Getting Over the Mid-Season Hump

by: Mike Kuchar
Senior Writer, American Football Monthly
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By the time you read this piece, you’re in the middle of the season and have a pretty good idea of how things will turn out. The best thing about the pre-season is feeling your kids out – who’s going to be a contender and who’s going to be a pretender. By now, at least you would think to have a handle on that. Hopefully, for most of us, we’re riding a win streak or rapidly progressing into “mid-season form”… whatever that means. For some of us, we have to deal with disappointment – maybe some injuries or some key turnovers down the stretch has caused us to sink deeper into mediocrity. Welcome to October, we’ve reached the grind of the season. I’ve been on both ends and can tell you with no doubt of certainty that mid-October living with five wins under your belt just feels a lot better. But regardless of our win-loss record, I think now is the time that we really have to enjoy the game, and what’s more, enjoy the time with our players – particularly if we’re in a mid-season drought. Truth is, they’re never really thinking wins as much as we are. To them it’s playing high school football with their friends every day, and spending time with us, their coaches.

Gonna sound a little cliché, but our duty as coaches seems to never end. Funny how so many of us get caught up in the technicalities of the game, that we forget how little that really matters compared to the psychology of our players. The great ones know this – the first question Bobby Bowden asks his staff every week is “How is the morality of our kids?” Coaches around the country, like Mike Riley at Oregon State, are getting their players involved in weekly movie or bowling nights – just to keep things interesting. Jim Tressel, whose reputation constantly proceeds him, has a huge banner hanging from his office with a quote from Albert Einstein that reads, “Concern for man and his fate must form the chief interest of every technical endeavor… Never forget that in the midst of your diagrams and equations.” The quote itself just rings with validity.

Truth is, we all seem to forget it, as we make this continual treck down what seems like an endless journey into doldrums of the football season, we really have to try and enjoy each day individually. We all know that my now they’ve started to bleed together – by Thursday most of us feel like we’ve played the game a thousand times over in our minds. Just don’t get too caught up in that stuff.

I’m reminded of this by one of my peers in the profession, Glenn Caruso from the University of St. Thomas, who says “there’s a reason why some of the best players in the profession weren’t the best coaches. And guys like Lombardi and Paterno, who weren’t spectacular performers, find a way to relate to our players.” Sure Caruso could be just sticking up for his Italian counterparts, but he’s right. Our journey to identify and relate to our kids never ends even though the days in October eventually do.

Yours in football,

Mike Kuchar
Senior Writer
American Football Monthly
MikeKuchar@AmericanFootballMonthly.com

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