Era: A period of time characterized by particular circumstances, events, or personages.*
I went to college at a major state school where the Midwest meets the South, a school I truly love for so many reasons. Many (not all) college alums from that area will tell you a football crisis is the worst kind. There are after all, so many measurements of success for a university, but few compete with the impact of football in this part of the world, and after going to the conference championship twice in the 2020s, the last in 2023, our team at my beloved school hit a wall.
Everyone had their own explanation about why this happened. Whether it was an unwillingness of the coaching staff to adapt to the NIL era in college sports, a coach trying to “burn it down” on the way out the door, or just a general anemic response to the player portal aspect of it all, we were lost in the football wilderness.
Enter the White Knight, Coach Eric Morris about 9 months ago, to lead the squad into a new era. Much has been made of that word, era. The Eric Morris era. It’s a new era, end of the old and dysfunctional era, bring on the wins. Since Morris’ hiring 9 months ago, and over 90 new players (!) it’s been happy-happy, smile-smile, media appearances, lots of attention lavished upon every vaunted recruit, the huge NIL price tags attached, and the brilliance of this new coach. It’s also one of the largest roster flips in a single-season for a modern football team in history-that’s one cautionary element.
After the first game, an embarrassing loss to a smaller but Division 1 program in our state, and the loss of a highly recruited O lineman who broke his leg as the game began, some fans and even analyst have had the reactionary response that we are still in that wilderness (podcasters DO have to create a story and create some drama weekly, don’t you know? So I discount the over-analysis).
Sorry folks, one game does not an era make. An era unfolds, over a long period of time.
Nerves are raw, football fans are starving for something good to cheer. After the 0-1 loss, emotions are running the gamut.
No one knows what will happen, but there must be some faith placed in a program to allow it space to breathe, grow and develop; isn’t that what college itself is about!? It is true of life as well! If there’s one big lesson for us all, it is that we must step back for perspective, not get upset about one event, or one setback, and guide yourself toward the long-term goals which have not changed; I preach this constantly in my financial advisory business.
Let me make one analogy for the football nerves: let’s imagine you went to work for one of your competitors to fix your area of expertise. In your first review, you were expected to beat not only all of their old metrics of sales/efficiency/output, but also every competitor and also your metrics used at your former employer. Immediate turnaround.
How absurd is that expectation? Highly, IMHO. Creating team synergy, that intangible magical thing which gets results, that all comes with experience. Games, quarters, series, downs. Right now, as we begin Week #2, it’s understandably a pressure cooker of expectations, and to no surprise, at least to me, nerves took control at the beginning. Weather was horrendous as well for a team that practices indoors (reportedly 161F Heat Index on the field).
Expectations and goals are wonderful, but sometimes we must give a little grace. Especially when the White Knight has been saying consistently for some time now that adversity WILL come, and it’s a matter of how we deal with adversity when it happens. Those are wise words, if you ask this outsider here at my little ol’ desk a few hundred miles from my beloved campus.
It’s eras over events, keep making the next right decision, all the time, every day. That’s to all of us.
*The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition
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