Owls' spring goal should be to take care of the little things

By Mike Gibson
Watching Temple in the Bobby Wallace or Ron Dickerson years line up with too many or not enough men on the line of scrimmage reminded me what the two greatest coaches I ever knew told me over and over again.
"Mike, you take care of the little things and that'll lead to big things," they said.
One was a college coach about to enter the National Football Hall of Fame.
The other was a high school coach who was every bit as good.
Wayne Hardin and Mike Pettine took care of the little things and they both accomplished big things.
Hardin fielded national powers at two places where people said there would not be a national power in the modern era: Navy and Temple.
Despite a mandatory five-year military commitment (pre-Vietnam War), Hardin had the Middies No. 2 in the nation and developed two Heisman Trophy winners, Joe Belino and Roger Staubach. At Temple, he had the Owls ranked No. 17 in both polls and beating California in a bowl game.
Pettine won 326 high school games, lost 42, tied four and won three straight "large school" Pennsylvania titles before retiring on top at Central Bucks West. In the 1990s alone, Central Bucks West was 121-8 under Pettine. That's not a misprint. One hundred and 21 wins, eight losses. That followed a sub-par 1980s (95-11-1). Pettine had a lot of slow, small, white kids but they never jumped off side, they never went in motion before they were supposed to, they never lined up with too many men on the line of scrimmage.
Yet they constantly beat teams with bigger, faster athletes because they took care of the little things.
Pettine's teams literally went years without substitution problems or illegal procedure penalties or false starts.
Now Central Bucks West is a sub-mediocre football school.
It's no coincidence it's without Pettine.
I once asked long-time Pettine assistant coach Mike Carey, a former All-American center at Pitt, about why I could cover CB West games for five years and never see an offside or illegal procedure penalty.
"Mike, come to one of our practices, you'll find out," Carey told me.
So I did. For a whole week I saw kids go offsides, but never in a game.
Always in practice.
It went like this:
A kid would go offsides.
"Run it again," Pettine would yell out.
Another kid would go in motion too soon.
"Run it again," Pettine would yell out.
And they ran it.
Again and again.
When there was a subsitition problem, the assistant coaches weren't immune to the criticism.
"Coach (Sid) Hunsberger, what happened there?" Pettine would yell out.
"Run it again," Pettine would say. "That's it, coach. It better not happen again."
Watching Temple in the past, the most disappointing thing to me is the bull-bleep penalties the Owls used to get. I don't mind getting beat off the ball by superior athletes, but just once I'd like to see a team execute the way those Central Bucks West and Temple teams of the past did.
I'd like to see this team do the little things right in 2007.
"Run it again," Pettine would say long into the Doylestown night.
Hopefully, Al Golden will be spending much of the upcoming spring practice doing the same at 11th and Diamond.
Golden could have no better coaching templates to follow than the one established by people like Hardin and Pettine. On this long road back, following their wonderful example is as good a first step as any.