Posted by gillispie on 11/18/2010 7:49:00 PM (view original):

Posted by oldresorter on 11/18/2010 6:09:00 PM (view original):
gil - that is funny, I used to do what you do, then I just published it all.  After answering a few requests today, I now remember why I just published it all, although you miss out on the personal contact, that is for sure.

honestly OR, if not for the personal contact that allows me to find people to continue my endless ramblings about this game, i would have stopped playing a long time ago :)

If not for gils ramblings in the GLV, I'd probably have hung it up with both of my remaining teams. 

I'm normally willing to share my opinions to everyone, via the CC, but rarely take the time to actually mentor someone.  I've helped a few guys out with the game and gotten a few started in it, but beyond that, I don't go into too much personal detail.  I'll respond to a few random sitemails, but normally not with an overwhelming amount of information.  

I've read the forums off and on for the last year or so and I will say, they aren't the source of information that they used to be.  Or even when people bring up intelligent ideas, there are tons of people there to shoot them down.

My basic line of thought is, if you want to know how valuable a coaches opinion is, look at how successful they are.  If you've won a solid % of your conference titles or a NT, I'd rarely dismiss an opinion as completely invalid.  Even if I don't believe it, I'd rather take the time to understand it.

I will say, if I had someone like BG around to chat with (and I had more time to do so), I'd likely have won 10+ NTs by now.  Even after 200+ seasons, I'm still learning.

i agree mld, the forums are not the great source of info they could be. i don't even want to say that they used to be, because as long as i've been here, people have been shooting people down in a ridiculous (and often assholish) fashion.

the most important thing is for people to remain helpful and open minded. it is incredibly obvious why many people ignore the forums altogether. if somebody believes something other than the group consensus, they just get shat on immediately. it doesn't matter how good of a coach they are, or how right they are. people just **** on them anyway. its happened to me a ton of times, now it doesn't happen very often, but it has many times in the past. its incredibly annoying when you post something that you can't know is false unless you try it, and a hundred people tell you you are wrong, but you know for a fact none of them tried it. i agree with mlat - if the coach has any credibility at all, and they pose a new idea, its best to understand it before you reject it. i can't tell you how much i have learned from random miscellaneous ideas i've picked up on these forums that most people rejected immediately.

one last thing i would like to encourage people to do. you don't need a mentor or need to be a mentor to benefit immensely from a dialogue with another person (or people). i get new ideas all the time today from much less accomplished coaches, and have always learned from everybody from a guy with no titles to guys like OR. find a couple guys who you like to talk to, and bounce ideas off them. or watch their teams and when you see something intruiging, ask them about it. there are so many ways to be successful in this game, which makes it true that there is at least one thing each of us could learn from every coach (within reason), and usually, there are a lot of things. i have probably learned as much from the people i mentor as they have, just from picking up on ideas they had and the things they've learned, from their perspective. most people seem to be happy to discuss their own teams, their own theories, i've never went to a guy and said, hey, that thing you are doing is cool, can you give me a little insight into.... and not gotten a good answer.