Lloyd Carr

[A Fleshner Fantasy]

The other day I went to a small gathering at which he spoke for a while. Now, I know that all of you know that I did not think highly of him as a coach, but I must say, after hearing him speak and reflect back upon his time at Michigan, I respect him completely as a person. I still don't think he was a great coach and I never will, but at this point I'm glad he got to leave on his own terms. He spoke about the importance of doing things the right way and I really hope that Rich Rod will do the same. There are many many many teams doing things that are against the rules at this point, from paying players to illegally scouting them, so I hope that Michigan remains as one of the few teams that does things the right way. Don't get me wrong, I think that there are still a few other major programs who have a coach that instills discipline and good ethics (Urban Meyer comes to mind), but it is disappointing to see others cheat in some way, whether it is the coach or a booster (such as Reggie Bush's situation at USC or Troy Smith getting paid to play at OSU). Anyway, that was kind of a digression, but I just wanted to note how much I wound up respecting Carr as a human being and a mentor to the players.

[knapplc]

That's a good observation. Too often we get so wrapped up in the performance of their team that we forget that they're real people.

During the debacle of the last few seasons in Nebraska, some people chose to view a couple of the coaches as ONLY existing to coach Nebraska. Our old DC's kid got heckled at a high school baseball game, and in every paper and news forum, people were screaming for the heads of everyone on the coaching staff in some pretty unpleasant terms. These guys did NOT belong here in Nebraska as coaches, but that's on the field. Off the field, Coach Callahan Charities raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for breast cancer research, Coach Cosgrove was a frequent contributor to his son's high school coach's learning curve, and the rest of the staff were reasonably active in the community, in local churches, and in keeping our players in the classroom with good grades (for the most part).

Just because a coach is not best-suited to lead this or that team, it doesn't make them a horrible person, and they certainly don't deserve to be vilified on the streets as the worst thing to ever effect the school.

Perspective.