There’s a reason “work smarter, not harder” is a cliche.
My HS coach was hyper-disciplined, to the point we’d practice the national anthem in preseason. He’d play it from a boom box, we’d have to stand up straight in a line with our helmet under left arm, right arm over heart. It always took a couple of tries with a lap around the field for whatever we screwed up. He never had a losing season and had multiple undefeated ones.
So you have a HS school coach who was old school and lost a lot. I had an old school coach who won a lot. It’s almost like evidence of my observation that people focus on the outward manifestations when inward mentality is what really matters.
So someone saying “Hurley having practices early isn’t what really matters!” is correct. But the bottom line is he’s a winner. Syracuse hasn’t been in a decade. He’s doing something we haven’t in ages.
I’d be interested in your speculation as to how my old school coach might have been different from yours, and similar to the guy who replaced him. Because identifying that correctly tells us both why Hurley has won two championships, and what we need to be looking for in our next coach. A good starting point is acknowledging that Hurley has done something special and noteworthy - he’s won two national championships. That at least gets you past the “There’s nothing special about Hurley!” loser mentality that has infected so many Syracuse fans.