From the latest news and blog

Do You Think Your Job Is Stressful

I often times find myself wondering how college football head coaches live past the age of 50. I mean seriously, it has to be stressful. Recruiting players, managing staff, running practices, overseeing player development and academics and of course coaching the games and that’s just scratching the surface. The post game press conferences can be brutal especially when you lose. And then of course there’s social media which adds a whole new wrinkle to the lives of coaches. Go Figure!! How they survive all of this without dropping out with a heart attack is beyond me. They must be on some serious blood pressure reducers. Forget about the millions in salary, if it had been me I would have kicked the bucket long ago! Let’s hope this year they can hang in there till the end of the season because things are really atarting to heat up. Of course having great players at important positions must help immensely in times of stress. I figure having Quinn Ewers or Arch Manning at quarterback for Texas is good for lowering your blood pressure by 10 or 15 points. Dillion Gabriel at Oregon maybe not so much. Having lineman that way 350 to 400 pounds, like at Georgia,  must help a lot with the pressure until of course you play Alabama who has the same size lineman that can also run the 40 yard dash in 4.8. I know, it’s scary but all this leads me to believe I could never Coach college football. I’ll leave it to the young guys, my blood pressure is high enough already just watching them play on tv and of course it doesn’t help that my picks are tubing this year. It seems to me that the great coaches that coach the great teams that win weekend and week out make it look easy. They’re calm, cool and collected on the side line. There’s no screaming, there’s no yelling, there’s no fist pounding during the post game news conferences. they just get everyone trained up to do their jobs and let them go. If they’ve done their jobs it should all just fall into place right? Maybe yes and maybe no. The ones that seem to lose every week, they seem to sweat a lot. There’s a lot of yelling and screaming and jestering. Clip boards go flying, hats come off, headsets get thrown to the ground. To me it’s not a good look, not a good visual. It’s supposed to be a game right? Games are supposed to be fun right? Well we all know the answer to that question. Just follow the money. By now I think it’s safe to say that several head coaches are going to be looking for new jobs soon. Hugh Freeze at Auburn has been sweating and screaming a lot. Mike Norval hasn’t been stressed but after going undefeated in the ACC last year Florida State looks terrible at 1-3. It might be time to make a change in Tallahassee. Of course all is not lost if you loose your job as a head football coach in a power five conference team. Most of these guys will walk away with multi million dollar buy outs. They’ll get paid to leave. Sorry, but no sympathy from me coach. Next of course are the coaches who are sitting pretty and by these I mean the ones with stacked squads, talented players 4 and 5 deep at skill positions and guys twice the size of their opponents along the offensive and defensive fronts. Texas, Georgia and Ol Miss come to mind here and of course Alabama is in this group of calm, cool and collected college coaches. You won’t see Lane Kiffin, Kirby Smart or anyone else from this group yelling and screaming because they’re destroying the competition. However things may soon change. After several weeks of top teams playing unknowns from the Sunbelt, The Mountain and other non FBS conferences it’s go time in the SEC, ACC and Big Ten. No more Ohio State vs. Boise State. No more Alabama vs Eastern Kentucky. You can forget about LSU blowing out Troy State because it’s time to let the big boys play each other. This weekend’s line up of Georgia Vs. Alabama, Mississippi vs. Kentucky and Notre Dame vs. Louisville should start to show us who is for real and who is not. A big, very big, showdown between Colorado and The University of Central Florida will show us wether or not Travis Hunter is a true Heisman candidate. Kansas State vs. Oklahoma State and Illinois vs. Penn State should show us if anyone is going to be competitive outside of The South Eastern Conference. With Michigan vs Ohio State still far down the road it’s all still up in the air. In the end I’d say a great strategy to make some picks would be to seek out calm waters and avoid the turmoil and turbulence of the emotional whirlpools that are seen on the college football landscape every weekend. At this point I need a new focus on my picks to generate some winners sone how, some way!! Play On I say!KevKev's Corner Our Staffs Weekly Sports perspective(click here for more of Kev’s past articles)