Does anyone REALLY know what time it is?

Reportedly football coach Lou Holtz once exclaimed to his football team, "Today we are going to get 3 good hours of practice in; even if it takes us 6 hours to do it!"

Sounds kind of far-fetched, but not completely unfounded back in the day. Since Lou made this remark new NCAA rules limit how much time athletes can spend practicing. Long gone are the good old days of ridiculously long practices. Those of you that have not been exposed to college football practices may be unaware of how they are conducted. After calisthenics and brief drills, done as groups, by position, the meat of the practice starts with highly scripted drills involving different groups of players from both the offense and defense. In order to orchestrate the script an artificial clock is used to keep everyone on the same page, and in the right location, at the correct 'time'.

Football facilities are now equipped with clocks or large counters that mark 5 minute periods so that each coach and player is on the same schedule coinciding with this artificial time system.

The only problem with this system, at least as far as I observed, is that learning football (and probably most other things) occurs at differing rates that can't typically be determined or scripted by a coach - at least at the college level. You've probably all seen movies about football where the irate coach yells, with great dramatic effect, "RUN IT AGAIN!" I'm here to tell you, it ain't that dramatic when it happens repeatedly every day at practice. In many instances, so many plays get re-run that the coach yells at the freshman student manager (who usually gets stuck with the horse$hit chore of running the clock) to start the period, or even the whole clock over from the beginning.

I read somewhere, years ago, that TIME was the only invention that man has come up with that he is now totally become a slave to. While we all have the ability to spend our own time however we want, football coaches are the only people I've ever met in person who can control time for large populations of people. That power has always amazed me in a "how messed up is that" kind of way. (After all, author Carl Sandberg said, "Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.) Maybe that's part of the reason I got out of "Big Time Athletics", I don't need some football coach thinking he can control MY time.






I got to thinking about time since we just 'sprung forward' for daylight savings time. I guess I now need to add the US Congress to the list of people who can control time for others. By enacting the 2005 Energy Policy Act (that continues our daylight saving time rules) they've got us all changing time as well. Probably contributes to the fact that I don't care much for politicians regardless of their affiliation, either.

I am aware too that we all need to dedicate hours to sleeping eating and other maintenance issues, but how about all the other time we have available to use?

As a 'Recovering Hockey Parent", that strange breed that finds a LOT of time on their hands after the kids are off to college (after devoting copious amounts of time running kids to arenas for practice games & tourneys through their high school years) I finally finished my undergrad degree. I graduated a year AFTER our oldest and 2 years BEFORE our youngest.

I'm amazed at the number of employees at the University that I initially met years ago who, when I run into them now, bemoan the fact that they've been on campus for X years and have never taken advantage of the schooling benefits. I say, do as Nike advised lo, all those years ago, JUST DO IT!




How about all y'all?
What have you always wanted to do if only you had the time?
Start today, and you're one step closer to finishing. Times gonna pass either way.

Who knew?