University of Oklahoma Athletics
Mossman: Poker Hand Backwards?
August 12, 2008 | Athletics
 |
Mossman Prophecies | Archive |
This is the time of year that is still slow enough, football speaking that is, that the status of practice rates as a topic for discussion.
Come August 30, not so much.
Thanks to my job and interest level, I pretty much eat, drink and sleep OU football. As I think back over all of the practices and scrimmages I have watched, there are two vivid memories ... sore backs and aching knees.
For someone with a very discriminating football eye, there are things that can be gleaned from watching practice. For the rest of us, well, it all looks kind of the same.
Public displays of preseason workouts tend to be so vanilla that I have often wondered why coaches bother with them in the first place. It's nearly impossible to learn much by watching them, and I can't see where the team is benefitting much either if the main focus is to hide half of the playbook.
Here is the question I would pose. If any of us were to be engaged in a competitive endeavor of any kind ... sports, business, you name it ... and we had the option of preparing out of sight from our adversary, wouldn't we choose privacy every single time?
Wouldn't it be fair to say that anything to the contrary would be akin to holding your poker hand backwards?
Now, I am sympathetic to that fan that would like to watch scrimmages, and it's too bad that a few could demonize an otherwise harmless proposition, but as a fan I am a lot more concerned with the outcome of the games than the outcome of the practices. And if the outcome of the practices can have a positive impact on those games, then I say to the coaches, "Practice any way you please and we'll see you on game day."
And it doesn't really matter if an open or closed practice really determines wins and losses. If a coach thinks it does, and that coach has won 97 out of 119 games, who am I to tell him that he's all wet? At some point I've got to look over at this journalism degree on my wall and confess that Bob knows just a tad bit more about this football deal than do I.
Until then, I am content to watch the stuff I DVR'd
last season while dreaming about the August 30 date
and the first strains of "Oklahoma!"
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Mossman Prophecies | Archive
Read an inside perspective from the OU Athletics Department
on the latest Sooner sports topics. Associate Athletics
Director for Communications Kenny Mossman provides
his thoughts in his online column at SoonerSports.com.
