Ags get an ‘A’ for effort
Oh, ignorance sure is bliss.
I’m talking about Aggie football fans that are in an impatient uproar over things of which they really don’t know as much as they think they know. I’m talking about the classic bandwagon fan that flees when the team loses. You know who you are.
The Aggies lost again. They’re 0-4 again. Now the pessimists abound. This team could easily be 3-1 right now. And, remember, last year at this time, they hadn’t scored an offensive touchdown.
All things considered, it might be necessary to examine the effort put into these games by the athletes themselves.
With all the agony the football team has gone through, nobody on the team or coaching staff has stood to complain about a lack of effort (at least not in public).
“There’s no doubt in my mind (we’re giving 100 percent),” senior defensive end Frank Maile said Monday. “We don’t know anything else but to work hard. That’s the only result that comes out of the game is that there’s not a lack of effort. The work ethic is night and day from last year.”
Recently the desire was stirred inside of me to be a little more sympathetic to the student athlete-especially those in the brutal beat-up game of football.
I’ve never been and never will be a student athlete. I’m just a lowly student writer. But in interviewing Dale Mildenberger, the athletic department’s head trainer, the fact struck me: These guys really do put in quite an effort.
Just what kind of effort?
“Oh, maximum (effort),” Mildenberger said. “What people don’t understand is that being a student-athlete is a huge, huge personal commitment from each of the students. They have the requirements of academics, they have the requirements of family, they have the requirements of social life all on top of the rigid requirements of athletics.
“I have nothing but respect for collegiate athletes today,” he said. “When it’s not successful, it grinds (them) even more.”
Every day but Monday, football players are doing something with the team.
On top of all this, if they have a good game-or maybe a really bad one-they are occasionally called on by us annoying sports writers to answer questions.
Some of you have similar busy schedules. Classes can be intense, and the amount of homework may seem impossible at times. You’ve got to work to pay bills. Juggling all these responsibilities takes solid focus. You know this.
Mildenberger also talked about the lack of experience of losing that many current football players might have had in high school.
“However good or bad the Aggies may be in any given year, absolutely everybody out there for the Aggies was a star somewhere else before they came to Utah State,” Mildenberger said. “This may be the first time they’ve experienced not being successful in their careers. It hurts them. Some take it better than others. It definitely wears on them and all others around them. Do I think they give a maximum effort? Absolutely. Anybody who thinks they don’t truly doesn’t understand the activity that we’re in.”
That’s excellent insight from a man who has been in athletic training for nearly 40 years.
But, even considering this, some fans and many non-fans have the audacity to say silly, ignorant and uneducated things like Brent Guy should be fired or football should be dropped as a sport.
Yeah, fire Brent Guy. Then what? Where does the program go from there? Spend more time and money finding a new coach who will have to start over again? I don’t think that’s a very effective formula for success.
Even when Utah State has had coaches who actually had success-such as Charlie Weatherbie winning the Las Vegas Bowl in 1993 and John L. Smith leading the team to the Humanitarian Bowl in 1997-those coaches bolted the minute success was found for higher-profile coaching jobs. Weatherbie left for the Naval Academy and Smith to Louisville. So, what do to?
Oh, by the way, as good as those two coaches were and are, neither Weatherbie or Smith ever had a winning season at USU.
For the hundredth time, give Guy and this team a break. The University of Utah football team is a beatable one, even being shut out by the same University of Nevada-Las Vegas team the Aggies should have and could have easily triumphed over.
Come Saturday you naysayers might be complaining to a different tune because, depending on which Ute team shows up to play, the Aggies have a legit shot at winning.