Bag of Mail

Strength Coaches Are Celebrities Now



The new column is up at FanHouse. Enjoy.

On Friday I sat down to do a radio show here in Nashville with my friend Chad Withrow. As we were going on the air, ESPN brought in a reporter to discuss a seismic story breaking in the college football universe on the televisions hanging above us. Tennessee was firing its strength and conditioning coach, Mark Smith.

Seriously, this was the story. We were about to go on the air in Nashville and we weren't going to lead with this story, but ESPN was. A year-round sport demands controversy, even if there's no real controversy.

If you've ever doubted how much the Internet has changed college football, this was a tipping point of epic proportions.

The nation's largest sports voice was reporting on the firing of a man the average Tennessee fan couldn't even name. But the fact that the average Tennessee fan didn't know his name wasn't the story. It's come to this, no one associated with a major college athletic program is anonymous anymore. The universe of sports knowledge has expanded so fast most of us have forgotten what sports used to be like. In fact, it's a cliche to talk about the dumbing down of America, but think about it for a moment, how much more sports knowledge about your favorite teams do you actually know today compared to 10 years ago?

Put it this way, how many assistant coaches on your favorite college football team could you have named a decade ago? I'll be honest, I didn't know the majority of the staff. I knew the offensive and defensive coordinators, and I would have recognized the names of the other guys, but I wouldn't have been able to place them at their correct positions. And I would have hardly known any position coaches of other SEC teams. Be honest, you didn't either. Fast forward 10 years and assistant coaches are stars, pocketing big salaries. What's even more ridiculous is that we have opinions about our assistant coaches now. There are guys we think are particularly strong and guys we think are particularly weak. I've accepted all that.


Pictured above is noted poonhound Lance Thompson.

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Posted by Clay Travis at 1:16 PM

2 Comments:

Anonymous vbs said...

Is the link busted? Not seeing it searching by author either?

May 26, 2009 3:53 PM  
Blogger Clay Travis said...

It should be fixed now. FanHouse had a minor eruption yesterday in blog posts.

Let me know if it's working now.

Just finished a post on SEC coaches that should be up in a bit as well.

May 27, 2009 10:55 AM  

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