C
CougarbibAKA - more than you ever wanted to know about or hear from the Bibster. Details about me are intended as context (not bragging) about a man living on a rock in the middle of the ocean with potential contacts - but no actual information from any of them - but with a little bit of managment insight. Hopefully 1 or 2 of you will find my ideas credible.
Somewhere I saw it reported that Bronco had expected the defense to be more of a reload this year while he knew the offense was a significant rebuild - thus he has more patience with the time it is taking the offense to gel, but was growing impatient that the defense was not picking up more of the slack in the meantime.
Philosophical differences with subordinates can be a cancer if you do not deal with it. He has not laid out exactly what those philosophical or leadership differences were. I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific, so I don't have enough Provo contacts to have the scoop. I count as relatives by marriage a former BYU President, one of the 5 people that acted as AD before Holmoe was picked, and as stated before, a player who is the son of my Stake President, and a former player who was in my Ward. I get absolutley nothing from any of these sources or their relatives other than insight as to how Travis Uale turned down a Utah Scholarship offer (he was a walk on there as a freshman) after his mission to walk on at BYU. I have no information to add to this story from any of them.
I do have another source with very close ties to 1 of our three best players and another starter. I did hear early in the season that there was becoming a divide in the team between the veterans including those two players and the entitled new freshman and other "highly touted" recruits. That was not linked to Hill, however. I remmeber the same kin dof stuff happenign when Lavell started to land nationally hyped recruits. It is tough to manage and many of them are over-hyped making it harder to manage and all of them are inexperienced and do not recognize their limitations at first.
I have up to about 400 people at peak times that work for me. There are VPs, Directors, and Managers in between me and them. I have frequently had subordinates, peers, an deven bosses with leadership style differences, philosophical differences, or specific technical differences of opinion. That is healthy as long as it works like this. You hear out the differences of opinion, rethink your position if apropriate, but either way - the BOSS make a decision if consensus cannot be reached, the entire managment team communicates that decision, and all involved know that they will be held accountable to embrace that decision as if it was their own - even if it isn't. On the rare occasions when a subordinate loses sight of that last point, you have to make a change and you have to make it fast. Otherwise, you get passive-agressive or maybe even active resistance that undermines what you are trying to do.
I do not know if that is what was going on here - but if it was the firing was the right thing to do even though - I wholeheartedly believe the offense has even bigger problems than the defense. But when either side of the ball strugles it affects the other. When the D allows long drives, and specially scores - the offense loses any momentum or rhythym it had. When the Offense goes 3 and out, the D gets worn down and perhaps discouraged. How it seems to keep afffecting the special teams is more of a mystery - but it becomes a cancer and cancer affects everything in the system.
I believe Bronco has a timetable of expecations for the offense and that responsibility remains delegated to Anae to fix it. Bronco's comments recently seem to indicate that he feels that may be a while on Offense. He went from very early on having the philosophy of picking guys and going with them after Spring to having the QB, LB, TE, and one Safety battle go into summer and then into the season. Recently, Bronco has made comments to the effect that he is not evaluating the Qb on a game-to-game basis but in the context of progression from Freshman to Senior QB. I do not have too many issues with Bronco - but he does tend to speak to the media in Parables of sorts with thoughts that do not get completed in the sentence flow leaving you saying "What did he say?". But the above is the gist I get from Bronco.
The article someone posted a link to, from a former player, seemed credible - especially when I reacall that whiny BYU fans, and u know who u are, used to whine that BYU could stop the run but couldn't stop the pass, especially the deep bomb. Those complaints go clear back to Lavell Edwards time and often invoked discussions of the difficulty of recruiting and retaining "athletic" DBs. I recall excitement from fans that Hill could help fix that and he seemingly did for the most part. Then he got promoted (Peter Principle - maybe?). PP in case any do not know is that "We All Keep Geting Promoted Until We Reach a Level Where We become Incompetent". But maybe he was so focused on the pass that he just did not develop the ability to also stop the run. When Bronco gave him the OC reins and fully stepped back and quit participating - well that weakness was apparently exposed and Hill was apparently not taking the direction given to him to fix it - and Bronco wanted it fixed now and believes it can be fixed now. I sure hope it can be shored up with our depleted starters - otherwise it was about to get worse - maybe as bad as the Offense.
Like Bronco - I expected the offense to improve a lot more last week than it did. I don't know what to expect this week on either side of the ball - but expect decent special teams play at home and spirited and more confident play all around at home - at least until the booing starts.
