“Just by standing up in that front room in that first meeting, here’s the head football coach, their new authority figure, standing there addressing them, and just by observing the kids I could almost pick out the ones where, ‘OK, here’s where our challenges are going to be,'” Pelini said.
“And it’s not their fault. It has nothing to do with the type of kid — are they a good kid? Are they a bad kid? It has nothing to do with that. For the most part, it’s, ‘You’re a product of your upbringing.’”
Of all the subjects that came up during Pelini’s two-hour roundtable last week at Big Ten Media Days in Chicago, a question about the differences in athletes now compared with years past sparked as much conversation as any topic.
How different is today’s athlete from when he was playing at Ohio State in the late 1980s? Or, more telling, how different is today’s athlete from the ones he was coaching when he took the job at Nebraska just seven years ago?
“It is much different now. And it’s different every year. Society has changed," Pelini said. "This generation changes, and how you address them and what you need to do to help them grow."
While this discussion may seem as though it's drifting into “back in my day” territory to some, it proves for an interesting dialogue when technological advancements — and the social media outlets that have sprouted from them — have changed the way we all communicate over the past 10 years.
