V-E Day Turns Into The Alamo

Last year, Barcelona came home for the second leg of the Champions League semifinal having played three matches against Real Madrid, two on the road and one at a neutral site.  Barca had salted away a third straight La Liga title, lost a heart-breaker in the Copa del Rey Final, and then beaten Real 2-0 in the first leg of the Champions League semi.  They were like warriors coming home after winning the war, so a hype video using the theme from The Pacific made perfect sense:



This year, the Blaugrana enter a Champions League semifinal trailing 1-0 to Chelsea after a disastrous first leg in which Barca spurned at least six good scoring chances and allowed the Blues to score on their only shot of the match. Barca was described as "unlucky," after the match, but luck implies factors outside of their control. Barca's terrible finishing was within their control, as was the ability to mark Didier Drogba in the box when he was Ramires's only passing target.

Barca then followed that match by being beaten at home by Real Madrid in an entirely deserved fashion. Whereas Chelsea were timid and rode their luck (while Barca were not unlucky, Chelsea were most definitely lucky because they had nothing to do with Busquets and Cesc skying open-goal chances into the stands), Real were powerful, created more good chances, and won their La Liga title in emphatic fashion. In so doing, they ended all sorts of streaks: Mourinho having never won at the Nou Camp, not beating Barca in La Liga in four years, Barca not losing at home in La Liga in almost two seasons, Barca not having lost two meaningful games in a row since the beginning of Guardiola's time at Barca, etc.

So, when Barca deploy another hype video using the theme from The Pacific, this feels more like a last stand than a victory parade:





How did this come to pass for Barca?  I would point to the complete uncertainty up front.  In 2009, Barca won the Champions League with a set front three: Messi on the right, Henry on the left, and Eto'o in the center.  Those three combined to score 97 goals, including both of the strikes on that famous night in Rome when Barca started building their resume for being one of the best sides of all-time.  In 2010, Barca went out of the Champions League in the semifinals in no small part because they were in the middle of a transition away from Zlatan Ibrahimovic as a striker and towards Leo Messi as a false nine.  Ibra started both matches against Inter and was ineffective, in part because he was coming back from an injury and in part because Barca was realizing that he just was not a fit for their style.  By the end of the season, the Blaugrana were playing Bojan Krkic as a starter and Ibra was a very expensive substitute.  In 2011, Barca again had a stable front three: Messi in the middle, Pedro on the right, and David Villa on the left.  Messi dropped off of the front and created space for the other forwards to use.  Those three produced 95 goals and Barca won the Champions League again.

This year has been a lot more 2010 than 2009 or 2011.  I don't have any idea who is going to go on the team sheet and neither do most Barca fans.  Alexis Sanchez seems like a fairly likely bet, despite his pair of glaring misses at Stamford Bridge, because he provides Messi with a runner.  As for the other?  Cuenca because he plays as a true winger?  Tello because he is a dangerous dribbler?  Cesc because he combines well with Messi?  Pedro because he is a scorer of big goals (and was very nearly the hero last Wednesday)?  Dani Alves because he can play right forward?  Barca are 58 matches into the season and they don't know the identity of their front three.  Blame new signings, injuries, or a tendency to sit and watch the best player in the world if you like, but here we are.

The lack of certainty up front has made Barca weaker at the back.  Pep always says that Barca is not a very good defensive team when the other team is allowed to have the ball, so keeping the ball and then pressing hard when turning it over is essential.  If the front line isn't doing its job, then the back line gets exposed.  As Michael Cox explained, Pep has been forced to use quantity up front to make up for a lack of quality, which has created defensive vulnerability:

Whereas Real played their usual 4-2-3-1, Guardiola’s choice of formation was a surprise. He went for the 3-4-3, which meant Dani Alves pushed very high up on the right, Tello on the opposite flank, and Adriano on the left of a back three. This was an attacking gamble by Guardiola – he’s commented before on how dangerous it is to play a back three without controlling the whole game.

In a sense, it also hinted at Guardiola’s lack of confidence in Barcelona’s attacking department – he felt he needed two wingers to stretch the play on either side, yet also an additional midfielder to ensure superiority in the centre. This came at the risk of defensive stability, and Barcelona were particularly vulnerable to breaks into the channels/wings.

