Chan Gailey--BYU Age Advantage "Striking"

[steelfrog]

BYU, Georgia Tech on different ends of the age, experience spectrum

ATLANTA (AP) -- Georgia Tech has 11 freshmen on its two-deep roster, including starting quarterback Reggie Ball. BYU has a 23-year-old quarterback and 38 players who are married.

That disparity in maturity could prove to be the difference Thursday night in the season opener for both teams. Thanks to injuries and academic difficulties, the Yellow Jackets will rotate eight freshmen and sophomores on the defensive line, with more inexperienced players at defensive back.

"I think most everybody in college football would like to be playing with 23-, 24-, 25-year-olds, rather than 20-, 21-, 22-year-olds," Georgia Tech coach Chan Gailey said. "Everybody would like that."

Ball, who won the job over returning starter A.J. Suggs, is the first true freshman in school history to start a season opener. Conversely, the Cougars have eight players who already have children, and another four whose wives are expecting.

"There's a maturity level that happens to a guy," Gailey said. "He can handle difficulties. If you're up changing diapers at two o'clock in the morning, you can handle blocking somebody.

"They do have a maturity level that is pretty good."

BYU is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the religion's emphasis on family leads many members to marriage by their early 20s. About 80 percent of the players on this year's team are members of the church, including starting quarterback Matt Berry.

Berry took a two-year mission to Panama after redshirting in 1999, and came back to the school in time for spring practice in 2002. At 23, he's older than nearly everyone on Georgia Tech's roster.

And he's only a sophomore.

"I haven't been around a lot of other teams for an extended period of time, but I think there is a difference in maturity level," Berry said. "I think it's an asset. I think there's a big difference."

The edge, if there is one, is nothing new to the Cougars.

"It's just as much the age as it is the style of life," coach Gary Crowton said about his team's makeup.

Crowton should know. A member of the church, too, he went on a two-year mission to South Korea in 1979. He's been married for 18 years and has seven children, including 1-year-old Macloud.

After playing a Snow College and Colorado State, he graduated from BYU in 1983, and returned to his alma mater in 2001. Thankfully, he doesn't have as many problems as most coaches.

"You don't have to worry as much about the players getting in trouble," he said.

Having a family while playing in college is a foreign concept to Georgia Tech tight end John Paul Foschi. A 21-year-old senior who played as a freshman, he has enough struggles with school and practice.

"I don't know how they do it," he said. "I have too much work. I don't have any money, either. I don't know how I could manage a family right now."

 

[steelfrog]

Salt Lake Tribune
Article Launched:09/19/2008 02:37:43 AM MDT

It's time, once again, to get in front of an issue that is dragged to the forefront whenever BYU football climbs in the national polls. The fact that nobody mentions it when the Cougars stink is beside the point.
The Returned Missionary Issue.
Three games into this season, the RMI has already cropped up - two national columnists asked me about it just this week - and if BYU continues to win, it will once more become a major point of discussion by commentators all around, most of whom are mistaken on it.
They will say that BYU has an unfair advantage, competing the way it does with players who are grown men, pitted against young kids.
When it comes to pure chronology, dramatic labeling aside, that is pretty much true.
Collectively, the Cougars are older than a lot of teams - on account of their having 67 players who individually spent two years on LDS Church missions, delaying or interrupting their college football careers. The average age on BYU's team this year is 21. Thirty-two players are married. Three have children.
Those players, who are holding down households, changing diapers and/or juggling familial responsibilities, are likely more mature than 19-year-olds whose idea of commitment is making sure to set the DVR for the right time to record the latest episode of Art Mann Presents on HDNet.
On Wednesday, Bronco Mendenhall went on Jim Rome's radio show and told a national audience how much he trusts his players, many of whom are experienced leaders. He even said he wasn't sure he could ever go back to coaching players without the kind of discipline and perspective his guys at BYU have. So, there is that.
But there's also the downside, the down time, which is considerable.
As many in this readership know, LDS Church missions, which are given special sanction from the NCAA as time not counting against normal eligibility schedules, are anything but extra training sessions.
While there may be a few renegade exceptions, players who volunteer to go away for those two years to share their faith are busy doing things that run counter to honing football skills. They do not spend regular time at the local Gold's Gym, lifting and conditioning. They aren't part of some elaborate, extended redshirt regimen in which their diet and exercise are optimally balanced.
They are sent all over the world, many of them to Third World countries where they live in jungle huts, often without indoor plumbing or running water, where they eat local cuisine that plants in them bugs of an exotic nature, vexing them with dysentery and weight loss and muscle atrophy.
One former BYU player, who had recently returned from his two years in Panama, once showed me a pattern of blue-green-brown spots on his leg, a lasting souvenir on his skin from some sort of bloodsucking worm he had picked up there. By way of a diet that consisted primarily of rice and beans, with an occasional piece of chicken thrown in, he ingested parasites that ravaged his stomach and caused his joints to ache.
Hardly a convenient pathway to greater subsequent success on the football field.
Those aren't the only hazards.
Austin Collie, who spent his mission in Argentina, twice was robbed while serving there, and once had a gun pulled on him.
Mostly, though, missions aren't filled with that kind of drama. They consist largely of young people reading scriptures, praying a lot, spreading their faith, completing service projects, trying to share their beliefs with whoever will listen.
Missionaries get up early, work long hours, expending loads of energy, and they collapse into bed late at night. They knock on doors and they do what they can to make the world a better place, as they see fit. Their two years away are a non-paid non-vacation to a place not of their choice.
I've interviewed hundreds of returned-missionary athletes and asked them if doing the mission thing helped or hurt their athletic skills. Most of them said it diminished their abilities, messed up their conditioning, and decreased their competitive drive. Some of them said they eventually got all of that back. Some said they never did.
They just quit and moved on to their studies and other priorities.
Those who regained the fire did it over time.
Bottom line is, those who do make it back are older, but rustier. It's not easy to return from a mission and play, and it's hardly competitively advantageous. Strictly from a football point of view, playing straight through the high school and college years, keeping the momentum rolling from season after season of practice, is the surest, safest bet.
On the other hand, most of the returned-missionary athletes I've talked to said their missions were worth the sacrifice involved, well worth the interruption of football, but their lessons learned were more beneficial to the advancement of their lives, not their games.

