Posted 8:26 AM by Mike
A few weeks ago I found out that one of my coaches at River Falls accepted a head coaching job at Elmhurst College, near Chicago. He had been at River Falls for 15 years and was the associate head coach and also the defensive coordinator. He really deserved his own program. He could easily be a D-I coach but prefers D-III. He has always said that be prefers D-III athletes because they are playing because they love the game, not for a scholorship. 99.99% of D-III football players will not play professionally so they are playing because they want to play.

He and my high school football coach are the two most infuentual coaches I've ever had. I respect every coach I've ever had and still call them all "Coach" when I see them to this day. But these two hold a special place in my heart.

My high school football coach convinced me to go out for football. At the time (8th grade) I had no interest in playing football. I was a basketball player. He had been hounding me ever since I was in 6th grade about playing football. Then one day in his English class, he got down on his knee at my desk and finally begged me to play. I finally caved and said I would go out as a freshman. He wanted me to practice with the varsity though. He put up with me not knowing where to play. I think I played almost every position the first couple days of practice. I finally settled on fullback. I played one JV game at fullback and realized that I wasn't cutout for running back even though I scored a touchdown. I told him I was switching to OL/DL and he smiled. The next week, I was getting some playing time with the VARSITY at OL! He told me that he always saw me as a lineman because I had a big butt!! After that, my JV days were over.

My coach at River Falls was influental in a different way. During my first camp at River Falls I was struggling with a lot of things. I didn't have a place to live yet, didn't know anybody, and was very homesick. Basically for the first time in my life, I wasn't enjoying football and wanted to go home. He somehow picked up on this and one day, after practice, as I was walking back from the practice field he came up beside me and asked me how I was doing. I told him how I was feeling and instead of telling me to grow up and suck it up, he told me to not give up. He said that it will get better as long as you don't let it get to you. He shook my hand and told me to keep my head up. After that, things were much better and everything kind of fell into place. I can never thank him enough. If I had decided to pull the plug and go home, I wouln't have met all this great guys I played with, and more importantly I would have never met my wife!! Thanks Coach!

Posted 8:19 AM by Mike
It's that time of year where I get kind of antsy. This week was the first week of high school football practice in MN. Nothing like high school football. Here's a good quote Ed Harris has in the movie "Radio":

"I love football. I love everything about it. I like Friday nights searching for a win, and Saturday mornings when we found one!"

How true this is. Friday nights under the lights is the best. I miss the feeling of getting all jacked up for a game. Being on the verge of puking due to a combination of nerves and excitement in school during the day. But then all that disappears after the first hit of the game. I miss the rush of the contact. Legal violence! Where else can you take out all of your frustration on a person standing right across from you and then get to do it again, and again, etc.....