Today's match against Chelsea is no time to batten down the defensive hatches, as Barca need a two-goal win to progress.  (1-0 just gets the Blaugrana to extra time.)

So, here we are at the Alamo, Thermopylae, Bastogne, Rorke's Drift, Shiroyama.  Barca are struggling, at least relative to the standard that they have set for the last three years, but even a struggling Barca side can put together a great performance.  They are playing for history (first club to retain the Champions League), so it would figure that they will need a last stand to make that happen.

Butchering the Past, SEC Scheduling Edition

I have a fairly lengthy column up at SB Nation, complaining about the possible end of Auburn-Georgia and Alabama-Tennessee as annual events.  I start with an extended analogy to the antebellum yeoman farmers who wanted to avoid having to use currency or work for larger landholders and then end with a gripe about the SEC emphasizing short-term profits over anything else:

In sum, the SEC has been so thoroughly sucked into the vortex of being a quasi-pro sport that short-term revenue maximization is now the name of the game. The changes to the conference in the 90s - splitting into divisions and joining a two-team playoff - proved to be beneficial in getting the league where it is today, but the decision in the works to jettison two of the SEC's best rivalries is unlikely to have any such upsides. Aside from the facts that the decision has angered the league's core consumers and could turn them against the new arrivals ("thanks, Mizzou, you cost us the Deep South's oldest rivalry and the Third Saturday in October"), the change will upset the rhythm of the season and ever so slightly diminish the quality of the TV product. The SEC is losing a little of its soul with this decision, and its soul is part of what makes the conference so profitable.

I wonder about whether the college football ticket market is a bit of a bubble waiting to pop.  One of the driving forces here is that teams want to keep the right to schedule as many home games against lesser opposition as they can possibly shovel onto the slate.  A nine-game conference schedule would solve the scheduling issue created by SEC expansion, but that would leave one less spot for the New Mexico States and Furmans of the world.  I seriously wonder about Georgia fans who would normally pay thousands of dollars for season tickets looking at their athletic director and saying “you sacrificed the Auburn game, which is often the best game on the home schedule, in order to preserve a glorified scrimmage.  Screw you, I’ll buy tickets to the games that I really want to attend on Stubhub.”  Demand for season tickets looks solid right now, but it would not surprise me in the least to see it soften in the next 5-10 years if the SEC maintains its current course.

Brazil Goes to the Map Room

My favorite movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark.  My parents dragged me to it when I was six years old.  I say "dragged" because I wanted to see Clash of the Titans instead.  Based on the picture of Indiana Jones in the newspaper wearing a Middle Eastern headdress,* I feared that the movie was going to be an extension of Sunday School, which I was already mature enough to find boring.  Two hours after being forced against my will to go into one of the theaters on 29 in Charlottesville, I came dancing out, convinced that I had seen the best movie in the history of the world.  Three decades later, I will admit that there might be other movies of superior technical quality, but no movie has surpassed Raiders as my favorite.

* - Showing a similar mentality, my five-year old described our neighbors' nativity scene as "Jews, a camel, and a donkey."

One of Raiders' best aspects is that it is stuffed to the gills with iconic scenes.  Indy running away from the boulder.  Indy's travels being tracked by a red line on a map.  Indy shooting the swordsman in the Cairo market.*  The Ark melting the faces of Toht and Dietrich.  The Ark being buried in a government warehouse along with who knows what.** 

* - If there is a better 30-second metaphor for colonialism, I'd like to see it. OK, maybe the fact that the locals cheer the Westerner who uses technology to defeat the skilled, but outdated native cuts against my conclusion, but leave me my attempt to find meaning in a pulp classic.  Also, it's interesting to me that two of the best scenes in George Lucas-affiliated movies - the swordsman scene in Raiders and the "I love you." "I know." scene in Empire Strikes Back - were both improvised by Harrison Ford.

** - The perfect metaphor for government waste.

For me, the best scene in the entire movie is the Map Room.  Indy takes his right-sized staff into the Map Room at the right time, waits for the sun to hit the right spot, and then looks on with amazement as a brilliant beam of light strikes the location of the Well of the Souls.

