Things I Observed at the MHSFCA Winner’s Circle Clinic

Let’s be clear: I’m not a football coach, although I did go to the University of Alabama, so I’m sure I acquired at least a small amount of football intelligence. That being said, I’m not a football coach. I did, though, get to hang with football coaches over the last couple of days, as the Radisson downtown is hosting the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association Winner’s Circle Clinic. My gym is in the basement, so I got to experience parts of the conference. While every single person I talked to was very nice, I did observe a few interesting things.

For starters, I honestly thought it was a truck and SUV convention. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many trucks and SUVs — mostly the latter — in one place at any given time. Unfortunately, many of the drivers of these vehicles need work in parking them.

Suggestion: Perhaps the MHSFCA could offer a session at next year’s Winner’s Circle Clinic on using a parking deck, including the parking of  large vehicles. No, wait — that will be too late. I vote for a webinar.

A pair of drivers had significant difficulty with the parking deck. One didn’t seem to be able to accelerate his SUV beyond about 3 miles per hour. That was unfortunate. More unfortunate, though, was the guy who decided to make like a salmon and drive his SUV upstream — otherwise known as the wrong way. I’m pretty sure that said coach would have been really unhappy if one of his wide receivers had turned right instead of left on a pass route.

Suggestion: Coaches who fail the MHSFCA parking deck course should be required to run suicide sprints.

The coaches enjoyed conversing with each other. They also enjoyed traveling on the escalators. Unfortunately, they seem to enjoy conversing at the entry and exit points of the escalators instead of, you know, in the common areas where there is lots of space for standing and talking.

Suggestion: Mark off the common areas to look like sidelines. Coaches should be naturally drawn to those areas.

Coaches never get to experience tailgating; after all, they’re getting ready for their games while people are tailgating. Apparently, the conference wanted to give them the experience they never get during the season, as beer was available for purchase in the hotel lobby.

At 11:00 this morning.

And the tip jar already had money in it.

Suggestion: I guess beer is beer, even if it’s a can of Coors Light at $4 a pop, but having beer available for massive quantities of football coaches — high-school football coaches, that is — that early in the morning sends the wrong message, even if there aren’t students on hand. I’m not sure that sends the right message.

Better suggestion: I suspect at least some of the coaches in attendance were not on annual leave. I know I saw at least one group of coaches get out of a publicly owned vehicle (or a van with a license plate stolen from a publicly owned vehicle). Even if the alcohol wasn’t included in the registration fee, I don’t think it’s a great idea for public employees to be consuming alcohol during a training session. I go to training sessions, and I don’t get to booze it up during training. Maybe it’s time for public employees who coach sports to subscribe to the same rules other public employees have to follow. Save the beer for the after hours, MHSFCA.

Last, but not least, I got to see representatives from Michigan-located, Division I – Football Bowl Subdivision teams, including Michigan, Michigan State, and Western Michigan University. I saw the folks from WMU on Thursday night, but they weren’t around while I was there. I’m not sure who was representing MSU at the conference yesterday, but today the Spartans were represented by Mark Dantonio (who clearly enjoyed his presentation session) and, at the MSU table, two women to whom I didn’t speak. The Wolverines were represented by, amongst others, Jeff Hecklinski, who I did talk to on Thursday night. He was a really nice guy, and I enjoyed getting to chat with him for a moment. Michigan also had one other important representative at the table.

Yes, it's the real Sugar Bowl trophy. Nice work, Michigan! (Much better work than my photography....)

 Suggestion: More trophies, please.

All in all, it was an educational experience, even though I had only very brief interactions with the conference. Jeff Hecklinski was the highlight, and beer sales before noon were definitely the lowlight.