I owe the Tigers! Here’s why.
So, I got an email from a good friend of mine and he asked if all I do is have fun while I am here in Switzerland. Well, it’s a pretty damn obvious answer if you ask me. Yes, all I do is have fun – that’s my job! However – there are many different definitions of fun.
First off – football has been fun to me since I started playing when I was ten years old or so. (Remember many years ago Garrett Morris in Saturday Night Live saying “Baseball been berry, berry good to me!? Just insert football for me.) Hell, it’s a tremendous game and it teaches so many great lessons you will use all through life. There isn’t a single day that goes by where something I learned from the game cannot be applied.
Well the Tigers thru Dan Frey went out of their way to make me a part of their organization here in Switzerland. There were others involved and my thoughts are that Stephan Pulver and Daniel Gygax were in the mix.
There were a lot of moving parts to get this collaboration organized and pulled together. Passport checks visa applications, City, Canton and Federal government approvals and many other little details.
Dan did a tremendous job in handling the process of attaining the proper paper work and explaining to me what needed to be done. We had many emails, several Zooms, a few Skypes and some other transatlantic contacts.
Trust me, he is a very patient man.
Honestly, I never worried about the entire operation because it was done so professionally. However, my point is that for all of the work that many people (including government officials) put in – well I am grateful.
I owe the Tigers!
So, back to the “fun” part. I have an opportunity here to spend many months in this fantastic country which is “fun” by the way. Plus, I have an opportunity to share some experiences I have had … connect the Tiger staff with information that many of my coaching compadres in the US have shared with me and to hopefully contribute a little to the organization as a whole.
The least I can do is spend a few hours of the day preparing any football information I can put together and assemble it for the staff. I mean, that isn’t very hard. In fact, it is fun going back thru old playbooks and lectures trying to dig up information that the Tigers might be able to use.
Unfortunately, my “Hudl” doesn’t work real well here for whatever reason so I cannot dig up some old videos. But, there isn’t much I can do about that. But, I am the one making out on this collaboration. There is no doubt that I am lucky to be here.
I owe the Tigers for sure!