Hugh Freeze Secrets to Success Vol. 1: Pretend You're Dead

Modern college football coaches are sociopaths: Hugh Freeze wants his players to envision themselves dead, in order to achieve peak performance on the football field. You can read the rationale behind the philosophy below, but to break it down to brass tacks: Freeze wants players to set goals and envision the eulogies at their funerals to specifically mention that those goals were achieved in order to reverse engineer a successful life.

Well, that certainly took an unexpected turn. pic.twitter.com/8PKkyrMHKv
— Ben Garrett (@SpiritBen) August 23, 2016

So, presumably, when Ole Miss quarterback Chad Kelly is preparing for the moment he eats it, he will envision a funeral that mentions what a hard worker he was, that he "was a devoted husband, and caring father, and had a senior year for the ages, outstripping his 2015 junior campaign that saw him throw 31 touchdowns and only 13 interceptions, while completing 61 percent of his passes; A fine quarterback, but a better man."

Personally, I think this is kind of lazy and contradictory, on the coach's part. Rather than having players confront their own mortality—when what they really want is for them to run through brick walls until their bodies fail—why not work with each player to develop an individualized plan using the coach's specific football expertise to tailor a set of goals for each boy he is molding into a man? You know, like teachers.

[Saturday Down South]