You Can Do More!

Conor Oberst and the AFCA National Convention

Jeff Floyd
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How are Conor Oberst and the American Football Coaches Association National Convention related?

Get ready for a relatively circuitous ride…

If you are over 30, there is probably a good chance that you do not know who Conor Oberst is. The 34 year old singer-songwriter has been playing music for over 20 years … he released his first recording, Water, when he 13. He was recording folk music before the likes of Mumford and Sons, and the Avett Brothers made it popular again.

My 24-year-old son, Carter, has been an Oberst fan pretty much his whole life… my wife and I, not so much. When Carter was in middle school, Oberst and Bright Eyes (his group) populated our iTunes library. Carter would sit at the computer doing homework and listen to Oberst … we would make his wear headphones because the music was… well… pretty awful.

My son and his fiancée have seen Conor Oberst perform live three or four times…. most recently a couple of weeks ago with my wife and I. My son informed me that “Oberst had a newly released record (Upside Down Mountain), I had to listen to it, download it, and we should go to the concert.”

I did listen and download… it was good…. very good… surprisingly good! The concert was excellent… really pretty awesome.

You know how iTunes works… you select an artist, click on a song, and it goes through all the songs on an album (either sequentially or shuffle) then moves to the next album from that artist.   Well, the other day I was listening to Oberst’s new album…an album that I like a lot. It went through the whole record, then started on the next album on my iTunes library, an Oberst vestige left over from when our son lived at home. In fact it was a tune from his first record, Water… and it was just as awful as I had remembered it… bad… really bad.

Juxtaposed against his new work, it was very evident how far Oberst had come as a singer-songwriter.

So, how does that relate to the AFCA National coaches convention.

I had the opportunity to attend many of these conventions through the years. I enjoyed listening and learning from the best in the nation. One thing that always struck me was how many of the guys that had “made it”… that were successful coaches, at any level… had “paid their dues”.   Very few of them were “flash in the pans”.   If you looked at their resumes most had toiled as assistants… for years… at various levels… from high school to college, learning and honing their craft.

I am quite sure that if you were able to watch these “big name” coaches that had “made it” when they were early in their career… when they were graduate or student assistants… that their growth and improvement would be just as apparent as Oberst’s was to me.

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And as a bonus, here is a link to Oberst and Dawes performing an NPR “Tiny Desk” concert.

Oberst-NPR Tiny Desk

You Can Do More… your brain is lying to you…. Don’t Believe It!

Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com