Black Shoe Diaries

I don't think it's the changes themselves that everyone's afraid of.

It’s the effect those changes are going to have. Anything that can be seen as a threat to our ideals is going to scare a lot of people. Whether that fear is founded in reality or is irrational is a different discussion. I really don’t care what they do as long as our players continue to do well academically and athletically and we continue to do things the right way. Whether things are done the right way with long hair or facial hair is irrelevant to me. I do want to avoid anything over the top though. The only thing that I don’t want to see change besides the uniforms is the type of players we get. I want players we can be proud of for their accomplishments off the football field as well as on it. If the quality and character of our players don’t change, I will have no problems.

Succss With Honor Always - February 22, 2012 reply

I am happy with the changes

As long as the team stays out of trouble and continues to work hard and work with the community and go to class….etc….etc….etc. I don’t care about he minor changes. I feel it is a give and take situation. If it gets to loose and the teams start to slack off I would like to see BOB put the hammer down and put some restrictions back on. If the team does everything they are should do and more then why not give the freedom.

jetskijoe - February 22, 2012 reply

This is speculation

But I have a feeling that the strict appearance guidelines stuck around because Joe wanted PSU to be different. This could make the guys recognize that PSU is not like other schools. You are held to a different standard here. It might seem silly at first, but being different has its allure, even if it means adhering to strict rules. I think it enforces the team concept.

moosepsu - February 22, 2012 via Android app reply

I don't care.

As was said above, many of our players are tatted up anyhow. Just because they keep their hair/facial hair short doesn’t necessarily make them look more or less clean cut. I think their should be a standard of having hair and beards well-kept (i.e. no Brett Kiesel situations) but otherwise they should be free to wear their how they see fit. Goodness knows they have enough to do as D1 athletes already. So long as our players continue to represent themselves well publicly it’s no matter to me.

I would love for BOB to keep them in suits for gamedays though. Reinforces the idea of the game being a business trip.

Governator - February 22, 2012 reply

Hell

The Blue Band now has a stricter hair/facial hair policy than the football team does. Hair must all fit inside the hat, and absolutely no facial hair other than a mustache that is well groomed and does not protrude beyond the corners of the mouth.

dbl5030 - February 23, 2012 reply

I generally agree with physicist above.

Though I’m not TOO bothered by a shaggier look. It is, however, an erosion of what made Penn State unique. What concerns me is – what’s next? Based on this loosening of the rules, I fully expect Bob to be much less strict than Joe was on players celebrating plays and TDs. I’m sure he’ll be upset if a celebration causes a penalty, but I also don’t expect future players who were never coached by Joe to give Moye’s response to ‘give us your best TD celebration pose’ during a photo shoot – ‘I play for Penn State – we don’t celebrate.’ Based on BOB’s moves, I think that mentality is all but dead within 3-4 years. And that’s really disappointing.

PSUEnrg02 - February 23, 2012 reply

Not too concerned

BOB understands the important things – academics, discipline, the uniforms and what they represent.

He actually pushed the morning work-outs earlier. I don’t think there was any football or academic reason for pushing it from 6 to 5:30 (or was it 5:30 to 5?). I think that was just about pushing discipline.

I think BOB sees a lot of these rules as actually distracting from the important stuff. I can see it both ways. Sometimes asking kids to keep track of something that’s basically meaningless is a good way to build good habits. But I think these guys already have so many details to keep track of that maybe it’s ok to get rid of the ones that don’t really matter very much.

The ugly sweatshirt aside, the Pats ran a pretty tight ship. Brady always looks very sharp in his post game interviews. I’ve also read that Belichek wears that ugly shirt to protest not being able to wear a jacket and tie. And he can clean up when he wants to.

And in every one of BOB’s public appearances, he’s dressed appropriately for the occasion.

Also, in modern sports, there’s been a shift away from “coat and tie” as the symbol of unity and seriousness to wearing team gear all the time now that the teams have uniform sponsors eager to shower them with free stuff. It’s not as formal, but it’s more practical and it’s more uniform. Note that every guy in those work out videos is wearing the exact same Nike shorts, shirt and socks. That looks good, I think. You didn’t see half the guys wearing their high school sweatshirt or a Steelers shirt or whatever. They looked like a team that is proud to represent PSU.

That’s important. The Pirates, for example, made a big effort with that a few years back in their minor league system. The Spikes, for example, were wearing whatever they felt like during practice, etc, and looked like a beer league team. Now, everything they wear is either Spikes or Pirates and every guy has to wear their pants in the superior old-school high sock look and not the Manny Ramirez pajama look. It hasn’t produced a lot of wins, but I think that sort of attention to detail helps the team play as a team better and gives a better impression to the fans. And the Pirates need all the help they can get.

But the hair and the hats are largely arbitrary. What people of Joe’s generation saw as inappropriate and disrespectful, younger people don’t see that way. It goes both ways anyway. My mom, who is more in line with the old school, actually thinks I cut my hair too short! You can’t win.

It’s not that our generation doesn’t care about presentation. It’s just how standards and conventions change. 100 years ago or so, pink was considered the better color for boys (more powerful and flash, supposedly) whereas blue was for girls. Stuff like this evolves.

(I would like to see PSU ban guys from having hair hanging out of their helmets. I think it’s more dangerous and it kind of looks crap too, but the danger is more important. Actually, I’d like to see the NFL and NCAA ban that too. Getting pulled down by one’s hair would be dangerous, but then if that were banned, guys would just grow it super long to prevent anyone from grabbing the back of their jersey. Just tie it up or cut it off during the season.)

As for the media availability, I think Joe just saw the press as a distraction, and he wasn’t entirely wrong, and I think he had some real animosity for the press, which wasn’t entirely undeserved. In the old days, a coach could get to know a reporter and know that he wasn’t going to write bad stuff or betray confidences. That’s not how it is now, for better and worse, and Joe just didn’t like that shift.

But I think BOB has a better feel for how the media works in this day and age and sees opportunities to use it to his advantage and doesn’t just look upon them as a distraction. His time in the NFL, especially in Boston, probably helped with that.

It’s especially important right now because of the “secrecy” narrative that took hold in the media, which is partially fair and partially unfair. But beyond that – and I think that whole issue will go away in a year or two – it can help in recruiting and can help get skeptical boosters on his side.

Those are the immediate benefits, but “marketing the program” should also be an important long-term goal for PSU (and every football program.) You’d think PSU wouldn’t need to market football, but I don’t think they can ever get complacent about it. Not just because STEP and the economy has made tickets a tougher sell, but because people today, especially kids, have more and more sports and other entertainment options battling for their attention. It’s not a given that every kid in PA is going to always care about football as much as they have before, let alone automatically care about PSU football. If programs like Penn State were to go the route of major league baseball and just think that people will continue to show up forever because they always have in the past, we could see the same kind of gradual decline in interest. Maybe not next year or the year after but five, ten, and 20 years down the road, absolutely. Remember when horse racing and boxing were popular sports? It could happen.

reedjohnmiller - February 23, 2012 reply