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AFM Magazine


Video a Necessary Part of Every Program

by: Jeff Davis
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“It was film in the old days, up to about ‘88 or 89,” recalls Clemson’s veteran video coordinator Rick Bagby, a pioneer in his field who led the video revolution that enables football coaches better use their time to develop sophisticated, smart, systems, and, he hopes, winning game plans for the ACC program that’s been a big winner for decades in the South.

Across the country in the Pacific Northwest, Steve Pohl has been running Oregon’s football video operation since 1992. “When I got here, some of the older coaches kidded me how they had to splice reels of film.”

Indeed, tales of film room sessions conducted by the likes of a George Halas, Paul Brown, Vince Lombardi, and Tom Landry, where every player lived in fear of being called out by the coach and the embarrassment of seeing his mistakes run over and over in front of his equally jittery teammates, are legendary.

“One of the biggest changes from film to tape was instant availability,” Bagby says. Video use not only changed the game, but created plenty of opportunity. “It used to be a full time job for one person. Now, it’s a full time job for me and two assistants,” says Bagby whose full time staff is augmented by eight students who do everything from manning the cameras, to digitizing, preparing cutups, and running other facets of the computer system. “We shoot everything, every practice, every game. If it moves, we shoot it,” Bagby says.

“At our practices, we have four cameras running all the time. Side and end zone for offense, and side and end zone for defense. We’ll have two people inside digitizing those tapes constantly during practice. My goal for the staff is no one should ever wait on videos. So, if coaches wanted to walk off the field, not even shower, it’s immediately available. It will be ready for them.”

“A lot of it is NOT creating the wheel each week,” Oregon’s Steve Pohl says. “A lot of it is finding a system, a plan that works. We keep them moving. Get the game film done and in their hands by five at Sunday. Don’t waste their time. We digitize the video for coaches to be ready to see it any time they walk off the field. It gets the coaches everything they need faster and gets me out of here faster as well. Saving five hours a week adds up to 50 hours a season, almost a week’s work.”

Bagby agrees. “It’s a constant process. In the season, we start at 7 a.m. with a staff meeting, and go all along until practice at 3:30. Those coaches come off the field at 7 p.m. If it’s during recruiting time, they’ve gotta make recruiting calls at night. They’ve got so many things they have to do at night. If they’re waiting on me, that’s not utilizing their time. Out of ten coaches, someone’s always in there,” Bagby says. “We’re all about service. We’re support personnel. Our job is only as good as the coaches. If we’re not providing them, we’re not doing our job.”

Like all coaches, Oregon Ducks’ head man Mike Belotti, in effect a CEO, must get a feel for the big picture on both sides of the ball. “He usually watches a full game then goes back to see situations. He lets the coordinators do the coaching and detail work,” Pohl says. The detail work resembles a spread sheet. “It’s headings and rows with plays in them to set up situations during a game. Its easy for a coach to sort it out.”

Pohl gives the coaches “wish” lists to determine what they need from him and his staff. “In this information age, they can do what they want with it. I give the GA’s and each offensive and defensive staff members a list of criteria, like down and distance. The GA’s fill them in, type them in. They will ask for the cut-ups they want. It’s endless. I can do it for them, but they actually can do that themselves.”

Determining an opponent’s tendencies is the equivalent of solving a mystery. It’s all there on tape. Day after day, week after week. It’s up to the coaches peering at video screens at their computer terminals to crack the cases. In the “new” glossary, the key term is cut-ups: “Cut-ups are a series of plays with a common denominator,” Pohl says. “It might be down and distance. A certain front, etc. They have similar characteristics. A series of plays from a number of games with similar characteristics. They are used to determine tendencies.”

No video operation can function without equipment. The haves in Division I have the resources to go first class in quality and quantity. “Video is as good as the camera you use. You need several good cameras. If you can’t play it back there, you need several reliable studio decks inside to play tapes on,” says Clemson’s Rick Bagby.

But, as Oregon’s Pohl stresses, fine equipment can be found at a reasonable price. “The equipment has become pro server friendly. You can get some real good quality pieces of equipment in the DV world . DV cameras that are $2,500 with 3-chip configurations that some of the $15-20,000 cameras had ten years ago. The quality is so much better.”

DV, is the operative universe for programs like Clemson and Oregon. “You need a computer for every coach. If you have any ability to get one for them, you just have to get one for each coach,” Bagby says. “With the 20-hour rule the NCAA puts on you with the streamlined process, meeting times are hard. Our players know about it as much if not more than the coaches. They’ll come in on an off day and go to town.”

Pohl agrees. “The DV is so much the better option because you can do so much more with the terms of digitizing it today and using the laptop be it Mac or PC. The hard drives 250 GIGS. I had 360 GIGS ten years ago that took up half a rack. Now you can put in a 200 GIG in the palm of your hand. Storage is cheap now and you can get as much on there as you dream of.”

That’s all well and good for the elite Division I schools. At a school like Tennessee Tech, which comprises most programs, make-do and maximizing are the orders of the day. Tennessee Tech’s video coordinator the past three years has been John Chandler. “I have a direct impact on it, because I coach the running backs too. YOU have to do it all.”

