December 14th, 2023 at 2:50 PM ^
Hilarious and so true. Imagine our youth today being told to take the beach at Normandy, yikes!
December 14th, 2023 at 2:59 PM ^
They'd think storming a beach would mean having a bon fire, making s'mores, and getting high.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:15 PM ^
Or....they might make the world a better place because they didn't bully and harass their fellow classmates into becoming demented mass murdering adults.
There's good and bad in every generation.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:23 PM ^
Problem is the pendulum swung all the way to the other side. We went from borderline abuse to kid gloves. Imo, that was bound to happen given the treatment of a certain generation by their own parents.
There's a sweet spot somewhere between those two ends.
edit just to say I'm not disagreeing with what you said.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:29 PM ^
I'd love to live in the sweet spot. Sadly, humanity has a hard time leveling off there. It's swing this way and that way.
My response was overly snarky, but I don't like when people look back as if everything was perfect back in the day. My older relatives complain about politics now saying it was so much more civil when they were younger. I always remind them of McCarthyism and ask if it was really better. They revise their comments very quickly when reminded about reality vs. their aged perception.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:33 PM ^
Politics were the same. It’s the worldview, friend.
December 14th, 2023 at 5:26 PM ^
An actual conversation with my dad around 10 years ago (I'm 38):
Him: kids today are just hooligans running the road.
Me: dad, what were you doing at 15?
Him: I was a hooligan running the road.
Me: It's not new. I believe the first person to write down that the youth of the day would be the end of society was Socrates.
December 14th, 2023 at 8:30 PM ^
Politics used to be deadly 150 years ago. What we think as being uncivil today is child's play to politicians in the 1800s.
As I once heard and like to say myself is that people believe history started the day they were born.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:14 PM ^
Who you talking about, the bullies overseas in 1939-41? I just really want to clarify.
December 14th, 2023 at 11:09 PM ^
But bullying is at an all time high with online bullying leading the way. Young kids are depressed now. Suicide is up. I don’t remember ever being sad as a kid. Social media is to blame for a lot of it
December 14th, 2023 at 9:33 PM ^
Hey Dick. The only thing missing from the bonfire on the beach, s’mores and getting high thing was getting eaten by a shark.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:31 PM ^
Anyone who was there for Normandy would be in their late 90s now. So your statement applies to everyone one this blog. Including yourself.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:42 PM ^
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
It’s the circle of hardness. Ryan Day knows all about it.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:49 PM ^
hmm if I combine this comment with MineralKing's, that means that Boomers are the weak men in this cycle
December 14th, 2023 at 4:24 PM ^
If the circle of hardness lasts for more than 4 hours am I supposed to do something? Asking for a friend
December 14th, 2023 at 4:28 PM ^
No need to worry unless the hard times last for three years. If it does, wait for the fourth year. It will most probably end everything.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:44 PM ^
Of all the reasons our parents and grandparents served in World War II, storming the beach at Normandy, flying, sailing troop ships, or whatever, being yelled at by a football coach was one of the least.
Remember that millions went into battle before there was football, or football coaches.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:40 PM ^
Mega eye-roll...if a World War is the standard of masculinity, a lot of men from all generations would fail.
Also Iraq war (for example) wasnt that long ago.
December 14th, 2023 at 9:37 PM ^
World war? Viking rape and pillage of trading ports…now that was a standard of masculinity.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:58 PM ^
Not saying that they don't exist, but I've yet to see a coach like the "younger" coach.
December 14th, 2023 at 8:19 PM ^
While the amount of ultra-fragile snowflakes has increased, the majority of young people are still made of strong stuff. Shining a light on caricatures just gets more attention, I guess.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:01 PM ^
"You'll keep running til I get tired" brings back old repressed memories.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:58 PM ^
Yeah, that got me too
December 14th, 2023 at 3:16 PM ^
My daughter's travel softball coach was an interesting character. He was a giant man and pretty old school. He taught them some pretty questionable physical tactics (like how to take out a baseman as you slide into base), as well as some other interesting things. One time they were practicing and a loud muscle car drove by. The coach stopped practice, called all the girls in (they ranged from 14 - 15 years old) and told them that guys who drive loud muscle cars have small penises. Ok then.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:22 PM ^
What kind of car did he drive?