 

[steelfrog]

Wrote Rick Reilly: "Brigham Old signs its recruits at 17 or 18, just as everybody else does. Then most of the signees take a redshirt year. Now they're 18 or 19. Then comes the two-year mission to parts near and far. From ages 19 to 21 the average male body blows up like Hans and Franz. When the BYU kids return to school, they hit the weight room, the training table and the roster -- as freshmen. That means by the time they're seniors, they're mature, disciplined and 24 to 25, or six years older than many NBA rookies

 

[StinnettFrog]

I have friends who share the mormon religion that can be a bit too cocky, but everyone I have had the pleasure of meeting are very considerate and respectful of others. The maturity of the body and mind with each passing year is a very big edge, but I believe what they are attempting to do on these missions is very deserving of the extension in playing time.

I still want the Frogs to whip their butts on the field.

GO FROGS

 

[steelfrog]

Well, Steel has Direct Relatives who are Morons--er, I mean, Mormons--who live in St. George. Wanna guess what happened when one of Steel's very own first cousins got preggers and had a baby out of wedlock? You guessed it--ostracized, fired from her job, couldn't find anyone to rent her an apartment. These people are an insular cult-like body, and if you don't look and act JUST LIKE THEM, you better find somewhere else to live, Brother. University of Washington players a few years ago were shocked at the racist insults they got from the BYU players on the field. Care to guess what % of Elders of the Mormon faith are black--or, anything other than lilly-white, for that matter?

 

[BlueNtheFace]

We'll take that maturity "advantage" and combine it with our recruiting "disadvantage" and call it even. OK?

Even though we have a high profile program, we don't get a lot of good athletes to take a 2nd look at our scholly offers because they may not want to live by a very restrictive Honor Code, or live in Provo, Utah. Even some of the LDS athletes don't want to live in Utah. I'm LDS and didn't want to live in Provo for 4 years.

Good luck this Thursday. I hope neither team has any significant injuries and that both teams play their best.


[SIZE=14pt]Go Cougars!

BYU 33
TCU 23[/SIZE]

 

[steelfrog]

From the writings of The Great, Brigham Young--by the way--these writings have never been disavowed by the Church of LDS at any level; only, under intense political pressure (and a desire to suck at the public teat), did the LDS decree that blacks could in fact become members of the Church of LDS:

BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African Race? If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. "

Vol. 7, pg. 290-291

"You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, wild, and seemingly deprived of nearly all the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind. The first man that committed the odious crime of killing one of his brethren will be cursed the longest of any one of the children of Adam. Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would have put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin. Trace mankind down to after the flood, and then another curse is pronounced upon the same race--that they should be the "servant of servants;" and they will be, until that curse is removed."

These are not Steel's words, but those of BY hisownself.