ESPN article on the MAC

moneymaker02 · Post by **moneymaker02** » Sun May 20, 2007 9:28 pm

haha i love the guy on crutches, thats classic

kdog27 · Post by **kdog27** » Sun May 20, 2007 11:27 pm

h2oville rocket wrote:What exactly IS the "South Florida" attitude?

The one I know is rudeness

Redwingtom · Post by **Redwingtom** » Mon May 21, 2007 8:21 am

Sour grapes from a quitter. Get over it!

WAAAAAAAAAW, the coach yelled at my boy! And I suppose coach's shouldn't make players run Michigan's, or a lap when they mess up?

I certainly don't see ANY programs rushing to pick up these two tremendous talents. And BTW, wouldn't telling them they had the potential to be All-Americans be considered building their confidence????

h2oville rocket · Post by **h2oville rocket** » Mon May 21, 2007 8:26 am

kdog27 wrote:
h2oville rocket wrote:What exactly IS the "South Florida" attitude?
The one I know is rudeness

I met an awful lot of nice folks from there. Soem rude ones, too. Kind of like here.

JoeFalcon · Post by **JoeFalcon** » Mon May 21, 2007 9:33 am

Redwingtom wrote:Sour grapes from a quitter. Get over it!

WAAAAAAAAAW, the coach yelled at my boy! And I suppose coach's shouldn't make players run Michigan's, or a lap when they mess up?

I certainly don't see ANY programs rushing to pick up these two tremendous talents. And BTW, wouldn't telling them they had the potential to be All-Americans be considered building their confidence????

I'm glad someone is bringing another perspective to this and not perpetuating the anti-Brandon mob mentality fueled by a disgruntled parent.

I don't know what the whole situation is because all I have read is a one-sided account from a family relative.

What I do know is that it takes an enormous amount of toughness-mentally and physically-to play football, particularly at the Division I level, and a certain amount of "psychological warfare" is standard practice by just about every coach save John Gagliardi. It was this ingredient, IMO, that Urban Meyer brough to the program six years ago to bring us out of the doldrums. Even stipulating that everything Rothenbuhler and Brandon were accused of is 100% accurate, that's no different than what would have occured at almost any institution that takes football seriosely. Football is a tough game played and coached by tough people.

As Dan Hawkins said rather emphatically a couple of months ago after griping from parents, "It's Division I football...it ain't intramurals."

Rightupinthere · Post by **Rightupinthere** » Mon May 21, 2007 9:46 am

MarkL wrote: The thing with Ellis is that he would always take so long to get the field goals kicks off that it was very easy for them to be blocked. As for Alonso, he also took so many steps to get the punt off, even though the staff had been pushing from the beginning to get the punt off in three steps. Anyway, point is that they were both amazing talents, but Alonso and also possibly Sean were not adapting to what they were being taught in practice.

I saw quite a few punts in person. The defenders broke the "line" before the first step was made. Why do you think he had to ROLL OUT to kick the ball? Since the "line" obviously took their instructions from the coaches - and were bad - what makes one think that the advise given to the kickers wasn't just as bad?

I don't believe the kickers were the problem.

hammb · Post by **hammb** » Mon May 21, 2007 9:53 am

JoeFalcon wrote: I'm glad someone is bringing another perspective to this and not perpetuating the anti-Brandon mob mentality fueled by a disgruntled parent.

I don't know what the whole situation is because all I have read is a one-sided account from a family relative.

What I do know is that it takes an enormous amount of toughness-mentally and physically-to play football, particularly at the Division I level, and a certain amount of "psychological warfare" is standard practice by just about every coach save John Gagliardi. It was this ingredient, IMO, that Urban Meyer brough to the program six years ago to bring us out of the doldrums. Even stipulating that everything Rothenbuhler and Brandon were accused of is 100% accurate, that's no different than what would have occured at almost any institution that takes football seriosely. Football is a tough game played and coached by tough people.

