What I Learned At
Notre Dame...

by Tim Enger, Technical Director, Football Alberta

Every once and a while you need a little pilgrimage. If you’re Muslim, Mecca’s the place. Christian or Jewish? Perhaps a trip to Jerusalem. For secular passions a trip to New Orleans or St. Louis is the thing for jazz enthusiasts. Paris is great for artists and archeology buffs could spend weeks at the pyramids. In short, everyone has a special place in this world which serves as the nexus for their interests. So where does a football coach go?

Taking football in its entirety, which includes both sides of the border, there are many places that hold special meaning for football coaches and fans alike. As a kid I used to think that Clarke Stadium in Edmonton was a magical place. Others have talked about Taylor Field in Regina or the mystique that Molson Stadium gave back to the Alouettes when they moved back in during the 1990’s. South of the border I’ve seen the L.A. Coliseum, Rose Bowl and Texas Stadium. Some talk of Lambeau Field in Green Bay as a modern day holy land for football enthusiasts, but really – if you want to talk about the gold standard for a football pilgrimage it begins and ends with a visit to the University of Notre Dame.

South Bend, Indiana isn’t much to write home about. It looks and feels pretty much like any other town it’s size, with one exception. At its north end is a place so hallowed, so steeped in tradition, and frankly so well endowed by boosters and donors that it almost defies description. The University of Notre Dame is a private Catholic University which has made their famous football team their calling card to the rest of the world. Students from all over the United States vie to get in each year and their football team annually has their pick of the top recruits in the nation. It truly is a special place and is kept that way by all who work there.

The purpose of this essay isn’t to regale you with how neat my trip was. I could go on and on about how the football tradition pretty much leaks out of everything you see. And the tour of the locker room and stadium was nirvana. Walking out of that tunnel at the north end you felt you were right beside Gus Dorais, Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung, the Gipper, Tim Brown, Brady Quinn, and yes…Rudy. Awesome!

But I digress... The purpose of this dissertation is to tell you what I learned at the coaches clinic and hope that you to can find things as useful as I did.

 1) Keep Your Traditions

Ok, not everyone has the storied past of Notre Dame, but everyone has a past and it’s a wonder we don’t share it more. Part of the problem with Canadian institutions when it comes to sport is a definite lack of connection with the past. Who do you think is donating all that money to Notre Dame? Not the current students that’s for sure, but their Alumni. People love to be reminded of the good times in the past and even though I’m pretty sure there won’t be a run on donations for your school or team if you switch back to the jerseys the team wore in the 1970’s it has a coolness factor that can’t be duplicated in any other aspect of the school or team you are involved with. The players who attend and play for St. Francis High School in Calgary know that they will be wearing the same look as the teams from decades before and that only those teams that won a city championship get the honour of ordering team jackets. That’s cool! Jasper Place H.S. has a display case that has articles from football team championships in the 1960’s and 1990’s and pictures of every player who has ever made the Senior Bowl. That’s cool! The Sherwood Park Rams bantam team features the same uniform look and cheers as teams dating back to the team inception. That’s cool! This allows them to have a connection to the past and all the players, coaches and fans who have come before. Is it any surprise that they can run a golf tournament and silent auction that raises thousands each year?

You don’t have to be a winning team to do that as well. The Fighting Irish at Notre Dame that went 3-8 last year wore the same look as the teams Knute Rockne coached in the 1920’s. Things will turn around on-field for sure, as they always do in South Bend, but one thing they will always do is respect the past and keep it fresh.

2) If You’re Going to a Clinic, Try to Learn Only a Few Things Well

A big clinic like this can be overwhelming if you let it. There are lots of seminars and frankly some of the stuff they discuss can be over your head if it applies to a level that you do not coach. The instructors at the Notre Dame Clinic (90% of them being current assistant coaches as well as Charlie Weis himself) did a great job in keeping it simple in most of their sessions, but sometimes they used terminology without explanation and they might as well have been speaking Greek. That’s OK, each session I attended set off a light bulb over my head about something I could tweak in my system or a new drill that might help my players. The rest was just window dressing that might have confused the message if I tried to take it all in.

