Gibbons named to Lou Groza Watchlist
Brendan Gibbons has been named to the pre-season watchlist for the Lou Groza award, the award for college football's best kicker (full list here). He is one of seven Big Ten kickers to make it on the watchlist, making up nearly a quarter of the 30 total kickers.
Just the fact that he has made it on this list, after the abysmal season he and our other goal kickers had in 2010, is a testament to how much he has improved as a player in the last two years (and a testament to how much brunette girls have improved him).
But he was the best kicker at the Sugar Bowl.
Congrats to Gibbons. Hopefully he can keep it up this season.
Thinking of brunette girls should help him keep it up.
Hopefully he thinks of brunettes all year.
We can put all brunette girls in the endzones for home games?
Good for him. But the thing is I counted over 30 names. So if half the kickers in the nation are returning starters then it probably isn't very hard to get on the watchlist. And this goes for any college football award.
But then I hit reply instead.
I normally don't bad mouth the previous staff, but knowing for a fact the way they treated Gibbons always upset me. More than anything else (because the lack of winning).
Say what you want about all the other stuff, it's been beaten to death...we know. But no kid deserves to get embarrased in front of the entire team. No kid should be blamed for loses by the coaches in a team game. And no kid should be yelled at over and over and rarely praised when he's giving it his all.
So, I know this is going to piss the Rich Rod regime lovers off, but I couldn't help but get super happy when I saw this thread on the MGoBoard and immediately think "SUCK IT!" to the previous staff after reading the orginal post.
This is awesome, and shows that coaching is more than screaming and yelling. We made what... FOUR total FGs two years ago? We're not all the way there, but a Lou Groza watchlist is lightyears away from where we were.
Congrats to Brendan! Now let's go be a Lou Groza FINALIST!
Should you ever read this thread...CLICK THIS LINK:
Seriously, constantly stating having "open tryouts for any student" to be the kicker is not displaying confidence in your kicker. And let's be honest, Kicking has got to be mostly confidence, any D-I kicker has a strong and at least semi-accurate leg.
Orrr...cussing him out in front of the team or blaming loses on the kicking game after the game may not help either.
#jussayin
HECK YES! GOD BLESS THE BRUNETTES!
Lou "The Toe" Groza. I saw an interview with him once and he was asked about his nickname. He said that while not great, it was better than being called "The Heel".
Congrats to Brendan.
Our field goal kicking was fairly decent in 2009, when Olesnavage went 11/15 on field goal attempts, including 9/10 from 30 or more yards. But yeah, 2010 was awful.
<.<
>.>
No one saw anything.
This might be an ignorant question, but can he be expected to extend his range further than the 40-42 yards it seems to be right now? Are kickers ever able to develop their range in college, or are they basically a finished product (in terms of leg strength) when they arrive on campus?