Derek Dooley Ramblings

November 10, 2012 D.A. Adams 3 Comments

Tennessee fans, you don’t deserve a winning team. You simply don’t. The bile and venom spewed at Coach Dooley over the last three years is shameful and disgusting. The vast majority of you are classless, short-sighted jerks who disgrace the legacy of the program with your behavior. If UT fires Coach Dooley Monday, which likely they will, you will get what you’ve asked for, and more than likely, you’ve condemned the program to at least another five years or more of mediocrity. Virtually no reputable coach with any sense would want to come to the university given your win-now-or-else absurdity.

First, a little history lesson for you. After the National Championship season in 98, the program slowly began to erode. The first major warning sign of this erosion for me was the Peach Bowl after the 2003 season. At the end of a disappointing 14-27 performance against a mediocre Clemson team, many players were seen on the sidelines joking, laughing, and talking on cell phones. For me, this raised alarm bells about the team’s character and commitment. Coach Fulmer seemed oblivious to his players’ lack of passion for competition. I wasn’t in the locker room and don’t know if he addressed it, but if memory serves, no one was released from the team.

Then, in 2005, the erosion of talent and dedication bottomed out. The team went 5-7 overall and 3-5 in SEC play, missing its first bowl game under Coach Fulmer. The team was slow at the skill positions and weak along the lines, and the players simply couldn’t execute. Of course, you refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong with the talent. Instead, you blamed Randy Sanders and ran him from the program in one of the most tasteless and ridiculous smear campaigns I’ve ever witnessed. Coach Sanders bled orange and loved the university. Today, because of you, he refers to it as “that place.”

In 2006, the team went 9-4 overall and 5-3 in the SEC, which on the surface was respectable. However, the team was 2-4 against ranked opponents. In 2007, Coach Fulmer seemed to have it back, going 10-4 and 6-2, winning the SEC East and taking LSU to the final gun in the SEC Championship. However, the losses included Cal 31-45, Florida 20-59, Alabama 17-41. More alarmingly, the wins included beating South Carolina by 3, Vandy by 1, and Kentucky by 2. Very easily, that team could have been 3-5 in SEC play. In 2008, the team did go 5-7 and 3-5, and Coach Fulmer lost his job.

Enter Lane Kiffin. Remember him? He came in full of bravado and promises. He landed some incredible talent and had the team looking competitive against ranked opponents for the first time in several seasons. There was optimism and momentum surrounding the university. Do you remember how that ended? January 12, 2010, Kiffin called a press conference late in the evening to announce he was leaving the school to take the USC job. In the middle of recruiting. After one season. Can your short-sighted-ness fathom what that did to a program already on the decline? Much of his first recruiting class left the university. Most of his second recruiting class followed him to USC or bolted to other SEC schools.

So in the midst of turmoil, UT began looking for a new coach. Will Muschamp turned the job down, flat out. So did Jon Gruden and Bill Cowher. Do you remember that? I wonder if the treatment of Coaches Sanders and Fulmer had anything to with their decisions. Maybe it’s just me, but if I were a coach looking at potential jobs, the last place I would want to land is a school with a loud, obnoxious, ignorant fan base with a history of running off coaches. But I digress.

During this turmoil, Tennessee hired virtually unknown Derek Dooley, and some of you started asking for his head the next day. Coach Dooley immediately went to work and salvaged what he could from the recruiting class, including keeping Tyler Bray. He also started rebuilding Tennessee’s image. For most of Coach Fulmer’s tenure, the team was notorious for the sheer volume of arrests. It seemed like every weekend, often after games, 2-3 players would get busted for disorderly conduct or worse. Then, it turned out some of Kiffin’s recruits were felons-in-training, so the program was not only sub-par on the field, but rife with off field issues.

Coach Dooley vowed to clean this up and implemented measures to hold players accountable. He began to build the character of these young men as much as their football skills. He also recruited some fine talent. Given the mess he walked into, he did a commendable job righting the ship. He brought pride and passion back to the program. The young men on his teams play for the Tennessee Volunteers, and they compete hard in every game. Yes, they are not quite up to SEC standards yet, but it’s not from lack of effort or lack of hard work.

I can’t defend Coach Dooley’s win-loss record. It’s awful. I can’t defend some of his coaching blunders. They are glaring. What I can do is remember a young Bill Cowher making his fair share of blunders with the Steelers. I can also look up the records of some of the greatest coaches in history and see early poor records. I’m not saying Dooley will ever be the next Bear Bryant. What I am saying is that Tennessee fans will never have a Bear Bryant as long as you continue with your hot-headed, crude behavior because you’ll never attract the right coach and then you’ll never give him time to build. Win now or else.

To Coach Dooley, I’d like to say thank you. Thank you for doing things the right way. Thank you for soldiering through an absurd situation. Thank you for being classy and dignified in the face of adversity. I’d also like to apologize for the behavior of the ignorant buffoons who will probably run you out of town. Please know, some of us saw the positive and appreciate the job you’ve done. Some of us understand that college athletics is supposed to be about more than money and wins. Some of us would love to give you one more year before judging you. Good luck, Coach Dooley, whatever the future holds for you.

