The first AP college football poll came out and as expected, USC was ranked first followed by LSU, West Virginia, Texas and Michigan to round out the Top 5. So we’re almost there… a fortnight away from the 1st full weekend of the college football season.
So are we excited? You bet. But we will admit that excitement is tempered a bit knowing that along with the joy that college football brings us, it is a double-edged sword that can also cause frustration, angst, and utter disbelief because it seems that each week we are witness to a continuing litany of boneheaded coaching decisions.
A quick peak into our dark psyche: Last October we were watching UCLA kick Notre Dame’s tail all over the field in South Bend. UCLA’s two defensive ends, Justin Hickman and Bruce Davis were living in the Irish backfield and ruining any chance that Brady Quinn had at winning the Heisman. Joy, oh joy. And just when victory seemed assured late in the 4th quarter, UCLA did a 180 and got completely away from what had been successful and what had them at victory’s doorstep. Yes, friends… the Bruins pulled “a Republican”
They completely shut down the offense, effectively giving the Irish defense consecutive 3 and outs and when the defense needed to make a stand with about 90 seconds left in order to ice the game, UCLA went into that god-forsaken and completely un-redeemable “prevent defense”, whereby Notre Dame blazed down the field in 3 plays for the winning score.
To say we were apoplectic would’ve been a slight understatement. Things were thrown, invectives cast, and house guests politely excused themselves from the premises in the face of this glorious meltdown.
This coaching performance was followed the very next day by the Chargers doing pretty much the same damn thing in their game against the Ravens. Unbelievable. We had a headache for about 4 days afterwards.
For the first time, we didn’t want to watch any football for a while. We’d had it. We were spent. We were beat down - ground into the turf by coaching stupidity. Why was it that we saw it coming a mile away but men who are paid great sums of money to lead young men to victory by being able to see the same could not?
It was then that we came up with this theory: Coaches watch game film but they don’t watch football.
Its not as counter-intuitive as it sounds. You see here at BwD HQ, at the height of any given Saturday afternoon in the fall, we are tracking no less than 6 or 7 football games simultaneously. And in watching and processing all this info, we don’t care that the left tackle is taking a bad technique in chipping on the defensive end before getting up field to block for a screen pass. We’re tracking scores and we are tracking game trends. We’re monitoring the ebb and flow of numerous games and as such, we start to see and recognize general situations and on-field circumstances from week to week that will lead to victory and conversely, defeat.
This is something that head coaches don't do. They watch plenty of game film and they get down into the weeds to look for an advantage in way of seeing if the wide receiver, for example, is tipping off plays by the way he lines up or hold his hands prior to the snap. But they don’t step back and look at the big picture - in fact, it would be nigh impossible for them to do so because as we are gathering game trends real-time, processing it and coming to our own conclusions as to what basic strategy will and will not work, the coaches are out there coaching and continuing to make boneheaded decisions.
Sorry for the long post but the poll and accompanying article from the AP via Sports Illustrated is attached. Click here.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/football/ncaa/specials/preview/2007/08/18/ap.poll.ap/index.html
So are we excited? You bet. But we will admit that excitement is tempered a bit knowing that along with the joy that college football brings us, it is a double-edged sword that can also cause frustration, angst, and utter disbelief because it seems that each week we are witness to a continuing litany of boneheaded coaching decisions.
A quick peak into our dark psyche: Last October we were watching UCLA kick Notre Dame’s tail all over the field in South Bend. UCLA’s two defensive ends, Justin Hickman and Bruce Davis were living in the Irish backfield and ruining any chance that Brady Quinn had at winning the Heisman. Joy, oh joy. And just when victory seemed assured late in the 4th quarter, UCLA did a 180 and got completely away from what had been successful and what had them at victory’s doorstep. Yes, friends… the Bruins pulled “a Republican”
They completely shut down the offense, effectively giving the Irish defense consecutive 3 and outs and when the defense needed to make a stand with about 90 seconds left in order to ice the game, UCLA went into that god-forsaken and completely un-redeemable “prevent defense”, whereby Notre Dame blazed down the field in 3 plays for the winning score.
To say we were apoplectic would’ve been a slight understatement. Things were thrown, invectives cast, and house guests politely excused themselves from the premises in the face of this glorious meltdown.
This coaching performance was followed the very next day by the Chargers doing pretty much the same damn thing in their game against the Ravens. Unbelievable. We had a headache for about 4 days afterwards.
For the first time, we didn’t want to watch any football for a while. We’d had it. We were spent. We were beat down - ground into the turf by coaching stupidity. Why was it that we saw it coming a mile away but men who are paid great sums of money to lead young men to victory by being able to see the same could not?
It was then that we came up with this theory: Coaches watch game film but they don’t watch football.
Its not as counter-intuitive as it sounds. You see here at BwD HQ, at the height of any given Saturday afternoon in the fall, we are tracking no less than 6 or 7 football games simultaneously. And in watching and processing all this info, we don’t care that the left tackle is taking a bad technique in chipping on the defensive end before getting up field to block for a screen pass. We’re tracking scores and we are tracking game trends. We’re monitoring the ebb and flow of numerous games and as such, we start to see and recognize general situations and on-field circumstances from week to week that will lead to victory and conversely, defeat.
This is something that head coaches don't do. They watch plenty of game film and they get down into the weeds to look for an advantage in way of seeing if the wide receiver, for example, is tipping off plays by the way he lines up or hold his hands prior to the snap. But they don’t step back and look at the big picture - in fact, it would be nigh impossible for them to do so because as we are gathering game trends real-time, processing it and coming to our own conclusions as to what basic strategy will and will not work, the coaches are out there coaching and continuing to make boneheaded decisions.
Sorry for the long post but the poll and accompanying article from the AP via Sports Illustrated is attached. Click here.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/football/ncaa/specials/preview/2007/08/18/ap.poll.ap/index.html
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