Double Extra Point
Great read...good stuff from the Harvard Business Review, I got some great background on Walsh & the WCO that I had not seen before.
One take that I think is worth commenting on is your reference to Callahan's "one game/one season" comment, as this is one specific where I think that BC has gotten short-changed as time has passed. After all, aren't the words "Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed the glory" inscribed in granite on the southwest corner of our stadium? I've always held that the context of the 2004 CU game needs to be taken into account whenever we look back on this now infamous Callahan utterance. I think there are at least a half-dozen cases to be made where "not the goal but the game" were personified in that game in particular...beginning with the gutsy onside kick call that started it off. I never took BC's comment as an affront to all of the historic streaks that ended that day, but rather "we laid it out on the line and tried our best--we never gave up hope of victory and tried our hardest to win until the final gun sounded...but came up short today" or, in other words: "in the deed the glory."
In my mind, I've always felt that these words were actually a quite TO-ish thing to say in defeat...you know, "one game at a time," "we'll just get ready for the next one," "I celebrate a victory when I start walking off the field. By the time I get to the locker room, I'm done"...that sort of thing.
On the flip side, your post explains (and also begs a further examination of) a couple of tendencies of Callahan's tenure:
1-The team seems to play better with more time to prepare pre-game.
2-The tendency to, at times, play a lot better in the first half of games than the second.
So I've gotta ask you, do you think that the amount of preparation that Walsh speaks of as being an integral component of the WCO is actually, in Callahan's case, camouflaging (and in essence, exposing) a certain inability to make proper adjustments, on the fly, come game-time?
I'm not saying that I feel that this is necessarily the case, but the quotes that you cite do beg the question...especially in light of some of the NU trends that I mention and your own reference to duress possibly causing the clouding of in-game decision making.
Could 60,000 fans be contributing to an increased sense of urgency??
DT,
I think the NFL and WCO specifically stress the preparation before the game over any game-time adjustments. Callahan himself admitted that he (and other coaches as well) typically does not make wholesale changes at halftime or during the course of the game.
One could argue I suppose that this might help explain some of the team's tendencies. I felt it could also explain why he is choosing to take the blame and to re-examine the way things are done.
The one thing we all have to look forward to is that he is single-minded in his approach and gets results when he pays extra attention to it. This will be another long off-season for him, but I think the team and the fans will benefit from his work.
Good read Jeff. I have noticed some of our ineffectual methods of making adjustments at halftime and it always perplexes me.
I think as Cally gets more knowledgeable at the college game he'll make better adjustments.
Oh and it other news....Zach Bowman is returning for his senior year. This. Is. Huge.
Oh and the ZB news is from the Lincoln Journal Star. Forgot to cite my sources.
Thanks Chuck, and yes Bowman returning is fantastic news.
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