Penalties = Lack Of Discipline?

El Paso Eagle · October 31, 2021

If the saying that penalties are a reflection of discipline and coaching is true ....

Spoiler

Last page to Find UNT

https://www.ncaa.com/stats/football/fbs/current/team/698

NorthTexasSportsNetwork · October 31, 2021

Eastern Michigan has 30 penalties, we had over half (17) of their total against Marshall...

We are easily the most undisciplined

UNT Texas Hooligan · October 31, 2021

Comedy of errors

Pseudo Nym · October 31, 2021

This is generalized flow chart, which is in some ways a mind map of how I view penalties in general.

It can be customized and altered to either a specific penalty (Unsportsmanlike), type (live/dead ball), really how ever you wanted to use it.

I needed picture books as a child to get the story, I'm one of those visual learner types 🤣🤣

Free to make at Lucid.app - gave me an excuse to try it out, pretty easy to use.

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With the amount off staff on DI teams, and staff that can't recruit during the off-season, you could assign GA's to go back and look at every single penalty, complete the flow chart and then compare how each penalty was handled, and identify where miscues are coming from: Who's taking accountability? Are we coaching them up consistently? Who's tracking what? Who's tracking who? What's working, what's not? Who's working out, who's not?

If you do this each week and lay it out for the guys, they'll:

See a consistent approach
Clarify what they don't know of have misinterpreted
Understand the expectations and consequences
Know what they have to do to get back on the field

Just by simply reviewing a chart and holding themselves accountable.

I'm basing this of my belief in what Brett Brown said once when he was an assistant with the Spurs whenI asked him about team culture: "F*** Culture, it's about accountability. Not me as a coach holding a player accountable. Not a player holding another player accountable. It's every player holding themselves accountable. You can't do anything special in this league until you have each person in the organization holding themselves accountable."

So this, for me, would serve to get a team to that point where everyone, players to ballboys, coaches to bus drivers, are holding themselves accountable. A tall task for sure, all the worthwhile ones are, but I definitely believe it's a necessity to building a championship team (regardless of sport or business).

It should also be clear at this point in the season how the staff handles penalties, I don't think it is clear because I don't think they've been consistent, clearly it hasn't gone well - this would be where the staff should be held to account IMO.

Edit: For me, I would use it for specific penalties, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, for example, so it's put together for use with specific penalties in mind (offsides, false start, etc....).

Edited October 31, 2021 by Pseudo Nym
Clarification