December 14th, 2023 at 3:23 PM ^
If one of my daughters' male coaches even uttered the word penis in their presence, I'd probably end up in jail that day. I'm old school like that.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:31 PM ^
Hopefully your kids never end up with good ole Mr Penis in gym.
He was a fine teacher. Could be a bit stiff at times
December 14th, 2023 at 3:53 PM ^
Coach Enis, Coach Phil Enis. Yup, Good old Coach P. Enis
December 14th, 2023 at 4:12 PM ^
You should be more worried that they listen to Cardi B. just sayin.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:24 PM ^
I only recently learned from my kids that WAP stands for White Anglo Protestant. She is so wholesome...
December 14th, 2023 at 6:20 PM ^
We laughed about it. Still do.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:40 PM ^
Thank god my daughter wasn't there. She'd probably retort back, "How do you know? Do you shower with them?"
December 14th, 2023 at 3:25 PM ^
I'm a hockey player and my nephew got his first chew out and bench this past weekend at 10, I was so happy they didn't take it easy on him. Life lesson kiddo. He took it pretty well after I talked to him.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:56 PM ^
Such a weird false dichotomy on this topic. Raising your voice at players isn't necessarily good or bad, just as being aware of and taking care of your players' physical and mental health isn't necessarily soft or coddling.
This video is just about two bad coaches.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:09 PM ^
Yes, there's a vast gulf between the two coaches in the video...and that's where most coaches should exist.
You can hold people accountable - and even be very assertive - without being abusive.
December 14th, 2023 at 3:58 PM ^
There is a lot of stuff out there on the internets
December 14th, 2023 at 4:03 PM ^
I played a bunch of sports growing up and have coached kids for close to 10 years now. I just can't wrap my head around a grown adult needing to scream at a young person over playing a sport. It boggles my mind. If you can't motivate positively, you should re-evaluate your need to coach.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:14 PM ^
I was in a profession 25 years ago where bosses regularly screamed at employees in front of other employees (kitchen job). Very common. I had come from a white collar job so it was pretty shocking. I told my last chef, right when I started the job, that there was no need to scream at me. Just ask for what you want and I'll do it. That's the boss/employee relationship. He just stared at me.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:29 PM ^
Appropriateness aside, I think screaming would be effective with kids from households where that's the norm for arguments. It's what they know, and they'd probably toe the line.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:07 PM ^
Wow, I hate to admit this, but, back in my day water was for wimps! It is amazing we all didn't die.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:26 PM ^
User name checks out
December 14th, 2023 at 4:12 PM ^
The old school guy seems soft compared to some of the absolute assholes I had for coaches coming up. They only redeeming quality of their coaching was I learned exactly how not to behave.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:17 PM ^
The short version: I hate this sentiment. It's completely upside down, at least as it pertains to modern college football at a major university. Moreover I find the sentiment to be counterproductive, as it's less about being funny than being mean while lying to oneself.
The funniest thing about this is there's an almost identical sketch about coaching in the 1980s vs coaching in the 1950s, and another identical sketch about coaching in the 1950s vs the 1930s. The historical accuracy here is zero point zero; adults remember things being harder than they are and imagine kids today have it easier than they do, and then the cycle repeats itself with the next generation. Millennials are making "ha ha Gen Z so coddled" jokes now.
Here are the actual, historical shifts in coaching styles:
- pre-1890s: Teams have no idea how to play the game, hire recent grads from schools that play to instruct them for a few weeks. Bigger schools have an athletic trainer who's more like a university-level gym teacher. Coaches stick around for as little as a week or at most 12 weeks, and their average age is 22.
- 1890s-WW2: Starting with Chicago, teams start hiring professional coaches and athletic directors to oversee them. Coaches are either Yost-style (positive reinforcement) or Stagg-style (system-based). Many stay at their universities for 30+ years, coaches grow more venerable and into AD positions as time goes by. Assistants are like the pre-1890s coaches: itinerant and young, mostly.
- Post-War: Ballooning rosters, budgets, stadiums, meets a new drill sergeant type who treats the players like they're at boot camp and can get away with culling the rosters because there are no scholarship limits (see: Junction Boys, or "Those Who Stay..". As teams grow to 100+ players assistants become more professionalized and are often the good cop, younger, unmarried, and worked to the bone while told if they wait 30 years they'll be head man.
