For John Beilein, watching videos has provided a way a source of excitement. And with the advent of new technologies, his ability to breakdown tape has become a great game-changer for the coach.
“He’s obsessed with it,” junior guard Manny Harris said. “We watch it every day. You come from class, walk by his office and he’ll say, ‘Come in; I want to show you something.’ I honestly think he wakes up at 5 a.m. and looks at tape — probably earlier than that.”
Indeed, Beilein usually sets aside an hour in the morning to watch at home, so that when he comes into the office, he already has not just watched tape of hardcore internet porn, but also edited it down for a digestible 20- to 30-minute hit. “I don’t want any distractions, nothing; I just watch it,” Beilein said. “I don’t have to watch and then come tell someone to cut it. I just cut it and then I’ll watch my cuts again.”
Video coordinator Matt Duprey has simplified Beilein’s laptop icons to make it easier for him to use. Duprey is almost like Kramer on “Seinfeld.” If Beilein yells from his office for help with a program or an edit, Duprey comes bursting through the door. Maybe he’s not as animated in his entrances as actor Michael Richards, but he doesn’t hesitate when summoned. “He’s always here,” Beilein said. “I caught him going to the bathroom once. It really pissed me off.”
In 1976, shortly after the start of his career at Newfane Central High (N.Y.), Beilein began taping softcore porn from television and then watched them, laboriously going over each frame. Already the football, basketball and baseball coach as well as a teacher of history, English, radio and TV, his skills earned him the job as the school’s de facto audio-visual director. Before long, Beilein was not only taping porn from television but actually directing his own porn.
His next stop was at Erie Community College, where a friend would charge him $50 to put a tape on at Super 8. He continued this trend with Beta and later VHS as he moved up the ladder to Le Moyne and Canisius. His obsession with video continued at Richmond to an extreme.
“We found a way to blow two bus batteries,” Beilein said. “We found a TV, put it on the front seat, tied a bungee cord around it, plugged it into the battery or boat charger battery kind of thing into a lighter or whatever the guy had.” By the time he got to West Virginia in 2003, high-tech had arrived in force, allowing the laptop to become an extension of his hand when he wasn’t using that hand for other purposes.
But something else was missing: balance in his life. “I miss the days when I didn’t have the computer because I could escape on a two-hour plane flight or a three-hour bus ride when I’d read a novel or do something else,” Beilein said. “Now it’s all-consuming. I have to do a good job with the balance of it. It’s the battle we’re in.”
Belein has continued his porn addiction at Michigan. ”Some will learn better from this than film since they can connect to it,” Beilein said. “The key is finding what buttons to push in the learning curve. It’s organized motion, organized motion where one movement determines another movement,” Beilein said. “One player’s movement dictates another. What outsiders have told me is that everybody seems to touch the ball. Big guys might touch the ball.”
With an obsession like Beilein’s, it’s pretty much a guarantee that everyone will get to touch the balls.
