bluffrinkrat
New member
Re: Ohio State Coach???
I agree that it remains to be seen how good a job Potter will do, but it certainly is a home run in PR for OSU and possibly in future recruitment. It was also a home run (to continue the baseball metaphor) for the lowly Washington Senators to hire Ted Williams as their manager back in 1969 to replace the "lemon" that they had the prior year. There's a myth, I think, that great players cannot be good managers. They get frustrated when the players can't do the things that they did so easily and they can't understand why any player would swing at a pitch 2 feet low and outside. There may be something to that, but Williams did turn an absolutely awful Senators team around that first year and like Frank Robinson became a manager of the year for doing so.
Mark Johnson. Great player and great coach for sure. I don't know, but it seems likely that some of those players that brought Wisconsin four national championships in five consecutive years with Johnson at the helm came there to be coached by a guy they had heard about since they first laced on hockey skates. Some great recruits may come to OSU to be coached by Jenny Potter as well. Time will tell.
One more Ted Williams story that I remember from an interview in 1969 (maybe on the Tonight Show or something). When he first arrived to manage the Senators he met with the players in the locker room to get to know them and ask a few pointed questions. He asked one young pitcher how he pitched to Harmon Killebrew. "Not very well," was the response.
I agree that it remains to be seen how good a job Potter will do, but it certainly is a home run in PR for OSU and possibly in future recruitment. It was also a home run (to continue the baseball metaphor) for the lowly Washington Senators to hire Ted Williams as their manager back in 1969 to replace the "lemon" that they had the prior year. There's a myth, I think, that great players cannot be good managers. They get frustrated when the players can't do the things that they did so easily and they can't understand why any player would swing at a pitch 2 feet low and outside. There may be something to that, but Williams did turn an absolutely awful Senators team around that first year and like Frank Robinson became a manager of the year for doing so.
Mark Johnson. Great player and great coach for sure. I don't know, but it seems likely that some of those players that brought Wisconsin four national championships in five consecutive years with Johnson at the helm came there to be coached by a guy they had heard about since they first laced on hockey skates. Some great recruits may come to OSU to be coached by Jenny Potter as well. Time will tell.
One more Ted Williams story that I remember from an interview in 1969 (maybe on the Tonight Show or something). When he first arrived to manage the Senators he met with the players in the locker room to get to know them and ask a few pointed questions. He asked one young pitcher how he pitched to Harmon Killebrew. "Not very well," was the response.
