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2008 Awards and Rankings: Top Posts of the Year

Runner-up post of the year

This post was in response to a post by long-time poster CSU Rambunctious, who waxed poetic about the importance of good coaches in successful programs. BVP for Heisman 03 gave his own insights on the topic and it was one of the highlight posts of the year. And in all honesty, was one of many BVP4H03 posts that could have been in the running for this list.

Subject: My High School Football Coach Used To Say...
Posted by: BVP for Heisman 03 on Fri Apr 18, 2008

My high school football coach used to say to us running backs, BYOB, Jack!

BYOB!

To which my buddy with coke bottle eye glasses used to say:

"Coach, was-dat mean? Bring Your Own Bottle? Bring Your Own Broad?"

"No, Jack! (He called everybody Jack). Be Your Own Blocker.....Be Your Own Blocker, Jack !"

One time at practice my buddy tried to field a punt and Coach yelled "Hey Jack ! Catch the ball !"

To which my buddy, who had left his glasses in the locker room said "Which one Coach?"

I guess the BYOB thang may have paid off......

My buddy went up to BYU...walked on the team......the running back coach took an interest in him....got him to see an eye doctor and corrected his lazy eye and vision. It was all isometric excercises, which tells a person about all you need to know about the public education system we we're subjected to....nobody could figure that one out for , oh, 12 years. What can I say? Our teachers....well they were all good peoples....but as far as the whole education thang went.....well it wasn't exactly what you'd call a demanding experience or that our teachers took an overwhelming interest in us.....they seemed to enjoy to making a bee line for the teachers lounge and smoking cigerettes, if you catch my drift.

We went to school, but we also ditched alot.....we surfed, we skied, we invented beer fishing.....we created our own golf tournaments to fight the boredom....we ditched school and played Texas Scramble with 24 teenagers riding on golf courts, 4 to a cart pounding the Budweiser....but education....well...hmmm....now that was something that wasn't on our radar....and not alot of our teachers, either, evidently.

After football had run it's course, my buddy joined the ROTC.....married a pretty smart broad......managed to get accepted into military flight school.....his wife tutured him up enough to squeeze by the math part......managed to do well enough flying the jets to become one of only a few dozen pilots accepted into the Stealth Flighter pilot program pre-Gulf War at the time.

Flew a gazillion missions in the Middle East.....ever seen the "luckiest guy in Bagdad gun film?" The one where the guy is driving a truck across a bridge? The one where the guy is driving a truck across a bridge and the bomb doesn't go off after hitting the bridge until he reaches the far embankment? Yep. That's his gun tape.

I asked him about it at a reunion. He said and I quote "The bomb was supposed to go off at impact. For some reason it didn't explode or the guy would have been toast. Bring Your Own Bomb. Jack. Bring Your Own Bomb."

His nickname? Shredderdude.

Why?

Because when he landed his Stealth Jet after a mission one time, he pulled back the canopy before shutting off the engines and all his bombing target info got sucked in the engine.

The first sargent in charge of maintaing the jet shouted "Congradulations Lieutent. ! You just turned a billion dollar jet into a paper shredder !"

I always thought they called him Shredder because he could flat demolish a Black Diamond ski run. The dude was awesome.....water skiing he was like a total pro....the kinda guy that can throw a rooster tail a 100 feet.

I stopped by the high school a few years back to drop a check to the Principal....they had created this stupid a$$ rule where kids had to cough up dough to play high school sports......I gave him enough to cover anybody that couldn't afford it for a few years (hey man, many of my teamates didn't exactly come from Bushwood).

I bumped into my old Coach.....he was fresh off a CIF Title hunt.

"Hey Coach. Did you get the Wall Street Journal article I sent you about the Stealth Fighter plane? Can you believe so-and so flew that billion dollar plane in the Gulf War?"

"Yea. I got it. I took it home to my wife and said "Honey. Did you ever wonder how bombs got dropped on hospitals and schools?"

The story doesn't stop there.....after the Gulf War he flew commercial.

He got in with American.

His milkrun was LA to Tampa with Jumbo's. Which suited him fine because it left him time to snow ski and water ski.

On the day of 911 I called a buddy of mine and told him: "Please tell me so and so is still flying American Jumbo's LA to Tampa."

"No." he said. " He changed. He's flying LA to Washington. And I can't get a hold of his wife....the line's busy."

Jeeezus. The thoughts that go through your mind are unreal.

I waited by the phone all day. Finally The Call came around 5:00 P.M. That was his flight, his Jumbo that ditched out in the countryside.

Only he had taken vacation that week. And the phone line was busy all day with getting his instructions on where to report for the Air National Guard and patrol the California coast.

My buddy probably would have been mixed up in something not so hot, if wasn't for football and football coaches. It gave us STRUCTURE. Something, we kinda needed, I guess. Instead he's flying jets.

It's been a few years, I guess, but I still can't stand my old Coach. His assistants were rough, man. Made guys like Frank Kush look normal.

I hate 'em......but I guess they taught us something that isn't there in the classroom, mainly mental toughness. Sh*t roles off my back like water off a duck. Same with my buddy.

BYOB Jack! BYOB !

Be Your Own Blocker.