As Dan Hawkins said rather emphatically a couple of months ago after griping from parents, "It's Division I football...it ain't intramurals."

I have no problem with a coach yelling at or disciplining his players. I have no problem with punishing them for the way they play with running, extra work, whatever.

What I have a problem with is a coach continually blaming specific players in the media when we lose. Blaming Corey Partridge for not making enough plays. Blaming Omar for not beating Toledo. Blaming our kicker for falling on his ass in awful conditions, or blaming the kicker for not kicking the ball to the endzone.

I don't doubt that all of those players made mistakes in those particular games. I don't doubt that those mistakes contributed to our losses. Still, to call out specific players on the collegiate level is just wrong to me. Especially when in Omar's & Partridge's cases they were proven players, some of the best on the team.

As I said all last summer, it is foolish to expect freshmen to come into the PK & P positions and excel right away. It just doesn't happen that often. If we were designing our punt scheme to require getting rid of the ball in record time it was stupid. If we were designing our kickoff coverage around getting the ball into the endzone every time, that was foolish as well. How many collegiate kickers hit the endzone with consistency? Let alone freshmen.

Maybe our kickers from last year weren't mentally tough enough to take it, but I don't think we'll ever know. They weren't put into a position to succeed, and then they were blamed as being the main problem. The kickers may not have been great but they were not even close to the main problem with our special teams. Our punt unit had rushers getting to the punter almost as quick as the ball. Unless he was going to perfect kicking the ball directly off the snap in the air, I'm not sure how he was going to get those kicks off.

In the end it doesn't matter. Brandon got what he wanted, new kickers. Of course he got what he wanted last year as well with two new kickers. Hopefully this solves all our problems, but I'm skeptical. Everything Brandon touches seems to turn from gold to lead, so we'll see.

Falconfreak90 · Post by **Falconfreak90** » Mon May 21, 2007 9:56 am

I wasn't there for anything that may or may not have happened in practice. I feel badly for the kids and wish them well in whatever they choose to do. I think it's probably best for all to move on...nothing is going to change what happened in 2006.

I certainly hope the kicking game is improved.

103 days...

JoeFalcon · Post by **JoeFalcon** » Mon May 21, 2007 10:16 am

I'm not a fan of "naming names" after losses either, but I think those instances were rare and/or in the context of answering a specific question. Brandon has repeatedly taken personal responsibility after losses as the head coach and praised his team (sometimes to a fault, IMO, because you shouldn't get used to losses or be 'proud' of them).

Coach Brandon...

After Toledo 2005: "I told them that they played their hearts out. They played their guts out. It was a tremendous effort. Nothing to be ashamed of and I am damn proud of my team."

On Corey Partridge after Toledo 2006: "I thought he was outstanding. He had a great game. He's a competitor, I mean he can catch balls with guys whacking him and he runs great routes. The punt return really set us up and I'm glad to have him back for two years."

On Corey Patridge after Akron 2006: "Corey (Partridge) was sick and in the hospital on Thursday. It tells you a lot about that kid. He showed up; he's a gamer. We just need more guys like him."

After Wisconsin 2006: "Well, I think our kids played hard, I really did. We had too many mistakes to win this football game and that was the disappointing thing."

After Akron 2006: ""I'm proud of my team. We hung in there and played our guts out especially after that tough loss last week."

kdog27 · Post by **kdog27** » Mon May 21, 2007 10:37 am

h2oville rocket wrote:
kdog27 wrote:
h2oville rocket wrote:What exactly IS the "South Florida" attitude?
The one I know is rudeness
I met an awful lot of nice folks from there. Soem rude ones, too. Kind of like here.

There are some pockets of good people. The problem down here is there is no middle class.

Warthog · Post by **Warthog** » Mon May 21, 2007 11:02 am

JoeFalcon wrote: Coach Brandon...

After Toledo 2005: "I told them that they played their hearts out. They played their guts out. It was a tremendous effort. Nothing to be ashamed of and I am damn proud of my team."

