When I think of teaching ball security, a few movie scenes come to mind.
First off, there's this scene from Remember the Titans where new head coach Herman Boone talks about striving for perfection.
"We will be perfect. You drop a pass, you will run a mile. You miss a blocking assignment, you run a mile."
"You fumble the football, and I will break my foot off in your John Brown hind parts...and then you will run a mile."
It's an iconic scene from an outstanding football film.
https://youtu.be/4f4pNwg_K9Q
Then there is my personal all-time favorite football movie, The Program where star newcomer running back Darnell Jefferson (played by Omar Epps) fumbles in practice and is tasked with carrying a ball all around campus while his teammates try to force a fumble in class and in the cafeteria and bring the ball with them to practice to get Jefferson in trouble.
Of course, there's also the uncomfortable scene starring Tim McGraw in the Friday Night Lights movie where he takes the field and gets physical with his son in front of their entire team after fumbling during the team's first practice.
One thing all of those scenes have in common is that they, in one way or another, motivate through fear.
At South Carolina, new offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield is utlizing a different approach.
Satterfield challenged one of his players about ball security during a unit meeting and it turned into an empowering opportunity.
"We're in a unit meeting, and he had no idea, but I was like 'Z White came up to me today guys and he said he wanted to do a PowerPoint presentation for you guys on Thursday about ball security complete with video.'"
"Everyone was laughing and then, sure enough, before I could go and tell him that he really was going to do it, he already had it done...and it was professionally done."
"He used pictures of me yelling and screaming and pictures of (running backs coach) Montario [Hardesty] with good ball security at Tennessee, and bad ball security at Tennessee. So he had some fun with it, but he also put a lot of work into it."
How has the player been since giving the presentation? Satterfield shares that he's seen marked improvement.
"It's amazing how his ball security - knock on wood - has continued to improve each day and just the importance that he has put on that because if he can take care of the football, he can do some really, really nice things with the football for us this year.
Hear Satt's full comments in the clip.