or feel stupid or disingenuous.

Here's what a game like this really makes me think:

How much to we care about winning? How committed are we to not giving up?

I know I know. Hear me out on this. It is not a dis and I am not calling for anyone to be fired. No one wants this staff to succeed more than me. I love these guys and they are the type of personalities I would love to rep BYU for a long time yet the success of a winning culture is the only thing that will keep a coach in this job. Plain and simple you need to want to win at all costs within the rules and your players need to feel the same way. I look and I just do not see that drive sometimes.

Of course all these guys want to win. It is what they are working for all the time. How can a guy like me sit on the couch and say anything like this? Now you may think I am contradicting myself now but I do not believe I am. Simply saying you have the desire to win and going through the steps to prepare yourself is not enough and above all actions speak louder than words.

I played with a team of stars in high school. About 12 of the kids I played with went D-1 and 3 played in the NFL. They guys who made the NFL were not even the most talented on our team but those guys were hyper focused on the sport and they never let up. Their lives were the sport. They played both ways and dominated their opponents whoever they were. Only performance will tell but when I hear Coach Pop speak I hear what I hope to hear from a coach. I hear him talking about putting in more time and making the sport your mission. The coaches go so far as to have ways of following their players workouts outside or normal practice times and giving the players tips to improve. If you have not read this article right after Pope was hired this is the epitome of what I am talking about:



His experience at Kentucky was a program built on setting aside the convenient to get better and win.

You want to know when I was most disappointed in this game? The last 4 minutes of the game. Yes they had the ball and we were not going to win the game, but why are we not using our three time outs to try and get the ball back one more time? You can argue all kinds of logical reasons and they sound good but you know the only thing I saw because it was happening in front of me? If it looks like we can't win we should just give up. That is so far from how great teams try to think that it saddens me greatly. That action is actually damaging to a winning culture. That could have been a teaching moment. That is the moment you gather the players around after the first time out and you tell them: "Are we quitters? Is this game only played so that you can win? Is there no victory in a game where we fight hard until the end and come up empty? Does playing to win mean we quit when it looks like we can't win? Get out there and make a stop or try for all your worth to do so. Offense, we are going to work to get you the ball and when we do you are going to shove it down their throats until that clock goes dead and forget about the mistakes you have made. We don't quit at BYU! That is not who we are. Now go play football as it was intended to be played!"

We looked tired and lazy in the 2nd half. I know lots of teams would have been in the same boat but that is still no excuse. We looked resigned to lose and I want to see coaching decisions that support that we have not given up even when the game has fallen out of control. Air the ball out still. Run some trick plays. Onside kick every time. Get super aggressive on D or sell out to stop the Run like we did for 5 minutes before we went away from that. When the game ends and we have given up 3 more turnovers and many more touchdowns because we were taking risks to make something happen and it didn't work out own up to it because you were trying to win.

When the reports ask "Is it embarrassing to lose 75 to 30? How did things get so out of control?" The coach can honestly say something like: "We played to win. We had adversity early and we needed to try and make up for it in the limited time we had so we took risks, because we needed to have possession and move the ball quickly. Losing by a lot was a risk we were willing to take because you will never see us give up. We play to win, simple as that. If that game is close we would play much differently but where we were down several touchdowns we were taking risks and trying new things because that is what it was going to take to win that game. I teach my guys to play hard and execute but most of all to never give up. We don't feel embarrassed for doing everything we could take the victory we were playing for today. We don't feel embarrassed for never giving up and never taking our foot off the pedal."

Playing to win and staying ruthless is why you run up the score even when you are crushing the other team. You leave no doubt to your players as to why they are there. You don't go out on the field just because you need a victory. You assume that every play secures that victory and that the game is always in question until the clock ticks 0 and the final score is tallied. If you want to be classy send in the 2nd and 3rd string but still have those players play like their lives depend on it.

If you get slackers at any point of the game pull them aside and quietly tell them you know they have more in them and that you expect to see it. Post game and during the week there are even more opportunities behind closed doors. You can be stern but loving in telling a player that they gave up or let off and that is not who that player is and not what the program is. Ask for more and tell them your job is to help them be their best selves on the field and you hope it translates to every part of their lives. My Dad used to have hard conversations like those with me. The "You can be better. You are better. Your family does better." conversations. I hated them and I was always angry at him for about an hour afterwords but I would cool down and realize he was right and the message was for my benefit and just because its hard to hear does not make it less true. Those are life changing learning moments. I actually think Kalani would be the perfect guy for these kinds of conversations as a college coach.

I loved how we finished the Tennessee and USC games but those games were close enough that the mentality I am talking about comes much easier. I want to see that mentality, desire and urgency in all situations of every game. The end of this game was a disappointment and the coaches only added to that IMO. Don't let our players off the hook. You could call it keeping guys healthy or conserving energy or keeping the play book a secret but all of that discounts the potency of the group's dedication to keep fighting for the win no matter what. Train these guys to be navy seals on the field.

If you tell me we start 2-2 preseason I'm pretty happy though knowing we lose to Utah would break my heart. I feel good about where we are but I still want to see the hunger to play for a win from our coaching staff communicated in their actions to our team. Maybe some of the things I've described are happening behind closed doors. I want these guys to succeed so bad and I hope they do. I don't care so much if we are winning as I care that we are constantly progressing. You simply cannot win them all but you can consistently become better and small increments of change toward getting better inevitably lead to vast improvement over time.

This is what happens when I have been holding my infant child for 3 hours in the middle of the night. I hope no one else reads this until tomorrow at noon or later. Being up like this is a torture I probably wouldn't wish on my worst enemy... but maybe a Ute.