The Red River separates Oklahoma and Texas, which isn’t a bad arrangement, given the neighbors’ general disregard for each other. But for 106 years now they’ve put all the animosity behind them to gather for a yearly football game that’s all about animosity. Of a friendly sort, the kind where 45,000 people boo a marching band, and barriers have been erected to prevent fans from hurling objects and beverages onto players when they enter and leave the field.
This Saturday past, 92,000 fans packed the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Texas to watch “amateur” athletes play a college football game. Just another make-or-break game in the big business that is American college football. I was there, watching #1 Oklahoma destroy #11 Texas 55-17. The game was nowhere near as close as the score. And Texas is the far bigger and wealthier state and school.
What does this have to do with Aston Villa? I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment or three.
The Nuts And Bolts
College football is big. Oklahoma’s head coach, Bob Stoops, is paid more than Alex McLeish, and will make $34.5 million over the next seven years. The players are paid nothing, besides getting a free four-year scholarship to attend university and the opportunity to make a fortune in the NFL. Oklahoma’s own stadium seats more than 82,000. And Oklahoma has a population of roughly 3,750,000. It’s the 20th-largest state by population, and really has nothing to recommend itself to kids looking for bright lights. Unless you’re talking TV.
As of 2008, ESPN ranked Oklahoma as the most prestigious program since 1936. The team was formed in 1895 (Oklahoma didn’t even become a state until 1907), and is the most successful since 1945, with 567 wins and a winning percentage of .763. It has seven national championships and 43 conference championships. Oklahoma holds the record for the longest winning streak in major-college history with 47 straight victories. Oklahoma is also the only university that has had four coaches with 100+ wins, including Bob Stoops.
Pretty remarkable for a team located in an unfashionable state in the middle of nowhere. And the thing with college football is that the players move on. They sign up to play when they’re 17 or 18 years old. Apart from various hardship dispensations, they’ll only likely be on the team for four or five seasons, with one of those being their first year, where they’re “redshirted”, or not played in a competitive game, but are brought up to speed physically and mentally.
So successful college coaches deal with with turnover at a number of key positions virtually every season. Superstars leave all the time.
The secret to success is four-fold: 1) Hire the right head coach 2) Have a philosophy 3) Identify players who fit your system and convince them to come play for you, and 4) Coach them well enough to play to the potential you saw in them.
Very simple on paper.
Still Waiting…
Here’s the point: A commitment to winning and head coaches who can work with turnover mean teams can rise above the churn and succeed consistently.
Losing your best players on a regular basis doesn’t have to spell disaster. Or mediocrity. Identifying talent, nurturing it, and having a defined system against which to evaluate their potential means that year-in and year-out you can win. Yes, the other teams face the same turnover. And yes, there is money involved, though indirectly (ie, you can’t buy players or give them high wages, but you can offer them better facilities, etc.). It’s not a perfect analogy.
We talk about youth, about money ruining the game. We talk about being a selling club. If Aston Villa embrace that reality we might be more successful than you’d think. But it all starts with the youth, which you can have for a very long time. You identify players with potential. You train them in skills and philosophy and playing together seamlessly within a system.
This is the sort of paradigm Aston Villa should be looking at. It requires the right manager. It requires a commitment to developing the bulk of your own talent, and it means that if you have those things, you need to buy fewer players at astronomical wages and transfer fees to get you over the top. And once you start winning consistently, it’s easier to attract the big names, and easier to hold onto the talent you have developed.
Quite frankly, given the inherent inequalities built into the EPL by the Champions League and the money that’s come flooding in, it’s the only way forward for a team of limited resources. If Oklahoma can do it, so can Aston Villa.
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The Author