Two qualities make the scene.  The first is John Williams' score, as the Ark's theme rises to an inspiring crescendo.  The second is Harrison Ford's expression of wonder at the show of light.  The cynicism of a world-weary archaeologist with the weathered leather jacket and fedora - the guy who said earlier in the movie " I don't believe in magic, a lot of superstitious hocus pocus. I'm going after a find of incredible historical significance, you're talking about the boogie man" - melts away now that he realizes that he is in the presence of the ethereal.  Steven Spielberg's movies are often noted for the moment of realization that his protagonists have.  (Think about Roy Scheider's face in Jaws when he realizes the size of the shark he's hunting, or Liam Neeson's face when he finally realizes the extent of the Final Solution and its effect on children in Schindler's List.)  The definitive moment of realization is Indy in the Map Room as his face changes to a wide-eyed gape.

I had Indy's expression in mind when I read Tim Vickery's pieces about the lesson that Brazilians should take from the hiding that Santos took from Barcelona in Japan.  With the world title on the line, Santos brought in a team that had been strengthened after winning the Copa Libertadores and was led by two burgeoning stars: Neymar and Ganso.  With the Brazilian domestic league in good financial form after signing a lucrative TV deal and the currency doing well against the failing Euro, this seemed like the time for a Brazilian club side to show its strength against a European champion.  Instead, Barca won in embarrassingly comfortable fashion, breaking out to a 3-0 lead at the half and then coasting home.

Vickery, who has been preaching about the failings of modern Brazilian futebol for as long as I have been reading and listening to him, could have viewed the match as a confirmation of his hypothesis that Brazil has given up the ability to produce passing midfielders.  Here is what Vickery wrote for the BBC:

Like watching Muhammad Ali against some outgunned challenger, Barcelona's destruction of Santos was as joyful as it was clinical. Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi ran rings round Santos as if the Brazilians were traffic cones in a training exercise.

According to the dominant current of thought in Brazil in recent years, this sort of thing is not supposed to happen. The physical evolution of the game, it was thought, had made it impossible. In this modern football of reduced space, the central midfielders need to be six-footers, big and strong enough to win the 50-50 balls and protect the defence.

And there was no point in possession football - a move with more than seven passes had a reduced chance of ending up in a goal. The way to win was to block the middle and look for quick counter attacks and set-pieces.

And the quality of the play? "If you want to see a spectacle," says Santos coach Muricy Ramalho, "then go to the theatre." Or maybe go to watch his side taken apart in such style by Barcelona.

In football the idea comes first. And the line of thinking helps explain the type of players produced. In Neymar Santos could count on a Messi equivalent. But where is the Xavi or the Iniesta? Brazilian football no longer has them because it is not looking to produce them. They do not fit the mould.

And here is his similar description for ESPN:

Sunday's match was not decided by a financial imbalance. It was the imposition of one footballing philosophy over another, a victory for the skilful little guys with the low centre of gravity, a triumph for the spectacle and self-expression of pass and move - a win like many that South American football has enjoyed in its glorious history.

The value of defeat is always in the lessons that it can teach. Perhaps the big lesson that Barcelona have taught in Yokohama is this: if Brazilian football wants to keep on winning not only titles but also hearts then it would be well advised to get back in touch with elements of its own tradition. There is an argument against the view that possession football is outdated and that the central midfielders should be unimaginative giants. Its case was made loud and clear in Japan this Sunday.

If Spain's triumph and Brazil's failure in South Africa was not evidence enough, Sunday's result in Yokohama should be Brazil's trip to the Map Room.  It should be enough to convince the cynics who have led Brazil astray ever since the beautiful 1982 iteration to the Selecao - led by Zico, Falcao, and the late Socrates - was upset by Italy (ironically enough, in Barcelona at Espanyol's old ground) that technical ability in the central midfield is more important than brawn.*

* - As Jack Lang of Snap Kaka Pop was marveling at Thiago - Barca's latest midfield prodigy and the son of a former Brazil international - and expressing regret that Thiago has declared for Spain instead of Brazil, I was tempted to respond with "maybe he didn't want to become a fullback."

To come back to this blog's favorite topic, the Map Room analogy has me thinking about similar episodes in college football, instances where one striking result caused an epiphany from a team or a conference.  These are the examples that came to mind, but I am all ears for more:

1.  After getting his tail kicked in by Florida State and Miami in a series of Orange and Fiesta Bowls, Tom Osborne decides that he needs defensive players who can run.  He recruits Texas and California more heavily, thus producing the dominant team that won national titles in 1994, 1995, and 1997.

