The Getback Gospel

Homer Smith, Innovative College Football Coach, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

2011-04-18T02:55:00.000-04:00

Homer Smith, Innovative College Football Coach, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

Trooper Taylor reaches mountaintop at Auburn | NOLA.com

2011-01-14T22:58:00.000-05:00

Trooper Taylor reaches mountaintop at Auburn | NOLA.com

GetBack Diary

2010-11-18T22:36:00.000-05:00

Getbackcoach: Get back.

Player: But I just saw you in front of the coaches' box, why don't YOU get back?

Getbackcoach: The officials let me go wherever I want as long as I'm helping them keep you knuckleheads in line.

Player: So you help the officials? Kinda like the Knoxville Police Department gets help from the "mall cops"?

The Man Who Coached Neyland: Ernest Graves

2010-11-18T22:32:00.000-05:00

The game of football long ago passed out of the rough and tumble stage. It has become a science. --Ernest Graves, line coach of Bob Neyland at the US Military Academy

Sometimes Perfect Isn't Good Enough

2010-11-18T22:13:00.000-05:00

In 1966, the last great all-white Alabama football team went untied and undefeated and untied, yet was denied the National Championship Yet Paul Bryant forever insisted that this undersized overachieving team, led by Snake Stabler and Ray Perkins, was the best he ever had. Outstanding book.

The Missing Ring by Keith Dunnavant (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press New York, 2006)

Pat Dye Postgame Speech

2010-09-29T14:30:00.000-04:00

Pat Dye addressing his Auburn Tigers after a narrow loss at Tennessee in his first year as head coach. The perfect speech for a team just beginning to play well.

Revenge of The Umpires, Part The Second

2010-09-29T06:28:00.001-04:00

Former Florida Gator Wally Hough assists a struggling Tennessee defense against Wyoming in 2008. Tennessee fans have insinuated that Hough's loyalty to his alma mater--he has been a local fan UF fan club president--represents a conflicts of interest...one that never seemed to afflict the impartial judgment of Vol alums like Bert Ackermann and Mack Gentry.

Erk Russell Remembered

2010-09-28T15:35:00.002-04:00

Georgia coaches and players recall the greatest motivator in the history of college football.

Revenge of the Umpires

2010-09-27T15:35:00.001-04:00

Wilbur Hackett, Jr, Former SEC Linebacker (Kentucky, also first black Captain in SEC) nails South Carolina's QB in 2008 game vs. LSU.

Visit the Wilson Football Factory

2010-09-27T15:01:00.001-04:00

"Gentlemen, this is a football."--John Heisman

2010-02-07T23:59:00.001-05:00

The Making of the Super Bowl Footballs

Not All Bearden Guys Suck

2010-01-27T19:27:00.004-05:00

Follow this blog

This Bearden Bulldog failed and failed and failed. He failed to earn a college football grant-in-aid from his hometown university and he failed several times to get into medical school. But don't call him a failure. He's world famous for his sickle-cell anemia research. Oh yeah, he started at strong safety for the 1972 Vols.
Dr. Townes was chosen as UT's "character athlete" for the 75th anniversary of the SEC. (Video 28 sec.)

Tennessee HS Football News

2010-01-16T02:30:00.004-05:00

George Quarles not Leaving Maryville Yet

A Boy Named Stacy

2010-01-15T09:50:00.014-05:00

Stacy Searels Doesn't Do Interviews . Neither did Neyland

Searels won the NCAA Award for Valor for rescuing some of his Appalachian State players from a fiery bus. As his former HC at Auburn might say "He man enough."

2010-01-08T23:53:00.003-05:00

http://www.kfoa.net/

Alabama High School Football--MUST SEE

2010-01-06T11:56:00.000-05:00

Alabama HS Football History

The Turfmaster of North Jackson High school

2010-01-06T10:25:00.004-05:00

http://www.njhschiefs.com/

Dedicated to Coach Hunter Fendley.

Erskine Russell

2009-12-23T17:55:00.001-05:00

The late Erk Russell was the last 4-sport letterman at Auburn University. But as a coach his specialty was getting maximum effort out of lesser athletes.

He won a state championship as head coach of Atlanta's Grady High School, and a national championship as defensive co-ordinator for the University of Georgia Bulldogs

His defensive line talent was so pathetic in 1980,. that he desperately

sought out ways to fortify their fragile self-esteem. (He couldn't expect much help from an offense whose best hope was an incoming "true freshman" running back who had played high school ball at the single-A level.)

When passed over for the head coaching job at UGA, Erk responded to the disappointment by inaugurating the football program at Georgia Southern. In their first two years of competition in NCAA Division I-AA, his Golden Eagles won back-to-back national championships.

Now Erk has been nominated to the College Football Hall of Fame

TSSAA Final Power Ratings 2009

2009-12-22T14:37:00.002-05:00

"Old man who is named for a convenience store."
they asked me "what is this downfield blocking of which you speak?
Pass-catching specialists may commit acts of violence? Offensive linemen must renounce passivity? Multiple defenders can tacklie a single ball carrier? 'Tell our coaches we want to practice harder.Teach us the ways of the ancient warrior who coached on the shores of the rivers Hudson and Tennessee/ Sonny Moore Ratings for Bearden unclassified (approximately 650 teams

Sonny Moore
Massey

Previous Years
   Sonny Moore
2009 12
2008 41
2007 6
2006    43
2005 68
2004   207
2003 114
2002 112
2001 82
2000 62
1999 36
1998 142
1999 22

Why Erk should be in the Hall of Fame

2009-12-22T13:32:00.001-05:00

Tony Barnhart's case
Nomination

Pics

2009-11-05T15:46:00.001-05:00

Football Album

2009-11-03T13:29:00.001-05:00

Is haallowe'en over yet?

Paul W Bryant

2009-11-03T09:29:00.002-05:00

Museum-.

Quotes

Dogs on TV:

2009-11-01T16:04:00.003-05:00

Bearden at West, 2009

So you want to be a get- back coach?

2009-10-19T19:57:00.005-04:00

I knew I was living on borrowed time at my last stop when a parent told me "you have the greatest job on earth." Job? I thought those resulted in paychecks.
Said he, I was already a "legend", on the way to becoming an "institution." If being the Get-back coach at that school were such a great gig, why wasn't anyone trying to take it away from me?
Nobody has ever applied for the lowly job of get-back coach. I certainly didn't. I had been away from football for more than twenty years when some guys who played for my forner high school coach asked me to join them for their season-opening game a hundred miles from home.
The previous season i had hollered a little too loudly from the sideline and was adopted as sideline mascot
by a bunch of kids just recovering from soccer.
The prospect of a two hundred mile round trip in a school bus geared for short hauls should have deterred me.
But I thought we might still have some of the magic dust that had taken the previous year's team to a Cinderella appearance in the state semifinal game.
So here I was in the lockerroom, 1o minutes til kickoff , the honored guest of the coach and team.
Then the officials made their routine pre-game visit to the lockerroom. After checkimg for weapons They asked the standard question, "Coach, who's your get-back coach?"
The HC responded, without hesitation, "Coach J is our get-back coach."
If you've just been suckered into football's most humble role, here's a primer from a legendary get-back coach whose greatness is undiminished by the fact that he desecrates the Sabbath by working on Sundays in the No Fun League.