Take a Load Off Grobe
One of my favorite sayings is `No good deed is ever left unpunished.’’ It has been ever since I heard that that’s what the song The Weight is all about. Songwriter Robbie Robertson of the immortal The Band said he was influenced by the work of the filmmaker Luis Buñuel
“In Buñuel there were these people trying to be good and it’s impossible to be good,’’ Robertson explained. ” In “The Weight” it was this very simple thing. Someone says, “Listen, would you do me this favor? When you get there will you say ‘hello’ to somebody or will you give somebody this or will you pick up one of these for me? Oh? You’re going to Nazareth, that’s where the Martin guitar factory is. Do me a favor when you’re there.”
“This is what it’s all about.’‘.
Now it’s hard to imagine two more different people on this planet than Robertson, a free-living musician’s musician from Toronto and Jim Grobe, a bedrock football coach’s football coach from Huntington, West. Va. But I couldn’t help but think that the two had come to the same conclusion duriing today’s first gathering of the season to eat chicken and talk football.
Grobe was being asked to explain the inordinate number of injuries the Deacons have experienced this preseason. His answer was the number of Deacon injuries wasn’t inordinate at all. They only seem that way because Grobe, unlike the vast majority of coaches elsewhere, is a good enough guy to open his practices to the media and public.
“I had a supporter the other day at one of our get-togethers say `Coach I’m really concerned that you guys have so many hamstrings and so many ankles and so many injuries. What’s the deal? Why are you guys injured so much more than anybody else?’ ‘’ Grobe recounted. “Well you don’t know who else is injured because nobody lets you come and watch practice.
“Our practices are wide open. Anybody can come any day and watch everything that we do. And that’s why people know where we are. But my guess is they’re no football teams across the country that going into the first game don’t have the issues that we do. We’ve all got kids that didn’t practice as much as we would have liked for them to practice to be ready to play the opener.’‘
We’ll have an accounjt from today’s press conference in tomorrow’s Journal, but there was nothing really newsy to emerge. Outside linebackekr Kyle Wilber, while listed as second team, is expected to play early and often and may even start and play the whole game. Cornerback Kenny Okoro, not listed on the depth chart, needs to prove this week in practice that he’s ready. And receiver Chris Givens, listed as second team, has missed so much practice that Grobe doesn’t think he could be in good enough shape to play major minutes well at Syracuse.
Wilber and Givens have been slowed by tight hamstrings, Okoro by an injured ankle.
Grobe also said that ultimately it’s not his decision as to who is able to practice or play.
“We have a deal,’’ Grobe said. “The trainers and doctors take care of the players, and I make fun of them and push them to come back. That’s our deal. And the players know. I tell them. I say `My job is not to be nice, but we want you healthy and we want you taken care of.’.
“When one of our guys goes down, they don’t convince me they’re ready to go, they’ve got to go convince Don (Steelman) and Greg (Collins) and the doctors that they’re ready to come back. That’s totally up to them. As soon as they can come back and perform at a certain level, they’re going to let you go.
“It’s kind of a good situation. I like staying out of it. I like to make fun of them and kid them about being soft and not tough and those kinds of things. But in reality, we all want the same thing. We want the kids taken care of.’‘