2.  After a favored Ohio State team gets obliterated by Florida in the 2006 national championship game, the Big Ten moves towards the spread offense.  Ohio State shows a run-based spread with Terrelle Pryor, Penn State deploys the "Spread HD," and Michigan hires Rich Rodriguez. 

3.  After Danny Wuerrfel is beaten to a pulp by Florida State at Doak Campbell Stadium in November 1996, Steve Spurrier relents on his long-standing opposition to the shotgun.  The Gators bury the Noles in the rematch and the 'gun is a feature of Spurrier's offense from that point forward.

4. After the SEC was dominated in the 1980s by conservative, run-the-ball-and-play-defense coaches like Vince Dooley and Pat Dye, Spurrier arrives in 1990, destroys a highly-rated Auburn team in 1990 48-7, wins the Gators' first SEC title in 1991, and then sets himself on a path of destruction through the conference.  The rest of the SEC enters the Map Room and emerges with the David Cutcliffe offense at Tennessee, the Air Raid at Kentucky, and the quasi-spread run by Terry Bowden and featuring Dameyune Craig at Auburn.

Others?

A History Lesson for Brady Hoke from the Ol’ Ball Coach

In 1996, Florida played at Florida State in a #1 versus #2 match-up.  Florida State won the game 24-21.  In the process, the Seminoles engaged in a fairly clear campaign to injure the eventual Heisman Trophy winner, Danny Wuerrfel.  The famous phrase that emerged after the game was that FSU defenders pursued Wuerrfel “to the echo of the whistle.”  How did Spurrier respond?  Take it away, Orlando Sentinel:

One after another, the hits come to Danny Wuerffel. Steve Spurrier's VCR hums on, and the longer it runs, the more punishment his quarterback absorbs.

This, Spurrier insists, isn't right. Which, of course, is why this videotape exists in the first place.

Spurrier asked his videographers to splice tape of plays that show Florida State defenders delivering late hits to Wuerffel, the newest Heisman Trophy winner. The tapes, taken from end-zone cameras used by schools, generally are unavailable to TV networks or reporters.

Joined in his office last week by several reporters for an invitation-only viewing session, Spurrier grimaces or shakes his head at the conclusion of each play--eight in all--from FSU's 24-21 victory over Florida last month.

"I don't know what we've got to do about it, but that kid's not going to be somebody's tackling dummy," Spurrier said.

Following FSU's hits are some selected plays from Florida's victory over Alabama in the Southeastern Conference championship game. In terms of punishment to Wuerffel, there's a noticeable difference.

A spear by an unidentified Florida State tackler on a sack--"That's criminal," Spurrier said--and a forearm hit by nose guard Andre Wadsworth draw particular attention.

Because of Texas upsetting Nebraska in the inaugural Big XII Title Game, Florida got a second shot at the Seminoles in the Bowl Alliance Championship Game.  Spurrier’s media campaign put the Seminoles’ pass rush at the center of attention going into the game.  Florida got an early late hit penalty against FSU.  The attention to the Noles’ pass rush, combined with tactical adjustments by Spurrier (most notably increased use of the shotgun) and the basic fact that Florida was simply a better team (Danny Wuerrfel versus Thad Busby?), led to the Gators winning in a rout.

Contrast Spurrier’s reaction to Brady Hoke refusing to comment on Michigan State engaging in a similar campaign to injure Michigan’s star quarterback.  In both instances, Hoke’s and Spurrier’s teams were visiting their in-state rival in a big game.  In both instances, the rival elected to engage in an apparent (obvious?) effort to injure the opposing quarterback.  In Spurrier’s case, he went on the offensive and got what he wanted: (1) media attention on the tactics of his opponent; and (2) a more favorable refereeing environment the next time the teams played.  Florida won the next two games against the Seminoles.  In Hoke’s case, he has chosen to say nothing.

