“On the first day of practice, we were all scared to death. Plus he hadn't brought along any footballs. One kid finally spoke up for all of us 'Excuse me, Coach. There are no footballs.'
And Coach Graham responded, 'We don't need any footballs.' There was silence while we thought about that...
'How many men are on the football field at a time?' he asked us. Eleven on a team, we answered. So that makes twenty-two.
'And how many people are touching the football at any given time?' One of them.
'Right!' he said. 'So we're going to work on what those other twenty-one guys are doing.'
Fundamentals. That was a great gift Coach Graham gave us. Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. As a college professor, I've seen this one lesson so many kids ignore, always to their detriment: You've got to get the fundamentals down, because otherwise the fancy stuff is not going to work.”