Spring Fever

As spring practices begin to start up, I've noticed that my 1-2 posts per week have been getting noticeably shown up by the plethora of other ND blogs itching to start talking some pigskin instead of any sort of roundball. Unfortunately, the last month of the school year comes with things like 'tests' and 'papers' and 'two-a-days for bookstore basketball,' so I hope no one will be too offended at my lack of obsessive coverage.

All other time commitments aside, I still find myself sacrificing some extra sleep every night trying to take in all of the great practice videos other sites have been posting, and from what I can tell so far, the theme for this spring seems to be perfecting the fundamentals.
The concept seems easy enough; stay low, hit hard, follow through. Pursue, eyes up, head on a swivel. We've all heard most of these phrases going all the way back to pee-wee football leagues, and while everything sounds straight forward, the truth is that it takes a lot of repetitious development to create fundamentally sound football players. Little things like getting runningbacks to protect the ball and run square through the hole can make a difference between a win and a loss.
Take new linebackers coach John Tenuta for example. I've watched two practice videos where he's worked on nothing but the LB's first steps. Excerpts taken from in between Tenuta's obscenities in this clip display his emphasis on the basics:

"Bring your feet!"
"Don't get caught arm tackling!"
"Don't drop your head!"
"Do it again, and get the dropstep right this time!"
This period of development is so crucial for a team like Notre Dame that needs to become more physical in order to have success next year. In the upcoming months, the players must build a solid foundation in the basic techniques required for their positions because they will need to focus their attention on mastering a plethora of plays, and after that, opponent specific gameplans. For anyone that has seen Will Ferrell's latest movie, Semi-Pro (if you haven't seen it, you're not missing anything, trust me), this is where the team learns the 'puke play.' This puke play is in reference to the fact that the players should have practiced these basics enough times that it caused them to puke, and hopefully, the intense repetition allows the basics to become second nature. When it gets to the fourth quarter and everyone's tired, they must be able to fall back on their unmovable foundation and trust it to finish the job.

That being said, I'm overly excited to see the upcoming developments on both sides of the ball this month, but the addition of Tenuta on defense has had most of my attention, and that is why he earned the honor of being featured for this quote of the week:


“You don’t want offensive dictating to you, you want to dictate to offenses,” Tenuta told the media before later stating, “We’re going to be an aggressive, ball hawking defense. I’m always going to aggressive.”


Bulls**t! Downhill!
Go Irish!