General Posts

NaNoWriMo Ramblings

November 2, 2012 D.A. Adams 6 Comments

I hate National Novel Writing Month. Hate isn’t really strong enough. I loathe and abhor it. The whole concept flies in the face of my strongest convictions about the craft of writing. First and foremost, you shouldn’t need a cheap, bullshit gimmick to motivate you to work. If you don’t have the internal motivations, you shouldn’t try to write a book in the first place.

I also despise the whole rah rah cheerleader horse shit. If you need a cheering section telling you how great it is you typed 10,000 words today, you aren’t a writer. Sorry. Hate to burst your precious snowflake ego, but writing is hard work that requires hours of solitude and months without feedback.

I also hate how it cheapens the difficulty of writing a full novel. This is probably what pisses me off the most. People who know nothing about crafting a book hear that hundreds of thousands of people are cranking out books in one month, and suddenly my three months of busting my fucking ass to write my fourth book seems like slacking. Why does it take him so long? All these people are pounding out fifty pages a day.

This stupid bullshit also floods the market with thousands of poorly conceived, shoddy products that make it that much more difficult for year round writers to be noticed. Thanks. This career wasn’t hard enough already without every starry-eyed, bored housewife or pimply-faced college freshman thinking their 30 day type fest will land them an interview with Oprah.

I’m all for creative expression, and I think everyone should write because it’s good for the soul. But I can’t stand this “social writing” bullshit. If you want to write, fucking write, but do it all year or shut the fuck up. Learn to craft your story and take some pride in the quality of what you say. Don’t flood my fucking newsfeed with tales of how you hammered out 15k words on day one of NaNoWriMo. What the fuck are you going to do with those 3 vanishing plot lines, 16 stock characters, and shifts in POV?

As for me, I’ll spend November finalizing edits on the manuscript I wrote over the summer.

General Posts

Saturday Afternoon Ramblings

October 20, 2012 D.A. Adams 5 Comments

Here’s why I find myself growing angry and bitter. By the terms of my divorce, based on Tennessee law, my child support is based on a ratio between my income and solely the mother’s, and the time we each have the boys. Because she doesn’t work, I’m required to pay roughly 30% of my take home income, regardless of what her household income is. Financially, that’s crippling and affects my ability to spend time with my sons. Furthermore, I have no oversight on how that money is spent. None. In addition to that, I get no tax break on that money. My taxes are based on gross income, so some years I actually owe money at the end of the year, despite living well below the poverty line.

If I don’t pay child support, I can face jail time for contempt of court. If I don’t pay it, even though I have no way of ensuring that money is spent on my children, I’m labeled a deadbeat dad, not just by the law but also by society. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with supporting my children. I would do anything for them. What I have a problem with is the imbalance of the laws that have crippled me financially for at least twelve more years, offer me no safeguards that the money is used for its intended purpose, and in effect enslave me to that obligation, regardless of whether or not she actually needs the money.

So I work, pay the money, and scrape by on what’s left.

My profession is education. Aside from writing, that’s what I’m best at doing. Today, because our society so undervalues education, during the school year, I work 60-70 hours a week. Last night, I graded until 8:00 PM, on Friday night. I woke up this morning and spent three more hours grading, recording, and uploading files. As soon as I finish this post, I’ll spend at least five to six more hours doing the same. Tomorrow, I’ll spend all day grading. From mid-August to mid-December, I get maybe three or four full days off. Anyone who has ever taught can attest that being in the classroom teaching is exhausting work in and of itself. I’ve worked other jobs and have often said that one hour in class equates to about two hours at another job. During the school year, I and every other teacher I know live in a constant state of exhaustion.

Because I have to work so many long hours with so little time off, I have no time or energy left over for loved ones. Just talking to my children for an hour four nights a week is taxing. Forget about date nights (not that I have any money for one) or spending quality time with friends and family. Forget about writing or doing the things I need to do for the farm. By the time I accomplish everything I have to do for school, I’m utterly spent, and it’s Monday morning and time to start over again. Forget about promoting my books the way I need to. Forget about nurturing a relationship. Forget about having any kind of a normal life.

I’ve had well-intending people tell me to find another profession, as if the answer is so simple. I’m trained to teach and write. I’ve yet to find an employer out there that values my skills or equates them to their needs. Not that there are any decent jobs out there right now. I feel trapped by circumstances with no foreseeable end to the cycle. I’ve all but lost hope on my books ever being “successful” financially. I’ve all but lost hope on ever getting the farm off the ground, even though I’ve proven my hydro design works. I simply don’t have the funds to make it happen.

So each day, I feel a little more bitter, a little more angry. I feel like our system has failed me at each and every turn. I’m trying desperately to find something to give me a glimmer of hope, a flicker of optimism that somehow things will get better, but each day I feel more trapped, more alone, more forsaken, more disenfranchised. That’s my reality. That’s where I am right now.