a nice, succinct description. And it’s a game that can only be played if the players themselves are, on the field anyway, terrible creatures. It’s not the sport of gentlemen. It’s not the game of kings. It’s 11 guys on one side trying to show 11 guys on the other side that they’re the badder, harder, and more monstrous team. And as such, harsh, physical practices filled with harsh language are de riguer in football from the high school level on up. It’s a game that requires “blood checks” after games and after practices because so many things can hurt on one’s body, and so much adrenaline can course through one’s veins that one can fail to notice ripped off thumbnails, bloody noses, busted lips, or torn ears.

It’s also a game that requires a massive amount of knowledge in order to play well, and that’s what’s really important about Tenuta’s coaching technique, not the language. The language is simply the delivery system by which Tenuta imparts his wisdom on the players. The wisdom is what matters. It’s not as though Tenuta is just yelling out “Bull#$^*” for the hell of it. He’s letting the players know, in no uncertain terms, that what they did was not perfect. Tenuta’s style leaves no room for ambiguity. He knows exactly what he wants out of the players, and the players know exactly what Tenuta wants and whether or not they’re providing the desired result. And every time Tenuta sees what he likes in these practice films, we hear him say “good” or “nice.” Maybe he’s not jumping up and down, exclaiming “yahoo!” and hugging the player that just managed to execute a proper f-ing form tackle, something they should have been able to do since the 8th grade given the fact that most of them were highly-regarded high school players, but he does, in fact, let the players know when they’ve done something correctly. Tenuta’s coaching style is a binary one. Either the player did it right, as he should, and thus might get a “good” or a “nice” if there’s time, or the player screwed up. Either way, the player knows it and Tenuta knows the player knows it. And besides, at this level, when a player does something exceptional, he didn’t do it for his position coach and he doesn’t need to know how happy it makes the position coach. The player makes plays in order to obtain the glory of victory. He makes plays for his teammates and, maybe, his school. His position coach is way, way down on that totem pole.

I find myself sharing this story all the time, and I’ve probably already done so in another post, but I’ll do it again to help explain my feelings on this. If you don’t feel like strolling down memory lane with me, feel free to stop reading here rather than heading beyond the jump: In high school, I was a really quiet, really well-behaved kid with a great academic record and an eagerness to play football. I didn’t want to play football, at the time, for the sake of playing football. I wanted to play football in high school in the southern United States to prove that I could do it at all. That’s because, before I joined the team, I thought I had an inkling of an idea of how tough it could be, and being a teenage boy, I needed to prove to myself and those I perceived actually gave a damn about my place on some imaginary hierarchy that I could handle such a test.

I had no idea how tough it could be. I thought I knew how much it would hurt to get hit, but I didn’t. It hurts a lot worse, even when it’s a hit that doesn’t make everyone watching go “oooooh.” I thought I knew how sore I’d be the day after the first practice, but it turns out you’re only that sore a couple of months into the season. The soreness is far worse after the first day of full-contact practice, and remains that way for the first few weeks. And I had absolutely no idea how foul-mouthed my otherwise reserved coaches (all of whom taught classes I took in school like AP History or Calculus) could be. And I had no idea how much that could shake me.

In my first week of southern, summer football practices, I’d been selected as a gunner on the punt team. At first I thought that was pretty cool because I figured it meant that the coaches felt I could run pretty fast and that I’d make the play on the punt returner. Turns out I was partially right. The coaches felt I could eventually do those things. Also turns out they didn’t feel I was anywhere close to whatever point in time they felt was “eventually.”

On the 10th day of summer full-contact practices, just as the soreness didn’t so much go away as become comfortably familiar, the head coach blew his whistle and called out “Punt Team.” Which meant I had to hustle out on the field, listen for the play-call, then get aligned on whichever side of the field we were aiming the kick. And so I did, and in doing so, I lined up against 2 seniors who’s only job it was to keep me away from the punt returner. And so they did; About 50 times in a row.

On the snap of the ball, I exploded off the line of scrimmage, hoping I could split my 2 opponents, and the opponents went ahead and nearly split me in half. It hurt a bit, but it mostly hurt my pride. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but apparently it was to the head coach because that’s when he began a tirade aimed directly at me that lasted for at least a half hour while we continued to practice punt team. And during that punt team exercise, my name transformed from Matt to the F-word and remained so for the entire practice. The ball would be snapped, I’d try to get down the field to the punt returner, my opponents would plant me into the ground, and then the coach would go off about how we had to do it again, “because F-ing F-er McF-er F can’t get this F-ing thing right.” And as I said, we did it again about 50 times. Which meant everyone else on the punt team had to run down the field at full sprint about 50 times in the August heat along with me, even though they all did their jobs correctly, and even though they all, after about 10 repetitions, hated me completely.

