Bad fundamentals at the collegiate level

1. The 20-hour/week rule

2. CFB has become an extremely complex game X and O-wise. Requires a lot of practice-prep time which takes away from Individual (fundamentals).

3. Climbing each different level of coaching isn't a meritocracy.

A portion of it, IMO, is that coaches at that level are servants to the talent. In that I mean that with the transfer portal and other factors, I think some coaches are intimidated to make corrections that may be perceived as too harsh because kids will leave or get them fired. Alabama can get away with a little more "harsh" or intense coaching because they can just pull out another 5 star guy out of the cupboard.

College football is just following the footsteps of the NFL in that players run the show now. They do whatever they want. And, that usually doesn't involve spending hours and hours learning the game.

I think it started, because a friend of mine who was a Big Ten assistant coach for many years told me so, when the scholarship limitations were lowered and when Juniors were allowed to declare for the NFL Draft.

You couldn't have anything resembling full contact so much any more because you didn't have the depth as before.

If a starter got hurt you could no longer plug in a former highly-recruited kid who had been there waiting, working (including lifting-getting bigger, stronger, faster in Off-Season) for his chance to play.

The transfer portal is only going to exacerbate that.

Great point about the transfer portal. That is going to wreak absolute havoc with this matter...It will probably in effect end up being like the 1 and done environment in CBB. Impossible to build a program in that kind of environment. OL and most DL, and LBs will probably still be 4 and 5 years in the program. But you will probably have QBs, RBs, WRs, TEs, and DBs that will have played in up to 3 different systems during their career...

I think this is the big thing, but I also believe we need to hold a mirror up to ourselves (ourselves being HS coaches) here as well. 

I've known a LOT of HS coaches who fall into this same mentality, who will argue that, "I'm not a drill master" (ie not here to rep fundamentals), who spend the vast majority of their time repping team, who are more into coaching plays as opposed to players. 
Yes, you can correct fundamentals in whole group situations, but to be honest most coaches look at that as a time to ensure players are in the right place at the right time, as opposed to using proper technique/fundamentals when there. And any correction they give is just telling the kid to do it, as opposed to really working on the fundamental development. 

There tends to be three aspects of coaching: 1) athletic development (make our players bigger, faster, etc). 2) X & O's (run the play correctly, be in the right place at the right time for the number of plays we have). 3) Technique (be able to execute the fundamental actions/technique/movement required). Most coaches see improvement at 1 & 2 as having the most correlation to winning games- while 1 & 3 probably do the most for developing the player in the long run. 

So you get these HS coaches who spend little time developing technique, and when the kids get to college, they don't have much fundamental foundation. College coaches assume they should have been taught this already, and do the same thing the HS coach did, seeing paths 1 & 2 as the best way to win games.

In regards to the 20 hour time limit, I see that as the same in HS. Many on this board argue that we/they shouldnt need that much practice time to get the job done. Its the same at the collegiate level. If you can't get it done in that amount of time, maybe you are trying to do too much.

Then I wonder if everyone goes by the Jimmie’s and joes not X’s and O’s philosophy, then why isn’t 1 and 3 more of a priority?

Talking CFB-P5 now:

If you are coaching at one of the top tier programs that get 4 and 5-star recruits every year, you may not have to spend so much time on teaching fundamentals.

If you're at the next tier - the programs that don't get the above - you have to develop your players in the Off-Season and by teaching them techniques-how to play successfully at P5 level.

Hopefully you will have them long enough to see it pay off.

In my neck of the woods that would be Iowa and Wisconsin for example. Michigan State under Dantonio too.

 Just to add a somewhat different perspective, I am sure that youth/Frosh/JV level coaches could make the exact same post directed toward HS varsity play.   And college guys could make the same post directed toward NFL players.   

I would also say that I would not call many of the things you describe as fundamentals but rather as mistakes or poor execution. Part of the reason is likely that the speed of the game is just faster.  

Too many coaches take talent for granted.

It's the real good coach who can teach his less than gifted kids to beat a more talented team, that has poor fundamentals, by out executing them

Coach, a lot of it that im talking about is clearly unforced/self-inflicted errors. It's not something the other team did. It's them taking a bad angle, not using proper technique, playing hesitantly. People talk all the time about playing fast, and you want players playing not thinking. Paralysis by analysis.

And yes, as i said at the end of the OP, it's definitely not a meritocracy.

Interesting topic considering my day's events; we hosted a combine for our state's end of year all star game.  Our HC is on the staff and is tasked with being the DB coach, and our AC staff ran the drills so all of the all star coaches could evaluate the participants.

At the end of the day my HC, who is the DB coach for this all star game, asked the DB coaches at my school to assess the DB talent/skill of that groups we worked out.  To a T, the coaches (total of 4 including our HC) distinguished between those that had innate skill/athleticism and those that had obviously been coached well as to those that excelled at simply having a skill set of DBs.  

I also inquired into the other defensive coaches on our staff if they had kids that showed out talent wise versus kids that had obviously had been coached well.  It was pretty consistent across the board.  I was able to witness the drill work across the defensive board from front line to the back end and that was my assessment too.

I only saw the offensive WR/RB/QB in the competition setting portion of the day.

It was easy to see which kids had been coached/worked well in the fundamentals, versus the ones that just were there on the aspects of their over all physical skills.  I even saw kids take to heart the corrections to their fundamental flaws like they had just heard them for the first time.

This was 75+ kids that were invited to come and work our at our facility.  These were kids that had already been through several previous  regional 'combines' and film evaluation by the all star coaches.  Again I only witnessed primarily the DB group, but also in competition periods WRs, LBs, RBs, QBs, also (in 1 on 1, and split 7 on 7 time).

Again It was obvious that most of the kids had talent/genetics, but it was also obvious which kids had been coached well.  Also this the 2nd year our staff ran this event; covid cancelled the game last year so the selective all star staff was recycled.

If the D1 prospect is getting his job done in HS despite lousy technique, keep in mind that the coach may need to use his practice time trying to get other guys even competent. 

But what I’m saying is that those things are always there.

It’s just that the greater athletic talent exposes natural mental hesitancy or mistakes in an opponent much more clearly for all to see. When you ADD to the mental processing players are supposed to do (and a lot of college and NFL coaches, including Saban and Belichik do this), you are going to potentially create more issues like this,

Take “bad angles.” If you run 4.6 and you’re trying to get to a RB who runs 4.9 in HS, you have more room for error. You can false step, hesitate, or come in at all kinds of different angles, etc. and still get there… but if that RB runs 4.4 you have almost no room for error and it will be glaringly obvious if you make a slight mistake.

I am sometimes astounded by watching stuff like Hawaii’s DL run 3 yards upfield and then try to “wrong arm” a few years ago, but that stuff is still the exception to what I see, not the norm.

This is also why you see a lot of true freak athletes in HS and college who can’t put it together at the next level. A lot of those guys just can’t get the processing, reads, etc down. As a coach, it’s our job to simplify our stuff to make our players more effective, but “instincts” and “processing” are every bit as much a part of having “talent” as being big, strong, and running fast.