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AFM Magazine


What a Tangled Web We Have Weaved...

The internet has changed the face of coaching.
by: Richard Scott
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Rewind your football clock 30 years, to a time when legendary Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant used preseason practice to install the wishbone in total secrecy and used it to ambush an unsuspecting USC team in the Crimson Tide's season opening 17-10 win over the Trojans.

Fast forward that clock to August, 2001, to a time when first-year Alabama coach Dennis Franchione attempted to prepare his team for its season opener against UCLA. Franchione, following an Alabama tradition, opened his practices to the media and a limited number of fans and soon found every little nook and cranny of practice information published for all the world to see, including the UCLA Bruins.

Where did the Bruins find this information? From spies watching with binoculars from local school buildings? From UCLA fans posing as Tide fans? From Alabama insiders taking bribes in exchange for information?

Of course not, UCLA coaches simply read it on the Internet.

"Now we know to look out for some blitzes," UCLA coach Bob Toledo said, grinning.

He wasn't smiling for long. Before he knew it, Alabama coaches were reading similar information on UCLA's practices and Toledo was livid.

"I'm tired of people writing stuff about my team on the Internet," Toledo said. "We've got games to prepare for," Toledo said, "and I don't like seeing reports about my team on the Internet."

Before long, Toledo and several other coaches, including USC's Pete Carroll, Arizona's John Mackovic and South Carolina's Lou Holtz, were either closing practices or tightening their practice security to protect the secrecy of their game plans and preparations.

"There won't be anybody at any of our practices ever again," said Holtz after a Gamecock fan site published detailed practice information. "No TV, no reporters, no parents, nobody. It's going to be closed completely. Completely. There's not a place for that, particularly when you're selling the information.

"I saw it and I saw the person who had the phone during practice because I made a mental note. What in the world would they be talking about at a scrimmage? It wasn't just once. And it had to be phoned in because there were updates."

Meanwhile, Franchione took to the Internet to address overzealous Alabama fans on his own web side, CoachFran.com.

"If you attend practice and then go put it on the Internet, you're telling the whole world," Franchione wrote. "I'd prefer you to keep our good points and our rough points to ourselves, and that's more work that the opponent has to do. I need your help on these things if you are watching practice, please.

"It's a bit like if you were at a family reunion; you'd probably want to tell others in the family who couldn't be there that Aunt Jane and cousin Beth looked good, but it wouldn't be prudent to tell the whole world that Uncle Bob is wearing a hairpiece these days."

Things could be worse for poor ol' Uncle Bob and his new rug. After all, he could be a head coach at the college level and find himself already overloaded with worries and troubles, only to find that this Internet thing is adding even more problems to long list of stressful concerns.

Whether you're the head coach at Washington or Washburn, Florida State or Fort Lewis, Tennessee or Trinity, there's always the possibility that someone is out there using the Internet to hurt your program.

Maybe it's something as innocent as the local beat writer reporting that your quarterback is limping like an injured bird dog on his newspaper's official web site. Or, it could be something as well-intended as an eager fan trying to share information with other fans. Then again, it could be something as mean and low-down as an opponent's fans spreading rumors about your best running back and the chancellor's daughter or trying to convince recruits you're about to take another job or lose the one you're already got.

Either way, coach, you've got potential problems every time someone goes searching for the latest on your football team. Hey, blame it on Al Gore. If he hadn't invented the Internet, you wouldn't have these problems, would you?

Yet, the truth is, the Internet is neither good nor bad, in and of itself. Think of it this way: the Internet brings the world to your fingerprints. Your wife can shop on line without leaving the house (that can be good or bad). You can research consumer reports on major items such as cars or appliances (definitely good) or you can learn how to build a bomb in your own home (definitely bad).

You can monitor your stocks, download your favorite music, read your hometown paper, print out a detailed map to that little rural town where your top recruit lives, purchase that hard-to-find Cal Ripken Jr. rookie card your son always wanted or download pictures of your sister's new baby. Instead of going to a seedy adult bookstore for pornography, people now access it in the privacy of their own homes. At the same time, the Internet is filled with spiritually uplifting information, music and daily devotionals and a multitude of credible information on mental, emotional and physical health.

And what's in it for coaches? When you're not looking into information about opponents and recruiting rivals, you can monitor recruiting, keep recruits and fans informed, distribute positive information and player features the newspapers sometimes ignore and learn what other coaches are doing in areas such as practice schedules and preparation.

"I don't have any e-mail and I don't go in the Internet, but I know it can really be a problem," says Clemson coach Tommy Bowden, echoing a statement commonly heard among coaches. "I know it really riles the fans up and gets them talking, and I know some of the other coaches read it and sometimes your players read it, especially if it's negative.

"On the plus side, there's a lot of information out there from a recruiting standpoint, and sometimes from an opponent's standpoint when you're playing an opponent.

"There's some good and some bad that can come out of the Internet from a coaching standpoint."

The negatives are all too obvious for coaches who worry that practice secrets, injuries, ugly rumors and inaccurate perceptions are readily available for public consumption.

"College football, particularly Tennessee, is well covered by Tennessee, and from that standpoint it's probably a good thing that more get to learn about your program," Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer says. "But some of the stuff that comes out, some of the silly stuff that no one will actually claim they wrote, is detrimental."

The power of the Internet has caused more than one school to at least be more careful with its practice security.

