Last night's radio show

BuckeyeJacket

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
371
Location
ATL
I had the A.T.aLe, and liked it a lot.

Sufferin' Til Suffrage is my personal favorite. Followed Kings of the South, ATaLe, and Golden Blonde.

At the GT Hotel and Conference Center they have a beer called Up with the White & Gold that is the Golden Blonde.
 

takethepoints

Helluva Engineer
Messages
6,142
Well, I've heard this before. And Collins is right; greatness is a process. But I'm not sure it is the one he is thinking of.

In his Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci, the brains of the Italian Communist Party at the time, described how he approached revolutionary activity, "Pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will." I think that's how most successful people in almost all walks of life approach their work. They have goals and they think they will achieve them. They also are characterized by a relentless search for error and its sources, so they can explain why they (inevitably) fail and fix the problem. Scientists are the stars at this, but business people and - wait for it - football coaches are the same way.

There is one field of human endeavor, however, where relentless positivism of the kind he calls for in his radio show clip is predominant: sales and advertising. I've had experience with an executive who had this kind of mindset. I had a friend who worked for him as chief evaluator and data analyst. Every year, the executive in question would set goals, call on all around him to bend every effort to sell them to the community, and insist on "positive attitudes" about reaching them. My friend had a problem: he was all for reaching goals and trying hard, but he also had a responsibility to analyze the data and say what it was telling him. And, consistently, he found that the data showed him that the goals in question weren't achievable and that no amount of positive thinking would make them so. He kept getting accused of "not being a team player" or "being negative" and all he could do was point at the figures. (Btw, they were almost always right on the money.) He finally left his position.

Now, I need to back off a bit because I think Collins said what he did for pretextual reasons. He knows the fans are restless and the the team has looked poorly coached. I suspect that he is as ready to criticize what his team is doing as any other football coach. But I fear that he really does want "POSITIVE PEOPLE who are on the same mission as I am" around the program and that he thinks that will help him achieve his goals. He may be right, but it should be obvious that this could lead to him being surrounded by a crowd of sycophants who are afraid to tell him the truth. That's what happened to the executive described above. This attitude is the thing I have the most apprehension about. Hope I'm wrong.
 

GT_05

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,370
Well, I've heard this before. And Collins is right; greatness is a process. But I'm not sure it is the one he is thinking of.

In his Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci, the brains of the Italian Communist Party at the time, described how he approached revolutionary activity, "Pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will." I think that's how most successful people in almost all walks of life approach their work. They have goals and they think they will achieve them. They also are characterized by a relentless search for error and its sources, so they can explain why they (inevitably) fail and fix the problem. Scientists are the stars at this, but business people and - wait for it - football coaches are the same way.

There is one field of human endeavor, however, where relentless positivism of the kind he calls for in his radio show clip is predominant: sales and advertising. I've had experience with an executive who had this kind of mindset. I had a friend who worked for him as chief evaluator and data analyst. Every year, the executive in question would set goals, call on all around him to bend every effort to sell them to the community, and insist on "positive attitudes" about reaching them. My friend had a problem: he was all for reaching goals and trying hard, but he also had a responsibility to analyze the data and say what it was telling him. And, consistently, he found that the data showed him that the goals in question weren't achievable and that no amount of positive thinking would make them so. He kept getting accused of "not being a team player" or "being negative" and all he could do was point at the figures. (Btw, they were almost always right on the money.) He finally left his position.

Now, I need to back off a bit because I think Collins said what he did for pretextual reasons. He knows the fans are restless and the the team has looked poorly coached. I suspect that he is as ready to criticize what his team is doing as any other football coach. But I fear that he really does want "POSITIVE PEOPLE who are on the same mission as I am" around the program and that he thinks that will help him achieve his goals. He may be right, but it should be obvious that this could lead to him being surrounded by a crowd of sycophants who are afraid to tell him the truth. That's what happened to the executive described above. This attitude is the thing I have the most apprehension about. Hope I'm wrong.

Echo chambers are bad news. I would think that most successful leaders and visionaries have at least one person that is willing to lay down the truth, even if it’s bad. Football, like life, is not all unicorns and rainbows, after all.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

presjacket

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
678
It would be a lot easier to trust the process if I knew what the process was. Throwing a bunch of feces against a wall and seeing what sticks isn't a process to me. Are we trying to win football games this season or are we just playing for the future? What is a pro style spread offense anyway? Is there a particular NFL team I can watch Sunday to see what we are trying to do? And on defense, when the coach said after the Citadel that he instructed the players to turn their backs on blocks to draw penalties I've kinda wondered what kind of coach we have.
 

tech_wreck47

Helluva Engineer
Messages
8,670
In reality, people should be glad that there are fans who are passionate enough about GT to complain about a bad start. It's when those people quit caring enough to complain that it will be time to worry... Apathy would be (hopefully would be and not will be!) a FAR worse problem for the program than disgust...
Issue for me is that a lot of people that are complaining are complaint about stuff they really don’t know anything about. It just gets annoying seeing negativity about stuff that people don’t even know what they are talking about.
 

Jim Prather

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,043
Issue for me is that a lot of people that are complaining are complaint about stuff they really don’t know anything about. It just gets annoying seeing negativity about stuff that people don’t even know what they are talking about.
LOL... If message boards were limited to only people who knew what they were talking about there wouldn't be any point in having a message board. :)
 

Heisman's Ghost

Helluva Engineer
Messages
4,938
Location
Albany Georgia
Well, I've heard this before. And Collins is right; greatness is a process. But I'm not sure it is the one he is thinking of.

In his Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci, the brains of the Italian Communist Party at the time, described how he approached revolutionary activity, "Pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will." I think that's how most successful people in almost all walks of life approach their work. They have goals and they think they will achieve them. They also are characterized by a relentless search for error and its sources, so they can explain why they (inevitably) fail and fix the problem. Scientists are the stars at this, but business people and - wait for it - football coaches are the same way.

There is one field of human endeavor, however, where relentless positivism of the kind he calls for in his radio show clip is predominant: sales and advertising. I've had experience with an executive who had this kind of mindset. I had a friend who worked for him as chief evaluator and data analyst. Every year, the executive in question would set goals, call on all around him to bend every effort to sell them to the community, and insist on "positive attitudes" about reaching them. My friend had a problem: he was all for reaching goals and trying hard, but he also had a responsibility to analyze the data and say what it was telling him. And, consistently, he found that the data showed him that the goals in question weren't achievable and that no amount of positive thinking would make them so. He kept getting accused of "not being a team player" or "being negative" and all he could do was point at the figures. (Btw, they were almost always right on the money.) He finally left his position.

Now, I need to back off a bit because I think Collins said what he did for pretextual reasons. He knows the fans are restless and the the team has looked poorly coached. I suspect that he is as ready to criticize what his team is doing as any other football coach. But I fear that he really does want "POSITIVE PEOPLE who are on the same mission as I am" around the program and that he thinks that will help him achieve his goals. He may be right, but it should be obvious that this could lead to him being surrounded by a crowd of sycophants who are afraid to tell him the truth. That's what happened to the executive described above. This attitude is the thing I have the most apprehension about. Hope I'm wrong.

If you were in his shoes, would you do anything different? I understand what he is doing and why but I want to see less talk and more results on the field. If he wants to approach his team in a positive fashion, that is his business but yes I can see the danger of believing your own hype too much.
 
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