Now, there are several distinctions to be made here.  First, Michigan did actually get several calls from the refs on Saturday, although they didn’t call all of the potential personal fouls and, most inexplicably, they did not eject William Gholston from the game when they had two obvious opportunities to do so.  Michigan certainly got more protection than Florida got against FSU, although I would also add that FSU did not go quite as far as Michigan State did.  Second, Florida was playing FSU again in the same season, so there was a more immediate reason to try to get the Noles on the defensive.  Third, at the time that Spurrier called reporters into his office to show them video clips of the illegal abuse that his quarterback had taken, he had a massive amount of political capital.  Spurrier had just wrapped up his fourth straight SEC title and his team was playing for the national title for the second consecutive year.  In other words, when Spurrier talked, people listened.  In contrast, Brady Hoke has been coach of Michigan for all of seven games.  His career record is barely over .500.  Michigan has now lost four straight games to Michigan State for the first time in a half-century.  Hoke might feel, with some justification, that he is the new guy to the party and it isn’t his place to speak up.  In four years, if Hoke has re-established Michigan as a Big Ten power, then he might be in more of a position to instruct Michigan staffers to splice together footage of Michigan State acting outside of the rules against his players.  Given that the Spartans are doing all of the heavy lifting* to make the rivalry one of the dirtiest in college football, Hoke needs to do something. 

* – I would not have guessed, by the way, that Auburn-Georgia has been the dirtiest rivalry game over the past five years.  Last year’s episode of escalating retaliation was not an outlier.  And if you want to know why ACC football is dreck right now, the fact that Miami-FSU is not on this list, but Duke-UNC is should tell you all you need to know.

A Lion in Winter

I am almost done with Winston's War by Max Hastings* and one of the dominant themes of the book is how irrelevant Great Britain became as the War reached its final stages.  The British deserve great credit when they were the last bulwark against the Germans after the fall of France in 1940.  However, by 1944, they were spent.  They didn’t have the population to take casualties, the industrial base to put thousands of tanks and planes in the field, or the money to pay for expansive military action.  Churchill wanted to occupy the Aegean islands to get Turkey into the war, but the US would not go along, so the British had to send an under-strength force and the campaign turned into a fiasco.  Churchill wanted to commit more forces to Italy and then push on to Vienna, but the Americans wanted to focus on landing in and then pushing through Normandy, so Italy became a sidenote.**  By 1944, the Americans did pretty much whatever they wanted and Churchill’s strategic impulses were rendered irrelevant.  He went from leader of the Western World to bystander.
  
* – For the record, Hastings and Antony Beevor are my two favorite WWII historians.  I will buy just about anything that they write.  If you are interested in getting into WWII as a subject, then their books are a great starting point.

** – In both instances, Marshall and Eisenhower were correct and Churchill was wrong, so it’s just as well that Great Britain did not have any pull.  That’s the funny thing about the image of Churchill as the great opponent of Stalin.  If Winston would have had his way, then D-Day would have been delayed, the push for the breakout from Normandy would have had less oomph, and the Soviets would have had more time to occupy more of Western Europe.  And that’s before we get to Hastings’ discussion of Yalta, where Churchill didn’t exactly stand up to Uncle Joe as is sometimes portrayed in the popular imagination.

Saturday, around 5:30, the image of a once-great and inspirational leader being shunted off to the side, ignored by those who once listened to everything he said, suddenly popped into my head in a completely different context…

Brady Hoke and Gene Stallings

As I have tried to come to grips with Brady Hoke as Michigan’s head coach after some initial misgivings, the most comforting analogy has been between Hoke and Les Miles.  No one would accuse Miles of being an x’s and o’s savant, but he does three things very well: (1) he recruits; (2) he hires good coordinators and position coaches; and (3) he makes ballsy end-of-game decisions (although the ‘09 Ole Miss and ‘10 Tennessee games damaged that last reputation severely).  The early returns are positive in the first two categories and Saturday night, he checked the third box emphatically.*  So yeah, Hoke’s upside is Miles.  His recruiting base isn’t as good, but he can make up for that with Michigan’s national profile and an “I love the s*** out of this school” pitch that worked for Charlie Weis at Notre Dame.  His predecessor didn’t leave the program in as healthy a condition as Nick Saban did, but Rodriguez did leave Hoke with Denard Robinson. 

