Football & Life

Today, the Rich Brooks fans are everywhere! Today, everyone loves Kentucky Football! Today, you just cannot be more proud to wear the white and blue! Today, is interesting but it was just a short time ago, like let’s say yesterday, that lots of folks were calling Rich Brooks an old man whose day as a coach had come and gone. Many were dispelling his coaching abilities and talking about why we don’t have more Kentucky boys playing on the team, and many were heard to say that the wins of last year were just luck and those types of wins will happen from time to time, but still, yesterday that was, there was not a lot of credit for Coach Brooks, until today that is.
It is so lacking in character the way we offer friendship. It is just amazing how fickle we are. I have often said that I don’t need any help when I am focused, centered and purposed. When one is strong and clear they are able to stand on their own and there is no need of assistance or a helping hand, but it is when you are down that one can use a helping hand up and truth is there are just not many that enjoy reaching down.
I attended football specialty camp at the University of Kentucky back in the day and my Kentucky Football History begins with Coach Fran Curci. Remember him, he was at Kentucky I believe something like 1973-1981. It was a great experience and I learned a lot, some of which I have never forgotten. The coach who taught line skills was Coach “K” and he preached one thing to win on the line, “wide base and short choppy steps”.
Anyone who has every played on the line knows that those skills have never changed. In all the years of football, a wide base and short choppy steps are still the number one techniques to be successful on the line of scrimmage. There are additional skills that will come in helpful like learning how to use your hands, learning to always keep your head up, mastering the first step or turn of the upper body is good technique in pointing yourself in the direction you want to go, all these are an added plus to you be highly successful when brought together.
Life is one of those things that you really need to be skilled at in evaluating the success of. Today, everyone is saying Coach Rich Brooks is a great coach. Today, the Commonwealth of Kentucky maybe in a state of shock as we have won four games in a row, there appears to be no ‘give up’ attitude and the team seems to be all that many have been dreaming about. If you are one of those and you have not remembered the team that it seemed could not win a game, you’ve missed it. It was that determination to not give up that we need to applaud. Remember the team that could not catch a ball, but they still continued to practice and the coaches still recruited, well, let’s give them applause.
Coach Brooks was not swayed by the negative comments; actually I can remember him saying when we lost games, “I take responsibility”, now that’s leadership. Not passing the buck, but accepting his role.
In the course of life sometimes we misjudge, sometimes we are quick to make a remark, sometimes we think we have it figured out when we are just looking at one aspect, or one play, one move. Remember that often when it looks like everything is going wrong the real true is that everything could be going right, the results are coming, they have just not over taken the negative yet, so give it time and wait and see.
In the end, the results are not about the Wins and Loses, while that maybe the first thing people look at. The real results are lives changed because people got involved, the difference made because folks cared to stick it out and became a part of the team.
Until then