"I don't look at the Internet much at all. Some people around here do, but I don't," Florida coach Steve Spurrier says. "We've closed practices in the past when it's become too much, we pretty much closed up all our preseason practices this year. We still open up our scrimmages because we feel like it's important to simulate game conditions and let our players to play in front of game, but other than that we've closed up our practices the past couple of years."

At the same time, several coaching staffs have learned how to make good use of the Internet. Nebraska coach Frank Solich and Texas coach Mack Brown both said their staffs use the Internet to keep a close eye on recruiting and recruiting rivals.

"Probably the most important issue for us with the Internet is recruiting," Brown says. "We have someone who looks at the Internet at all times. So many of the recruiting services talk to the recruits when the coaches cannot, so the coaches have a tremendous advantage when they're trying to find out what a young man's thinking when we don't call him. That's made recruiting much more visible.

"The other thing is, and I heard Dean Smith say this about five or six years ago when someone asked him about the media's place (in an athletic program), he said one of the great things the media has done, and I think the Internet fits into this with the on-line recruiting services, is that it's helped clean up recruiting in college athletics. So many people call the young men now and if there is something that's going on that's not above board and not within the NCAA rules, information become public more immediately."

Whether you see the Internet as evil incarnate or another useful tool for your program, it's important to understand what you're dealing with and be realistic about it. There's a big difference between the legitimate web sites (such as ESPN.com, cbs.sportsline.com, cnnsi.com, and official newspaper web sites) and the stuff you'll find on fan sites published by any local yokel with the cash and the time to keep it going. There's also a huge difference between credible reporting from beat writers who cover the program on a daily basis and the useless, baseless comments many anonymous cowards make in chat rooms and message boards.

After Kansas State's recent 38-37 loss to Oklahoma, some contributors on a fan site called kstatefootball.com, were critical of K-State coach Bill Snyder and his coaching staff, while others were quick to remind critics that the past decade has been the best era in K-State football. Some were critical of quarterback El Roberson and some were excited about his progress as a passer. Others ripped the refs, or the former K-State assistants now coaching at Oklahoma. The fan forum on kstatefootball.com turned out to be a buffet of healthy steamed vegetables, dangerous fried foods and fattening deserts, all mixed together in one long line.

If Snyder read and took all that stuff seriously, he'd simply be throwing away valuable time and effort better spent on improving his team.

"We're probably like everyone else - I get a mountain of paper that goes across my desk every day that addresses a variety of different things as it relates to our program," Snyder says, "but I think we have to be awfully careful because anyone can get on the Internet and virtually say anything and everything they like, whether it's factual or not. It's too easy to get caught up in all that.

"One of the things I try to avoid is just exactly that - we address reputable information that comes from the media. Every newspaper in the country is on the Internet, and we're going to receive that information and use it. But when it comes to the chat rooms, that's not of interest to us because it's not regulated, it's not monitored and anything and everything can and will show up there. It would be a waste of time and just create more headaches than we can afford at this time."

Like a lot of things in the coaching profession, the Internet is basically what you make it. One coach, Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer, has turned the Internet into his own personal sandbox, with Beamerball.com.

Several head coaches at the Division I-A level have their own official web sites, including Fulmer, Brown, Holtz and Franchione, and most coaches sites offer similar biographies, player features, comments from the coaches and other football-related information, but Beamer's site goes beyond all the others.

For $39.95 per year (do we have your attention now, coaches?), subscribers can read Beamer's daily practice comments, updates on injured players and Beamer's detailed analysis of the next game. Plus, Beamerball.com features weekday interviews with Tech's assistant coaches, the daily injury update and daily depth chart updates. After games, the site includes quotes from every coach and a long list of player awards and subscribers get an inside look at Tech football through photos, from the pre-game meal to the field to the locker room.

Even better, Beamer has been known to provide breaking news to his web site, often beating the local media outlets to the punch by providing information to subscribers they can't get anywhere else.

Of course, you can always see photos of Beamer and his family, get Cheryl Beamer's recipe for Coca-Cola Cake and read her opinions in her column, "Cheryl's Corner."

And the ironic thing about all this? Beamer doesn't even surf the 'Net himself. He's just smart enough to take advantage of it instead of being scared of it.

"We all contribute, but Frank calls the shots on this thing," says Greg Roberts, who provides most of the copy for the site and does the player and coach interviews. "He's not very verbal, but the guy is really sharp. He knows what Tech fans want."

He also knows what sponsors want. Tech recently signed an exclusive contract for Coca Cola to provide soft drinks on campus, but Beamer arrived at a recent post-game press conference with a Pepsi in his hand. When asked by a reporter recently why he was drinking Pepsi, he said: "You haven't been on Beamerball.com lately have you?''

Pepsi just happens to be one of the seven corporate sponsors of Beamerball.com.

"First, it's a way to get accurate information out," Beamer said. "There's a lot of interest in Virginia Tech football, what's going on behind the scenes. There are a lot of people calling call-in shows talking about our team, but the information they're giving out isn't always accurate. We can provide that directly from the coaches. It was also a way to generate some income for the coaches, trainers and equipment guys.''

What's next for Beamerball.com? How about Internet video, with Beamer talking directly to fans and assistant coaches breaking down plays for fans.

"We'll always be looking for ways to improve," Roberts said. "That's the way Frank wants things done, be it with his football program or his Web site.''






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