* – For those of you who (quite rationally) gave up on the game with Notre Dame leading 24-7 in the fourth quarter, Michigan had the ball on the Irish 16 with eight seconds left, plenty of time to take a shot at the end zone.  Kirk Herbstreit, who is usually on the right end of the bell curve for intelligence for color guys, immediately advocated for Michigan to center the ball, kick the field goal, and go to overtime.  Is this some sort of rule for analysts that they need to take the Rick Perryiest position when it comes to risk?  Let’s review the facts.  Michigan has not kicked a field goal all year.  They were 4/13 on field goals last year and have the same starting kicker this year as they did at this time last year.  They had momentum.  They had rallied in the game with a series of jump balls.  As Miles intuited four years ago, a fly pattern to the end zone is a very safe play with eight seconds remaining.  

But what if the better analogy isn’t to Miles, but instead to another SEC coach who ultimately won a national title: Gene Stallings.  Here are the parallels:

• Stallings had a losing record as a head coach when Alabama hired him.  If Michigan fans think that Hoke’s 47-50 record is bad, then imagine how Tide fans felt when Stallings was hired with a 27-45-1 record at Texas A&M and a 23-34-1 record with the St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals?
• Stallings was replacing an outsider who was fired after three years because of a lack of success against the in-state rival.  We’ll see what details emerge from John Bacon’s soon-to-be-released book, but there is a good argument to be made that Rich Rodriguez was never accepted by large segments of the Michigan fan base and the local media because he did not have any ties to the Schembechler-Moeller-Carr lineage.  Does that sound like Alabama fans rejecting Curry because he was the coach of Georgia Tech (a major rival for the Tide in previous years; look at the lyrics of their fight song if you need proof) and had no ties to the Bear?  Stallings didn’t have a great resume in terms of wins and losses, but he did bring the possibility of unifying a fractured, somewhat disgruntled fan base.
• Stallings was a defensive coach who didn’t wear a headset (although that was more common in the 90s than it is today) and relied heavily on his assistants. 

So obviously, Michigan is going to have an epic defense in 2013 and win the national title with Blake Countess stealing the ball out of the hands of an opposing receiver en route to the end zone. 

Your Schwartz Is As Big As Mine: SEC Scoring Versus the National Average

As I was embarking on my remarkable timesuck this weekend of putting 31 years worth of SEC standings into an Excel spreadsheet so I could calculate scoring averages, it occurred to me that I cannot discuss the question of SEC offensive performance over the years without comparing the conference against the national average.  I may have dropped Stats 402 at Michigan within a week because my small section was badly overcrowded, the TA barely spoke English, and “holy s***, this is math!,” but I have enough sense to know that any statistical study requires a baseline.  If we are looking at the changes wrought by Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer, then we need to know whether the SEC was simply moving along with the rest of college football or if one or both coaches had a significant when they joined the league.

So, thanks to some rudimentary skills with Excel (although not enough skill to convert this to a colorful graph) and a great nap from my two-year old that gave me the time to do this flight of fancy, here is SEC scoring versus the national average from 1980 to the present:  

Year	SEC PPG	National PPG	Margin
2010	30.88	27.78	3.1
2009	28.2	26.87	1.33
2008	25.22	26.92	-1.7
2007	30.06	28.23	1.83
2006	25.2	24.18	1.02
2005	23.83	26.54	-2.71
2004	24.69	26.4	-1.71
2003	27.15	26.66	.49
2002	25.43	27.13	-1.7
2001	27.56	26.78	.78
2000	26.35	25.99	.36
1999	24.68	25.69	-1.01
1998	25.51	25.69	-.18
1997	25.58	25.58	0
1996	24.38	25.52	-1.14
1995	26.67	25.3	1.37
1994	26.17	24.52	1.65
1993	24.33	24.51	-.18
1992	21.63	23	-1.37
1991	24.26	23.02	1.24
1990	23.15	24.72	-1.57
1989	23.07	24.21	-1.14
1988	22.06	23.98	-1.92
1987	24.74	23.24	1.5
1986	23.18	22.86	.32
1985	22.72	22.4	.32
1984	23.98	22.17	1.81
1983	21.91	22.25	-.34
1982	23.43	21.77	2.66
1981	19.63	20.52	-.89
1980	21.94	20.66	1.28

Some thoughts on the numbers:

