re: Enos

Responding to the posts since my last one I can only tell you that I heard things all the time as a player that didn’t have anything to do with why we played or didn’t play well. Played through high school. Coached for fun only at different levels including intramural college.

One of the best examples I can remember is before a game the older adults were having a convo about the team we were about to play and what we thought we would do and some of us said we believed we would beat them by 30. We were told we were overconfident and did not have a good attitude and would suffer from it in some way. And we won by more than 30. It was because we had the more talented players and executed the game plan with good coaching. It wasn’t like we went into the game and turned a dial and said well we are going to play at a 60% level this game because the other team isn’t that good. So we are just going to sleep walk through this. Or that players somehow play “harder” if the other team said some negative stuff about you or your team. You should already be playing your best and giving your best effort regardless what the other team says or doesn’t say. Playing your best is just how disciplined players operate but of course that doesn’t mean you are always going to win, now matter how much discipline or confidence that you have.

And in the case of the Arkansas football program just taking the 2023 season we were 9th out of the 14 in the rank of our recruiting class. We will most likely never be in the top tier. And even with a great coach that “coaching up” only gets you so far even if your confidence level is #1 in the SEC. And remember CSP tells us each week how hard everyone plays and is seemingly playing their best but that hasn’t been worth many wins.

I agree you have to focused and have your head in the game as a player, and that applies to pretty much every job you undertake in life, but you’ll never convince me that all the Ra Ra stuff and pomp and circumstance has much to do with a team’s performance or lack thereof at least in the case of disciplined players-certainly not at the college and pro levels of play. I do think that fans latch on to the other things in attempts to explain a team’s good or bad performance because as human beings we seek an explanation of everything and usually seek out what we think are the easiest answers to things we don’t completely understand.

And all this ties back to the thread topic because getting rid of Enos was the easy answer and people want to think his ouster was the remedy for our diseased program. I don’t doubt that people may feel better now but whether we will ultimately play better because we got rid of a coach underneath our head coach remains to be seen.