The Combine is Over …We get Together to Assess It!

There was no doubt that we were very excited about the results of the combine.  Both days went very well and I was very happy that everything played out pretty much the way Matt Hammer and JC Williams planned it out.

Certainly, parts didn’t turn out exactly as planned.  But, which person who was attending had ever been to an organized combine before?   No one who was watching or attending knew how it was supposed to work plus … then there was the rain … we can’t control the rain.  If you think about it, the only people who actually had attended a “real” combine were the coaches from the US.

And, we felt pretty good about the entirety of this workout!

The European coaches and players had seen and been involved with football combines.  But, not to the extent that we had.  That doesn’t mean we know everything … we don’t.  But when you sit through year after year of the NFL combine as we all have.  Well, we look at things a little differently.

But, this was certainly a very good showcase of Swiss talent.  Actually, I was proud of what I saw from the players.  The football in Switzerland has improved over the five or six years I have been in my second homeland.

The players, the coaches have continued to advance!  It’s really exciting to see.  We aren’t anywhere we need to be … but we continue forward in our small country.

Was this a perfect effort … well, no but… it was pretty damn good in my opinion.  One big problem was  this – we need to find so many more players.  That didn’t bode well for the Helvetic Guards first incursion (college word Betsy!) into the European League of Football (ELF).

Coaching is important – but the players on the team are the key to success.  Your personnel is (are) the most important part of the organization.  (You can draw all the “X’s and O’s” you want – but it takes the ability of players to make those schemes work.)

We were all  happy with the overall effort by everyone involved.  The coaches, athletes, aides … they were all on point and worked hard to make this venture successful.

In our after action meeting it was obvious that our current ownership was happy with the weekend. Matt Hammer and JC Williams should be complimented for their tireless work and their efforts.  All of us saw that this was not going to easy!

So, we did gather for one last meeting (thankfully only a few hours).

We were all happy and backslapping.

When you have this kind of “joyjacking” sometimes weird things happen.

As we continued with our meeting we addressed what our plans going forward should be.  Norm Chow – our head coach – brought up that we needed to get our Swiss players signed up and put the final touches to our roster.

Now that we had seen, or at least met with the best Swiss players we had to try and get our roster signed.  I think we all realized that this would not be easy.  We needed our primary owner (Mukka) to take the lead on this since he controlled the money and would delegate how it was parsed out in the salary cap.

Matt and JC were doing a good job – but they weren’t privy to the amount of money available.  So, how could they design contracts??   We just needed to get everyone on the same page.  We needed all hands on deck to get the Swiss players on our roster.  Norm agreed and we all agreed that we needed as much help as we could get.

But, since Mukka was the money man … he should be in charge of the contracts.

One thing Mukka also wanted to do was to get more publicity around the team.  He wanted to have a “party” or gathering for the players we had signed.  Toni – jumped on that and said we could get this done and put it out to the public.

Bob Palcic posed the question … well maybe we should have a Super Bowl party and we could all come back to Switzerland!  Nice … but in my mind I’m thinking that this is a bad idea.  (Thinking finances of bringing five or six coaches to Zurich from the US)!

Mukka jumped on this idea and said it would be a great thing to do.  We could do that and also have a “Mini-camp” the week before the SB party.

Are you shitting me???  This will cost twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars to get it done (six round trip flights, housing for six or seven days, food for the coaches, field rental for practices, miscellaneous expenses).  Well, maybe there was a lot more money than I thought!

Another Swiss vacation I guess!  (Chevy Chase … European Vacation!)