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Camp is over, next up: Season Opener at Troy

Football camp has come to an end, players have moved into their quarters for the school year and the opening of the 2010 football season is just days away.  Ask any of the players, first year or fifth year and the most likely answer you will get is that camp, this year, was long.  Triple digit temps on the field at times, crack of dawn practices to avoid the heat, meetings, film study and walk thru’s and more meetings and scrimmages.  With so many players having graduated from last year’s team, there was a lot of competition for every position back-ups. 

Decisions still need to be made by Coach Clawson and his staff to determine who makes the travel squad.  After the final scrimmage on August 22nd, he said that the starters are basically decided.  But they must determine who makes up the back-up roles, look at specials teams and of the 25 freshmen on the roster, who is going to play and who gets redshirted.

Classes have started and college life in its “normal” state and all have survived camp.  We do want to express how much we are going to miss Scott Lewis from the line-up though.  Scott, a junior offensive lineman who walked on as a freshman and did everything right and was awarded a full scholarship for his efforts and had worked his way up to be the starting left guard this season, suffered a freak injury during camp to his foot and having had surgery to repair the damage is in a cast and will be out for a while.  Make sure to give a hug to Scott and his parents, Gary and Gigi…two wonderful Falcon parents whom you will see throughout the season.
For a player and his parents, getting redshirted can seem disappointing.  After all, he went through the recruiting process, lots of schools wanted him and he is going to fill the need identified by the coaching staff and this is why he came to play here.  All true statements and nothing has changed. 

Consider the late Coach Randy Walker, who was Miami University’s head coach before moving onto Northwestern of the Big 10.  He said to a family asking about being redshirted, “Our plan is to redshirt every freshman we can.  If we don’t, that means we have no one else to play that position or, he is better than anyone else in that spot.”  He also gave the analogy of a freshman in college to that of an 8th grader in junior high.  The 8th grader watches his local high school varsity play on Friday nights and sees how big and fast and strong those seniors are.  When a player comes in as a freshman to college, he is akin to being that 8th grader all over again.  Teammates as well as the opponents have players entering their fifth year of college and are bigger, stronger, faster, quicker and mentally more prepared to play at the college level having been through several seasons and off-seasons.  Some of these players will also be looking to advance into the professional ranks. And the freshman player just finished his high school season just a little while ago.

We asked several of the Falcon freshmen during the camp the biggest change from high school football and the reply was unanimous; the speed of the game, the tempo of practice was all at a much higher level.  This is something that they all knew coming in, but until they experienced it they could not really comprehend it all.
As has been stated in previous posts, the NCAA and the MAC place limits on how many players may travel to an away game (the only exception being bowl games where the entire team is eligible to travel).  The NCAA has a limit of 65 players and the MAC has a limit of 60 players for league play.  For any given away game there will be 40 to 45 players left on campus.  This is true of any division one football school.

Being redshirted allows the player to practice and even make the travel squad.  There are some intricacies involved with losing the redshirt status but for here, let’s simply say that if a player plays in a game, he is no longer considered redshirted and now has four years to play four years of college football.  Being redshirted, of course, means that a player has five years to play four years of college football.

Every member of the team contributes to the success of the Falcons from a fifth year senior to a freshman walk-on.  Much can and does happen throughout the long season of college football.  Most high schools will have played at least two games before the Falcons travel down to play Troy.  And our regular season doesn’t end until after Thanksgiving and most high schools have completed their seasons by the end of October.

The pressures of being a student athlete are now in play with time management becoming a most important issue.  Coach Clawson does an excellent job of making sure that all freshmen attend mandatory study tables throughout the season to help provide a positive environment for studying and getting homework assignments done for your son’s classes.  This holds true as well for any team member who falls below a designated GPA.  And all players are held accountable for being in class,  being in the front of the class, participating and getting assignments and test completed. 

Coach Clawson did an outstanding job last year in seeing the teams’ Academic Progress Report increase to become the third highest in the MAC.  He inherited in his first year the teams’ APR that was not meeting standards and caused the reduction of the number of football scholarships awarded last year. The APR is a real-time measure of eligibility, retention and graduation of student-athletes competing on every NCAA Division I athletics team.  Happy to say that as a result, the Falcons were able to restore the full amount of scholarships offered in 2010.

We will be posting information on the new parking situation for Doyt Stadium, tailgating details and of course, where we will be for The Walk.  If you have not heard, the parking area on the east side of the stadium cannot be used this year so we are parking around the southwest side of the stadium for our tailgates.  More on this soon.