• There is no doubt that Urban Meyer and the Spread has had a major impact.  After his first year, SEC scoring has exceeded the national average in four of five years, each time by at least a point.  2010 was the most offensive year in the 31-year sample by some margin.  Ironically enough, Meyer’s offense was dreck last year, but the slack was picked up by Malzahn’s Auburn, Petrino’s Arkansas, Spurrier’s South Carolina, Mullen’s Mississippi State, and Saban’s Alabama.  If one viewed 2006-10 in isolation, then one could reach the conclusion that offenses in the SEC took a quantum leap and therefore the conference got better, but…

 

• The link between offensive success and conference success is broken when one looks at the 80s.  In four of ten seasons, scoring in the SEC was below the national average.  In those years, the SEC was the best conference nationally (as measured by SRS) twice and finished second in the other two years.  Look at 1983.  According to SRS, this was the best year for the conference in the entire sample.  Auburn finished 11-1 and should have won the national title.  Georgia’s only loss was to Auburn and the Dawgs then beat unbeaten, #2 Texas in the Cotton Bowl.  (“What’s the time in Texas?  Ten to nine.”)  Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama were all excellent.  There wasn’t a single SEC team that finished with an SRS number below zero.  The SEC was wildly successful in 1983 despite the fact that its teams scored below the national average.

 

• A related note: Pat Dye won four SEC titles at Auburn.  In three of those four years, the league finished below the national average in scoring.  There’s no question as to what environment was favorable for Dye’s Tigers.

 

• In terms of Spurrier’s impact, the effect took a little while.  Scoring generally went up, with a major blip in 1992.  A major part of that blip was Alabama’s epic ‘92 defense, not to mention the fact that Georgia had by far its best defense of the decade, allowing only 12.9 points per game.  Spurrier’s team had its worst offensive performance of the 90s in 1992, scoring only 24.2 point per game.  Scoring then picked up thereafter, reaching an apex in 1994 and 1995, the height of the Spurrier offensive boom.  By 1996-99, the effect was over.  Also, it’s worth noting that the SEC’s second-best performance in terms of collective SRS rating took place in 1997, when the conference matched the national scoring average exactly.  Again, offensive prowess is not necessary for the league to succeed.

 

• What the hell happened in 2006?  Generally speaking, the national scoring average has shown a stead, gradual ascent, adding a touchdown over the course of 31 years.  2006 looks like a massive, isolated recession.  Scoring dipped by over two points from the prior season and then shot up by over four points in 2007.  2007 was a wacky year in sorts of ways, one of which is that it featured the highest scoring average in modern college football history. 

 

• 2008 stands out as a transition year for the SEC.  It was the last year in which the Meyer offense was truly great, as Dan Mullen took his talents to Starkville after the season.  On the other hand, it was the offensive nadir for Tommy Tuberville, it featured an Alabama team that had not yet figured out how to move the ball effectively, it was the training wheels year for Petrino at Arkansas, and it was the end of the line for Phil Fulmer at Tennessee, and Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State.  Think of 2008 as the SEC’s awkward teenage year. 

 

• If I put words in HP’s mouth that the offensive dark ages for the SEC was the first half of the Aughts, then the numbers belie his conclusion.  SEC scoring out-paced the national average in 2000, 2001, and 2003 before collapsing in 2004 and 2005. 

 

• If I had to sum up my views on the changes wrought by Spurrier and Meyer, I would say that both pulled the SEC in the direction that college football was headed generally.  As college football moved from I-formation running to passing out of multiple receiver sets in the 90s, the SEC followed suit with Spurrier at the vanguard.  As college football has progressed to be dominated by the Spread in the second half of the Aughts, the SEC has again tracked the trend with Meyer’s offense as the shining example.  Stepping into the realm of speculation, the SEC is especially well-suited to take advantage of the Spread because of the number of athletes in the South who can both run and throw, thus filling the critical role in the Spread?  (Where did Oregon find Darron Thomas?  Where did Michigan find Denard Robinson?)  Did I just give myself another research project?

 

• Man, I am getting desperate to have some actual games to discuss.

Spurrier Versus Urban: Who Had the Bigger Impact?