This entire time, my head was spinning. All I wanted to do was get down the F-ing field and tackle the F-ing punt returner so we could stop long enough for me to pass the F out. But we just kept going and going because I, the F-ing F-er, couldn’t get this F-ing thing right. And we continued until one of the assistant coaches pointed out to the head coach that we were about to run over the amount of time our school district mandated for football practice.

That night I went home, and after the shock wore off, I swore to my father that I’d never play football again. My reason: There’s absolutely no excuse for one human-being to speak to another human-being in the manner my head coach had “spoken” to me. My father frowned, sighed, and said, “it’s not golf, ya know.” That’s all he needed to say. The mere fact that my father, a rather quiet and gentle soul, was taking the side of my anti-christ of a head coach was enough to make me realize that I’d had the game all wrong. I only thought I knew what sort of toughness was required by football. My head coach was just ensuring, before I got too involved in their schemes, that I really did understand it. But it’s a lesson that’s hard for anyone to understand if they themselves have not experienced it. A lot of people who get offended by this coaching style only think that the name-calling would never “get to them,” and thus it’s simply a crude behavior with absolutely no benefit. I’m willing to bet anyone who really thinks they could be on the receiving end of such tirades when they were teens without ever being “broken” are pretty naive.

The next day at practice, with the heat sweltering and the annoying-as-hell crickets complaining about it, the head coach blew his whistle and yelled out, “Punt Team!” But he might as well have yelled out, “Let’s see if F-ing McF-er F learned anything from yesterday.” And so I trotted out on the field to begin the exercise all over again.

This time, at least at first, nothing really had changed. The ball would be snapped, I’d run as hard as I could down the field for about 5 or 6 strides, and then my two opponents would plant me into the ground, or into the crowd of players on the bench, or into the Gatorade coolers - whatever was convenient to them. But this time, after repetition 12 or 13, just when I was really starting to get pukey, a funny thing happened - I actually got past my opponents. I didn’t get anywhere near the ball carrier. He was relatively fresh since he hadn’t had much chasing him for about a day and a half, but I did at least give a legitimate pursuit. And as I was jogging back to the line of scrimmage just on habit, the silence was deafening. I wasn’t getting called… anything. Heck, the head coach wasn’t even looking at me. Rather, he was explaining the proper release on a long-snap to the center. We lined up, did it again, I got planted into the players on the sideline, and I got a “G– D— it, F-er. Thought you’d learned your lesson” from the HC. We lined up, did it again, I got past the opponents and even got my hands on the returner long enough for my teammates to finish the play, and, miracle of miracles, the HC yelled out, “Good, Matt. That’s what we want.” No fireworks. No jubilation. Just an acknowledgment that I’d done what was being asked of me.

Now, the tricky thing - the thing I always forget to mention in this story - is that in between every 3 or 4 uses of the “F-word,” I was receiving instructions. Why was it stupid to try to split my opponents? What should I have done with my inside elbow? When the one opponent backed off while the other one came at me, what should I have done? And every time I was being cussed at, I was also getting some helpful hint either from the HC or a quieter assistant.

And let’s be honest, I probably wouldn’t have heard much from the coaches if it weren’t for the F-words in between. I was 14 or 15 at the time, and from about then until maybe 22, I, like so many young men, tended not to really be listening to anyone but the voices in my head. The F-word, if nothing else, served as a little bell to let me know it was time for instruction.

The cussing paid a lot of dividends in game-play too. As I said before, such coaching becomes very binary to a player. You’re either doing it right, or you’re not and you’ll know about it. If the opposition just ripped an outside rush to my side because I took a bad angle, the Pavlovian effect of the cussing allowed my brain to know that, yup, it really was my fault, so I’d probably better not do whatever bone-headed thing it was that I did so that the opponent would have to stop trying to exploit it. But it also really helped when all those aggravating little f-ers on the opposite side of the ball would say some pretty incredible stuff to you, trying to throw off your game. I’d heard so much in practice, it was really rare for an opponent to even get me to hear them, let alone pay any attention to them.

Football is a terrible game played by guys that want to kick the heck out of each other. And steeling your players in preparation for the game doesn’t just involve hammering them physically, but also mentally. And while Mr. Burlage might like to think the “Notre Dame type” of player is too sophisticated for the verbal assaults of Coach Tenuta to be effective, I’d argue that the “Notre Dame Type” will probably receive a great deal of benefit from such a coaching style. It’ll be the most jarring to the “refined” players that Mr. Burlage likes to think play for Notre Dame, and in short order, some of those couth gentlemen of the Fighting Irish just might turn into some mean sons of bitches who can play a little football.

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