3) If You’re Presenting at a Clinic, Keep it Simple

You may be asked one year to present at the University of Calgary or another clinic. I’ve fallen into the trap when asked to present before that you can’t wait to spread your entire system out for everyone to see to prove how smart you are. What you wind up with is an overload session where you are crunched for time and don’t get to finish the whole thing. Plus, there might be no time for Q & A which is probably the most valuable thing during these sessions. The best presentation I attended was by the Head Coach at Grand Valley State who spent his entire session on one pass play that they run as their “go to play”. It was just a simple out and up by the slot or tight end with a skinny post by the wide receiver, but the detail he was able to get into about how you attack all sorts of defenses was invaluable to the point where you believed him when he called it the “undefendable pass”. If he’d had to go over his team’s entire passing scheme in the time allotted, all we would have seen is him flipping overheads at us to get through as quickly as possible with little to no detail. Don’t be afraid of keeping it short and simple – any remaining time can be used for questions which really helps those trying to learn what you are instructing.

4) The University of Calgary/Football Alberta Clinic is a Top Level Clinic

I know there is more splash and dash in attending a clinic in Las Vegas or the prospect of going to one at a major U.S. University like Notre Dame, but really, after having been to one, they didn’t do anything more magical than the good ‘ol clinic we run right here in our province. DVD’s of the proceedings are available, clinic notes, a free banquet meal, a coaches social – it’s all there at the U of C. Sure they can’t match the locker room and stadium tour (nothing could match that), but everything else is done just as professionally and in some cases (i.e. the banquet) better than what I experienced at Notre Dame. The point here is that if your school or team has x amount of money to spend on coaches clinics you can get the best bang for your buck right here at home. This doesn’t mean that you can’t go south of the border from time to time, but don’t think the grass is that much greener or the knowledge to be learned is that much greater down there. Plus, you have to take a huge grain of salt with you sometimes due to the differences between Canadian and American football. Just keep learning wherever you can but know that you always have the best deal going each March in Calgary.

5) We’re All in This Together

One of the most poignant moments I can remember was after having spent a session where the Notre Dame coaches came out and did chalk talks on a position by position basis. One of my travelling companions asked me who did my session on quarterbacks. “Him,” I pointed at a picture on the wall of the hotel where we were staying that had copies of all the Sports Illustrated covers Notre Dame players had ever been on. It was an issue from the mid-1990’s and the player on the cover was the Irish’s all time leading passer Ron Pawlus, now their quarterback coach.

It seems amazing to me now that I was sitting in a chalk talk session with freakin’ Ron Pawlus who played at freakin’ Notre Dame and was on the cover of freakin’ Sports Illustrated, and he was chatting it up with me - Ned Nobody - like we were buddies. How cool was that! In fact he treated everybody with the same ‘whatever I can do to help you’ attitude that all the Notre Dame coaches displayed. They can think whatever they want about us privately but while representing the Golden Dome they are professional, courteous, humble and willing to admit that they don’t know everything; they are always learning – just like us.

Now the American game is always a little different in that recruiting is big business, so these coaches are smart enough to never burn any bridges through arrogance. You never know which high school program is going to produce the next great Irish Heisman hopeful and they want his coach to be a “friend of the program” for sure. However, they were Notre Dame - and if anyone had a right to give us the “Are you talking to me?” snub it was them.

The point here is that over the years of my employment at Football Alberta I have been “dissed” more than a few times by coaches at all levels. Unfortunately, I’m sad to admit that from time to time I’ve done some “dissing” myself when other coaches have come looking for help. No more! If Ron Pawlus and Charlie Weis can treat me and my cronies like human beings and do what they can to help us – who the hell am I to not extend the same courtesy to others? Football is a relevant sport in Canada but you could find yourself on an island of isolation real quick if you give people unwarranted attitude simply due to the position you’ve attained. I may be the Technical Director at Football Alberta but the position didn’t automatically come with all the knowledge about all that is right in football. I’ll always be learning and trying to build a better mousetrap and if you’re honest with yourself you’ll have to admit that you will be too.

I’m the last person on the planet that wants to shill out some kumbaya touchfeely stuff, but frankly life is so much better when we all work together. Football is a great sport and can do so much more for young athletes than any sport I have experienced. The only message I hope you take from this is that if you do become an accomplished coach remember where you came from and take an interest in helping out anyone you can. It will pay off greatly and make you, and our sport, better in the end. The coaches at Notre Dame know this – and now you do as well.

In closing, a trip of this nature has many pluses. Aside from the education you can receive there is the coolness factor of seeing a hallowed place such as this and the bonding between coaches on your staff is immeasurable. I would love to return. Not next year and perhaps not for a while. It’s a special place and I wouldn’t want to ruin it by becoming a ‘regular’. There are other things to learn and other places to learn things but I will never forget my time in South Bend – Go Irish!