In a time when news spreads more quickly than it ever has, (this very vague statement is deemed quite necessary by the author), it seems the same news is recycled constantly and events are hyped at an excessive rate. Point in case, this past summer alone I heard more about Michael Vick's release drama and Brett Favre's
retirement/signing escapades than I've ever heard about any other quarterbacks, whether they had more serious crimes, more interesting career changes, or better stats.
The funniest thing to me about how much I had to hear about these guys was that I was never very interested in either of them; I'm not a Green Bay fan and while I saw a lot of Under Armour ads in the past featuring Vick and noting his incredible ability (for his position) to run the ball, his career just isn't my thing either.
For an example of the absurdist culture I witnessed, at one point this summer Michael Vick was headed home from prison in a motorcade. On this particular day I was trying to enjoy some ESPN with friends. We were treated to not only the location of the motorcade as it traveled, but also its list of planned stops, explanations for those stops and a live broadcast from his intuitively empty house. Now tell me that you care about any of that and do it with a straight face. Therefore and as anyone who is reading this article with half an eye open or brain cell operating can imagine, I was incredibly dismayed to hear about things that were even less
interesting to me than these football players actually playing football, which I've exerted myself to explain isn't even that appealing to me. Now to my real point, which concerns our enduring RedHawk football team. I cannot stop hearing about Coach Haywood. I hear about what he's like, what he wants, how he runs practice, what he'll do for our record and I hear it from all angles. This is in no way meant as an attack or statement of disapproval for the man, in the same way I wasn't attacking the careers of the great Brett Favre or the questionable Michael Vick but rather stating a misuse of reporting and an excessive amount of focus.
In my own way and from my own views, I am attempting to do Haywood a service. I'm trying to point out that the bar can be set too high for anyone, and although this is not meant to sound pessimistic, I'm concerned that this bar should taken down a little just for a couple weeks, and then if everything works out, go ahead and post it sky-high.
Since coming to Miami, Haywood hasn't missed a beat in his attitude or his integration to all things Miami and this is fantastic. What team doesn't want an involved, worthwhile, even pseudo-campus celebrity coach. However, the team hasn't hit even the tip of the season at the time of print, and it's hard to find anyone even coming close suggesting that things might not be perfect.
The hard thing about perfection of course is that it doesn't truly exist. Maybe a perfect season means that a team never loses an entire game, but just as you can find positives in everything so can you find negatives, and even these perfect seasons must involve mistakes, injuries, lost quarters, wasted Gatorade cups and forsaken opportunities. Let's not lose our realism to gain excessive optimism that will do us no service.
We at Miami take pride in our academics and it shows in that we still haven't hit the point of focusing on absolutely ridiculous things like the crimes and ambiguity/indecisiveness of NFL players, but we do need to hone our abilities for when to say enough is enough.
Just like I could talk for years about a good tennis match I played, I understand that I'm a bit egotistical and I'd serve myself and those I speak with better if I stopped mentioning it after any meaningful points had been addressed, so should we now ease our talks of the potential greatness of our new football coach and maybe discuss other staffing and, in terms of talking football season, we could show a little patience and discuss the actual play of the game.
After all, we should be praying that discussing the actual games will be more interesting than discussing the possible outcomes. Even with the great improvements of communication and the seeming decline in apt focus surrounding sports the point still is the actual play of the game, right? So what I'm saying isn't that we shouldn't talk about Coach Haywood, only that we might show a little bit of temperance. Bring out whatever method keeps us studying for that extra night instead of boozing and holds our eyes open when a teacher couldn't do any less with a lecture. This guy's already pretty popular, pretty capable and sounds pretty nice although I haven't had the pleasure of meeting him yet.
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I suggest we do him a little favor after already paying him plenty of deserved attention and maybe a little extra, and give him a chance before we pile up insurmountable goals and dreaded great expectations. After all, a coach is only one part of the team and even in this great age of communication and recycled news, any good coach will still tell you there's no "I" in team. Don't try to force Coach Haywood to be that "I."
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