But SDSU, like UNR and USU, doesn't seem to be "Your father and grandfather's Oldsmobile". I am delighted to see Rocky Long making an impact - I just hope he doesn't make an impact this week.
Go Cougs
Somewhere I saw it reported that Bronco had expected the defense to be more of a reload this year while he knew the offense was a significant rebuild - thus he has more patience with the time it is taking the offense to gel, but was growing impatient that the defense was not picking up more of the slack in the meantime.
Philosophical differences with subordinates can be a cancer if you do not deal with it. He has not laid out exactly what those philosophical or leadership differences were. I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific, so I don't have enough Provo contacts to have the scoop. I count as relatives by marriage a former BYU President, one of the 5 people that acted as AD before Holmoe was picked, and as stated before, a player who is the son of my Stake President, and a former player who was in my Ward. I get absolutley nothing from any of these sources or their relatives other than insight as to how Travis Uale turned down a Utah Scholarship offer (he was a walk on there as a freshman) after his mission to walk on at BYU. I have no information to add to this story from any of them.
I do have another source with very close ties to 1 of our three best players and another starter. I did hear early in the season that there was becoming a divide in the team between the veterans including those two players and the entitled new freshman and other "highly touted" recruits. That was not linked to Hill, however. I remmeber the same kin dof stuff happenign when Lavell started to land nationally hyped recruits. It is tough to manage and many of them are over-hyped making it harder to manage and all of them are inexperienced and do not recognize their limitations at first.
I have up to about 400 people at peak times that work for me. There are VPs, Directors, and Managers in between me and them. I have frequently had subordinates, peers, an deven bosses with leadership style differences, philosophical differences, or specific technical differences of opinion. That is healthy as long as it works like this. You hear out the differences of opinion, rethink your position if apropriate, but either way - the BOSS make a decision if consensus cannot be reached, the entire managment team communicates that decision, and all involved know that they will be held accountable to embrace that decision as if it was their own - even if it isn't. On the rare occasions when a subordinate loses sight of that last point, you have to make a change and you have to make it fast. Otherwise, you get passive-agressive or maybe even active resistance that undermines what you are trying to do.
I do not know if that is what was going on here - but if it was the firing was the right thing to do even though - I wholeheartedly believe the offense has even bigger problems than the defense. But when either side of the ball strugles it affects the other. When the D allows long drives, and specially scores - the offense loses any momentum or rhythym it had. When the Offense goes 3 and out, the D gets worn down and perhaps discouraged. How it seems to keep afffecting the special teams is more of a mystery - but it becomes a cancer and cancer affects everything in the system.
I believe Bronco has a timetable of expecations for the offense and that responsibility remains delegated to Anae to fix it. Bronco's comments recently seem to indicate that he feels that may be a while on Offense. He went from very early on having the philosophy of picking guys and going with them after Spring to having the QB, LB, TE, and one Safety battle go into summer and then into the season. Recently, Bronco has made comments to the effect that he is not evaluating the Qb on a game-to-game basis but in the context of progression from Freshman to Senior QB. I do not have too many issues with Bronco - but he does tend to speak to the media in Parables of sorts with thoughts that do not get completed in the sentence flow leaving you saying "What did he say?". But the above is the gist I get from Bronco.
The article someone posted a link to, from a former player, seemed credible - especially when I reacall that whiny BYU fans, and u know who u are, used to whine that BYU could stop the run but couldn't stop the pass, especially the deep bomb. Those complaints go clear back to Lavell Edwards time and often invoked discussions of the difficulty of recruiting and retaining "athletic" DBs. I recall excitement from fans that Hill could help fix that and he seemingly did for the most part. Then he got promoted (Peter Principle - maybe?). PP in case any do not know is that "We All Keep Geting Promoted Until We Reach a Level Where We become Incompetent". But maybe he was so focused on the pass that he just did not develop the ability to also stop the run. When Bronco gave him the OC reins and fully stepped back and quit participating - well that weakness was apparently exposed and Hill was apparently not taking the direction given to him to fix it - and Bronco wanted it fixed now and believes it can be fixed now. I sure hope it can be shored up with our depleted starters - otherwise it was about to get worse - maybe as bad as the Offense.
Like Bronco - I expected the offense to improve a lot more last week than it did. I don't know what to expect this week on either side of the ball - but expect decent special teams play at home and spirited and more confident play all around at home - at least until the booing starts.
But SDSU, like UNR and USU, doesn't seem to be "Your father and grandfather's Oldsmobile". I am delighted to see Rocky Long making an impact - I just hope he doesn't make an impact this week.
Go Cougs