Since coaching pays the bills, Chandler has to rely on students to the video work. He’s proved to be an able recruiter there as well as finding players. “It’s just myself and two willing student filmers that do it. My responsibility is maintenance of the video equipment. I’m very good with computers and the only one familiar with that kind of program.”

The students handle the filming at practice and in games, using a sideline cameras and end zone camera. “We still shoot 22 players in frame,” Chandler says. “We start wide and slowly zoom into the ball to get the tackle area, ball carrier and yard line. We need to know the numbers, where they are and are they getting their assignments. We’re a no huddle team. We get to the line of scrimmage and let it go. So our guys are trained to hit the red button and here it goes.”

One of them handles the cutups. He takes game footage, breaks it down into offense and defensive segments and gets it to the coaches late Saturday night.

Then there’s that matter of equipment. “We don’t have laptops, so we are in the old stages,” Chandler says, meaning coaches and players at Tennessee Tech do not have the luxury of using individual PCs. “Everyone goes to a VHS station to see the cutups. Student Bobby Blevins does a tremendous job in delivering them to us. He makes cutups for whatever the coordinators need, be it personnel, down and distance, whatever.” So it goes in the smaller college programs as well as those high schools that have video technology for scouting and teaching purposes.

Take Sonora, California High School, for instance where Coach Mark Takainen heads a twelve-man staff for his varsity and lower level programs. “We used Super VHS when I started here 13-years ago. The last four years we have used digital stuff. We have three digital cameras, a digital editing system and three laptop computers we use for our editing system.” The laptops are used by Takainen, the head coach who doubles as offensive coordinator, his breakdown assistant, and the defensive coordinator.

“It allows us to spend more time game planning. It used to take four and five hours to break down a film (tape). Now, we can separate it into offense, defense, and special teams in a half hour,” Takainen notes.

The time saving digital brings not only gives Sonora’s coaches something of an off-field life, but acts as a teaching tool, a visualizing form of homework. “We have desktops in every classroom because we are a digital high school. It makes it nice,” Takainen says. “They can go into real play. They can’t go back and forth like DVD, but they still can look at it and use it that way.”

Wherever games are played, though, the clock never stops ticking, especially the pressure. Rick Bagby at Clemson is well aware how the grind can wear down a team as the season progresses. “It tells on everyone, players and coaches. If we can provide them a streamlined product in week eight or nine so they don’t have to use extra time or effort to evaluate, then they can get the job done, get home, get some rest, and be refreshed and ready to go on Saturday. I think that’s as valuable as anything.” That’s the most valuable service a video coordinator can provide.


Hints For Coaches

Both Division I video coordinators we interviewed for this article, Rick Bagby of Clemson and Steve Pohl at Oregon, have been able to establish templates that apply to the way all video coordinators can best handle their own work and satisfy those they serve: the coaches and players.

WHAT SHOULD A COACH LOOK FOR IN BREAKING DOWN A TAPE?

BAGBY: My hint to them when they break down a tape is not to hold back a thing. Give me everything. Provide me with as much information as you can and I’ll put that into the computer system. Then go back and decide what you want later. It wastes your time and my time if you only put in a small amount of information. Then, come Tuesday or Wednesday of game week, you decide you want to look at this, and want to look at that. That’s not good for anybody. I ask any coach to give me all the information and that allows the system to pare it down to something workable.

If you get technical enough to pare down something for situations in the fourth quarter to spot tendencies, then it works for you; that is, stances, and everything to establish keys. Enough information will tell you details you need to establish keys.

POHL: Don’t get too specific. You can easily spend more time entering data than watching a game. Just do the basics. Don’t overdo it so you are spending so much time breaking down a play that you may never see in a game. You can create more work for yourself than understanding what the other team is doing.

TIME SAVING TIPS FOR COACHES

BAGBY: I would love to see more coaches learn the computer system we have. So many coaches come in and learn just the basics. I don’t care what product you have, everyone out there has so much depth to it. No one takes the time to learn. They think they’ll learn on the go. You don’t learn on the go. All you do in that case is get into a grind, a routine, and not learn anything extra. If they’ll learn the little small things within a computer system that can make their job easier, they’ll discover that the system is designed to make their lives easier. That means you have to learn the details of the system. Then they can go through and filter plays, practice and get the information they need.

It streamlines the process. It streamlines the 20 hours per week they are allowed to spend with their players. If they can get to that meeting with streamlined video, it’s going to make the meeting go a lot faster, it keeps the players involved, and gets them to the field where you can do some more teaching.

GAME PLANS AND THE EDGE

POHL: They can put a game plan together in two to three days. Different coaches have responsibilities and a role. That’s the printed plan. Obviously, you can put in changes right up to kickoff.

I’ll run the cutups so they don’t have to. A lot of it is NOT re-creating the wheel each week. A lot of it is finding a system, a plan that works. We keep them moving. Get the game film done and in their hands by five at Sunday. Don’t waste their time.





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