- Post-2000: Wider recruiting and more communication between parents and players starts to whittle away at the Bo/Woody/Bear style of coach in favor of CEO types who use business efficiency strategies to implement systems (Carroll, Saban, Tressel, Urban, Dabo, Smart, Harbaugh). More talk of individual program "cultures" to convince more mobile talent to stick around. Assistant hierarchies form with coordinators acting like HCs of their units, subordinate assistants who do most of the training and recruiting, and large staffs who do scouting work and some of the technique stuff.
I wouldn't call any of them steps towards more "coddling." If anything more and more is asked of players each step of the way. Originally they were just getting some tips from guys about their own age, then they were expected to not smoke for part of the year and say "Sir", then they were soldiers, and now they have everything they eat, every moment they sleep, every second they work out and go to school tracked and optimized.
Here's the truth: Younger generations are tougher, better, smarter, taller, and in general can kick us oldersters asses in everything but trivia about being alive when we were and they weren't. Because that's how humans do it. We advance our technology and our culture, spend a lot of resources to make our lives comfortable, die, and repeat the process.
The reason we olds like pretending we got some sort of benefit from growing up in a shittier world is it avoids the uncomfortable reality of our mortality, and the fact that we spent our best decades learning to exist in a world that changed too much for those skills to be valuable. Of course we know how to deal with a tyrannical asshole coach who thinks he's R. Lee Ermey. We also hated them so much that our generation made Varsity Blues, Friday Night Lights and The Program to tell everyone how bullshit it was the minute they let Gen X direct movies. We also made pap that glorified old coaches so we could feel good about ourselves. Some of them are even good flics. But this video is gross. The humor is "this is you: [whine whine whine]." Ask yourself this: If the object of the humor isn't going to find it humorous, what kind of humor is it?
December 14th, 2023 at 4:40 PM ^
Younger generations are tougher, better, smarter, taller, and in general can kick us oldersters asses in everything but trivia about being alive when we were and they weren't, because that's basically how humans do it.
I disagree with this on the premise that male suicide in the younger demos is at an all time high. Suicide excluded deaths among young athletes age 15-24 are also at an all time high. Kids aren't tougher necessarily (subjective) but they have to put up with insane amounts of bullshit that we never had to (social media) which may be feeding into the statistics mentioned. Continual improvement is always the goal, I agree that kids today are getting better *training* than ever before hence the performance improvements. With time comes better knowledge of 'what works' as there is more data to point to.
December 14th, 2023 at 6:10 PM ^
Your position is that suicide = soft?
December 14th, 2023 at 4:43 PM ^
"adults remember things being harder than they are and imagine kids today have it easier than they do,"
I have 3 kids in in school right now and you couldn't pay me to be young again and go through what they deal with on social media.
December 14th, 2023 at 4:52 PM ^
I'm a 1979 birthday, and I'll tell anyone who'll listen that I had about the easiest childhood imaginable from a worldview perspective.
Think about it: no Great Depression like my grandparents, who survived that and went to World War II.
My dad? Would've been sent to Vietnam if not for a back problem (football injury, ironically.)
My kids? Social media age, the disruption of childhood for 1-2 years for the pandemic...
I'm too young to remember much of the Cold War fears, and by the time 9/11 and the Iraq War popped off I was damn near 23.
In fact, if you'd asked me for the top 3 worst things that happened in my childhood on the day I turned 18, there's a good chance one of my answers would've been "Chris Webber called a timeout during a basketball game..."
Any other early-mid 40s people feel this way?
December 14th, 2023 at 6:27 PM ^
I was born in 1965 (just this side of Gen X) and the difference between then and now is parental involvement. Back then, parents didn't think it was their job to play with us when we were little, pay attention to every little thing we did, coach us on how to behave in every situation, comfort us when things went wrong. My parents loved me but were not interested in the majority of my life. When I applied to colleges, they asked, "Where are you applying? Yeah, that sounds good." End of conversation. As a grade schooler, I had an incredible amount of freedom, and I lived in the middle of a big city. I took the city bus by myself in grade school. I wandered around pretty much untethered. Parents just had to trust you because there was no way to check up on you if you weren't somewhere with a telephone, and a phone number they knew. Even though I think it helped me be independent and confident, I didn't raise my kids the same, though I probably gave them more freedom than a lot of other parents.