Friday December 26, 2008

Changing the Identity

Changing the Identity
When Clemson named Dabo as the new head coach of the Tigers he was put in charge of getting the program to the next level. In my opinion, that level was a championship. Tommy Bowden had done a terrific job on so many of fronts but he did not win a championship and that was the death of his tenure.

As Dabo said, he was not in charge of turning around a disaster. The program was not completely broken. Instead of a complete overhaul, the program needed a tune up.

The football program at Clemson was solid in terms on all of the off of the field stuff. Academics, graduation rates, APR and GPAs were excellent. Bowden had recruited good kids who stayed off of the front pages.

The tune up comes in the department of championships but the foundation comes in one major area in this observer’s opinion. Clemson football needed an injection of toughness.

Clemson football has been among the nation’s elite programs on a couple of occasions. Coach Howard had the Tigers in the top ten a few times and his teams were known for their toughness. Coach Ford took the Tigers to the top of the college football world in the 1980s and again the identity of the program was toughness.

As a player Dabo was known for his toughness and he played on a national title team at Alabama that was the epitome of toughness. The 1992 Bama team was one of the toughest I have ever seen.

So the hiring of Dabo seems to be a natural fit for the current Clemson football program. He understands toughness and the importance of toughness.

So how does one go about changing the identity of a football program?

I am a firm believer that a team takes on the personality of its head coach. A head coach can inject his team with their identity through a concentrated effort. What a fan sees on Saturdays in the fall is only a reflection of what the head coach has instilled the other 352 days a year.

The single most influential place where this happens is the practice fields. Teams have 15 spring practices, 15 bowl practices, about 25 fall camp practices and about 50 in season practices. Football teams practice over 100 times each year for those 13 games and the practice field is actually the proving grounds.

I have had three different people tell me practice for this bowl game is completely different under Dabo. One observer says practices now look more like the practices of the 1980s. This team is being put through a rigorous routine now but the players seem to want just that.

The surprising about this is that players actually respond better when practices are physical but some coaches still chose to not be too physical in practice.

Why would a man who is 6-6 and 315 pounds who lifts weights all year and bench presses 400 pounds want to play in a finesse offense?

Players respond to discipline and they also respond to more physical approaches to the game. This is what Dabo and his staff are finding out every day. Sure injuries are a concern but injuries can happen when coaches pull back as well. So I am not sure what the draw backs of being more physical are.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of this physical approach actually comes from the mental side of things though. When a team prepares to be the most physical team and they know they are the most physical team then the confidence grows and that will show up.

Ask former Clemson football players about their success from the 1980s and they almost always point to practice fields as the place they won their titles. Most will say that practice was so demanding and the competition was so high that games on Saturday were the easy part. Players had the attitude that if they made it through the physical demands of the week they had it made. They will tell you that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday’s opponents were superior to the ones they would face on Saturdays. Therefore the players had swagger in Saturdays but that was not a false sense of confidence. Instead, it was earned confidence. They had worked harder than the opponent and they knew it.

I think we saw immediate results from Dabo’s personality from the first game he took over. In my opinion, Clemson was the more physical team in five of the six games Dabo has coached. The only game where the Tigers were not the more physical team was Clemson’s trip to Tallahassee when FSU beat up on the Tigers.

However, the long term effects of this concentrated effort will be much greater than the short term effects. Dabo has stated that the more physical team usually wins and this is the identity he wants for his football team. This has been the focus of the bowl practices and will continue to be the focus this spring. I think this football team will look completely different next fall as a result.

The next step is when the opponents start to recognize you for your toughness. I would say Virginia Tech is a great example of this. When the opponent realizes that they will be a bloody battle then you have won half of the battle.

It takes time to change the identity of a football team but the fastest way to do that is to change your head coach. Dabo has already put his mark on the program but nothing he has done will be more important than changing this program’s identity.

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