Not much else you can say when you coach so poorly you cause your team to lose the game.

JoeFalcon wrote:On Corey Partridge after Toledo 2006: "I thought he was outstanding. He had a great game. He's a competitor, I mean he can catch balls with guys whacking him and he runs great routes. The punt return really set us up and I'm glad to have him back for two years."

On Corey Patridge after Akron 2006: "Corey (Partridge) was sick and in the hospital on Thursday. It tells you a lot about that kid. He showed up; he's a gamer. We just need more guys like him."

These quotes are great. The problem is that Brandon also went out of his way another time to call Corey out and say "he needs to step up and make plays". He is/was the only WR who was 'stepping up', there was no reason to call him out.

MACMAN · Post by **MACMAN** » Mon May 21, 2007 11:05 am

Brandon AND HIS STAFF (Asst. Head Coach Included!) have no idea how to coach special teams. They have NO IDEA how to motivate a football team. They have NO CLUE as to how to work with these guys to bring them along and make them BETTER.

I agree with some of this...I also know however that Sean just plain sucked the new logo. Its unfortunate but its the truth. I also know that brandon has 0 clue how to pick a spec teams coach and 0 clue about special teams, hes an O cordinator..a good one but not a good head coach. I think the downward roll of BG football shows this right now with our spot in the MAC and I hope Im wrong but my guess is if he cant pull it together this year he should be put at O cordinator and new HC brought in. The school is spending far to much on football to not be in the top 2 every ¥ear.

Flipper · Post by **Flipper** » Mon May 21, 2007 11:22 am

Bottom line...what's happenned has happened. I don't thinkit serves any purpose to praise the team you have now by commenting on the guys who left. But then, I'm not a big fan of calling kids out in the media in general.

I will say in GB's defense that he did go out of his way in the pregame show before the Toledo game to point out that while he was ticked at Ellis following the miami game, he realized then that the kid was put into a situation where you really couldn't fault him for missing.

I think getting hurt had a big impact on Ellis' career here as the coaches seemed to lose confidence in his ability to get the ball deep from then on...even when he was healthy. We went to the moonball kicks almost exclusively by the end of the year IIRC. Rojas was a talented kid, but streaky. You'd watch him in warmups and he'd hang some beauties and then shank a couple of uglies. It was like clockwork, four or five great kicks, then one or two shank jobs I think he began to get a tad hesitant back there. I think he too lost some confidence and began to hold the ball a bit too long back there. You can't do that in any formation and not expect to get a few blocked.

I hope we're better this year... I really do.,

Jacobs4Heisman · Post by **Jacobs4Heisman** » Mon May 21, 2007 2:19 pm

I have no problem with a little pyschological mind-game now and then. And I certainly have no problem with getting on guys if you think that's what it takes to get more from them. I have a problem when these tactics are used out in the open, with freshman kickers from half a world away.

Just plain stupid to think those two kids could take excessive amounts of abuse and get the job done. Kickers need different treatment, freshman need different treatment, and kids with no local support structure need different treatment. Combine those three qualities, and perhaps some better judgement could have been used in how to handle them, especially in the media.

Redwingtom · Post by **Redwingtom** » Mon May 21, 2007 3:53 pm

Jacobs4Heisman wrote:I have no problem with a little pyschological mind-game now and then. And I certainly have no problem with getting on guys if you think that's what it takes to get more from them. I have a problem when these tactics are used out in the open, with freshman kickers from half a world away.

Just plain stupid to think those two kids could take excessive amounts of abuse and get the job done. Kickers need different treatment, freshman need different treatment, and kids with no local support structure need different treatment. Combine those three qualities, and perhaps some better judgement could have been used in how to handle them, especially in the media.

Good lord in heaven, put the poor babies in a bubble why don't you. This is ridiculous. These two were given THOUSANDS of dollars in free education and we can't ask this little from them?