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Howdy, and a good Monday. Little different format today as I have a little story for you.
I went to the San Antonio Coach's Night last night (if you are a member of the Tweeter, you probably know this already, but anyway). We sat in the back at the military table, as my dad called it, because the name tag said "General Admission." You can see the inherent humor handicap I am already faced with. I had never been to one of these before, but the folks at our table (really nice bunch of people) explained that this was the biggest the SA event had ever been. I think there were over 800 paid attendees, not counting the various University dignitaries, etc. [YES DALLAS AND HOUSTON PEOPLE WE KNOW YOURS IS BIGGER. THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE POSTS.] The live auction was a riot and after being told that the highest price a signed Manziel helmet had sold for was $8500 in Fort Worth, the crowd stepped it up and dropped a cool 10K on the helmet. And then $12,700 on a jersey of the same nature. Overall the live auction raised over $25,000, and the silent auction probably raised a great deal beyond that.
There were Kyle Field updates, but most of that is common knowledge available online, including the fact that in 2014 the phone reception "won't yet be premier" like it will in 2015. One more year of waving your phone around desperately trying to get a tweet out, folks.
Sumlin was as promised. I've seen him speak before, but never on friendly turf. He still had the same no-nonsense demeanor, though, yet was still able to connect with the entire crowd. There wasn't much new in his speech that he didn't go over in Media Days or other Coach's Nights: he's high on Daeshon Hall and Jordan Mastrogiovanni on defense, and he's not telling anyone who the QB is yet. But the final crowd question had a little more meaning even though he'd answered it before.
The easy thing for me to do is kick the kid off the team. That's the easy thing. The other side of that is me sitting on the couch with a single mom after telling her I'd look out for her son. But I couldn't undo in 17 months what had been going on for 17 years. And it happens.
There is Coachspeak, and there is a guy who coaches football speaking about life. All the comments I heard leaving the event were positive admiration for this. Johnny Manziel got caught shoplifting in high school. I'm glad someone gave him another chance or two, or we wouldn't be raising five figures in scholarships per piece of clothing.
But my favorite quote of the night was this:
A coach I once worked with told me to never read internet message boards, because "you ain't that bad...but you ain't that great, either."