College football continues to evolve, which means that coaching staffs must move with it.
With coaches now permitted to work with players in the summer in off-season training activities. It’s a significant departure from the old days when college coaching staffs couldn’t even discuss how things were going with their players with the strength coach of their program.
“We don’t want to take all of their time, but the time we got to take with them is going to be very valuable,” head coach Rich Rodriguez told the In the Gun Podcast. “And everybody’s going to be on the same page on what we’re doing to get better.”
Rodriguez believes that there are so many different ways available now for coaches to get their players more prepared to play that it resembles a professional model in many ways.
“Next year is going to be even more so when we have practices in the spring and practices in June,” he said.
The same thing can be said in the realm of recruiting, where many believe it’s harder to recruit and in some ways it is with the financial component, but Rodriguez is hopeful that the changes set to occur due to the House Settlement will help to address that as well.
But on the flip side, there are more tools available now to evaluate prospects than ever before.
“There’s no reason why kids can’t get recruited because you can make a highlight film in five minutes whereas before you couldn’t do that. You had to wait to see them in person and evaluate them,” he said.
Then coaches have the ability to bring them to camp and work them out in order to determine if they fit what each coaching staff wants at certain positions.
The one constant in college athletics is change and adapting to it is critical to find success.
“As coaches, we got to embrace the change, which I think most, if you want to win, you embrace it,” Rodriguez said. “But I like where we’re at with that, too.”
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