My pissing matches with Heisman Pundit are usually just for fun.  My tiny niche on the Internet is the Statler & Waldorf role, usually by criticizing other writers and media types.  I like arguing, so this is an easy role to fill.  It also generates chances for cheap, lazy posts, so it is consistent with my half-assed approach to this endeavor.  However, my latest exchange with the college football blogosphere’s favorite PR guy actually led me to an interesting question: did Steve Spurrier have a bigger offensive impact on the SEC than Urban Meyer? This point seemed self-evident to me:

The funny thing is that HP could actually tell the story he’s trying to spin if he set 1990 as his starting point instead of 2005.  When Steve Spurrier came to the conference, it was in the throes of basic I-formation football.  The 80s were dominated by Vince Dooley early and Pat Dye late, with Johnny Majors having some success sprinkled in the middle.  Running and defense was the dominant style.  Spurrier’s passing attack took the conference completely by storm and his teams proceeded to finish first in the conference for six of the next seven years.  Spurrier’s success led the rest of the league to innovate, with such examples as the Hal Mumme/Mike Leach Air Raid offense at Kentucky, Auburn going spread-ish with Dameyune Craig, and Tennessee modernizing its offense with David Cutcliffe.  Spurrier had a massive impact on the SEC and opponents either imitated or died.  Thus, the conference that Urban Meyer joined 15 years after Spurrier’s arrival was anything but the backwater that HP imagines.

HP rebutted in the comments section:

1. If Spurrier started an offensive revolution in the SEC, it sure didn't show up much in the offensive data for other teams…

7. Your claim that Spurrier changed offenses more than Meyer did in the league is absurd. The proof is in the offensive numbers, the titles and the Heisman winners. For instance, the Heisman is only won with superb offensive numbers. That's a truism. So, it's no shock that the only SEC Heisman winner between 1986 and 2007 came from Florida, the only SEC school that had outstanding offensive production. Of course, since 2007, there have been three SEC Heismans, which coincides with the league's offensive explosion (as I demonstrated by the numbers in my post). Do you think it's all just a cosmic coincidence?

8. I grant you that Spurrier did introduce the forward pass to the SEC. But those offenses that started passing were nowhere near as innovative as Spurrier's and they did not keep up with some of the other leagues and that is reflected in the national offensive numbers during that time (as I pointed out, only 1 SEC team averaged over 35 ppg from 1998 to 2005, and 10 have since...another coincidence?)

The crazy thing about sports arguments is that there are usually numbers to help resolve arguments.  With the help of the ESPN SEC Football Encyclopedia* and the invaluable college football section at Sports-Reference.com, as well as heavy usage of Microsoft Excel, I created a chart to measure a number of factors over the past 31 years of SEC football:

• Points per game scored by SEC teams collectively;
• SEC teams finishing in the top ten nationally in scoring offense and total offense;
• Consensus offensive All-Americans from the SEC;
• SEC offensive players who finished in the top ten of the Heisman voting; and
• The SEC’s SRS Rating and conference rank based on SRS.

I included the last two categories because I wanted to compare the overall strength of the conference with its offensive numbers.  Normally, I wouldn’t care about individual awards in assessing overall conference strength, but HP suggested them as a yardstick and they do have some value in assessing the subjective opinions of the media regarding SEC’ offenses.  I would have liked to have included yardage figures on the chart, but I couldn’t find those figures for the 80s and since the point of this exercise is to test whether the 80s were more of an offensive dark age than the first half of the Aughts, I couldn’t use yardage as a measuring stick.  If someone knows where I could find those figures, I’d be all ears.  

* – I bought the Encyclopedia on my last trip to Borders because “everything must go!”  Yup, my last purchase at one of my favorite stores was shaped by one of my online Newmans.

To steal a line from Brian Cook, chart?  Chart.     

Year	PPG	Top 10 Total Offense	Top 10 Scoring Offense	Offensive All-Americans	Offensive Heisman Top Ten	SRS	SRS Rank
2010	30.88	2	1	2	2	8.20	2
2009	28.2	1	2	3	2	10.35	1
2008	25.22	0	1	3	1	6.83	2
2007	30.06	0	1	3	2	9.78	1
2006	25.2	0	1	1	1	9.02	1
2005	23.83	0	0	2	0	4.61	5
2004	24.69	0	0	2	1	4.85	5
2003	27.15	0	0	1	1	7.10	1
2002	25.43	0	0	1	0	6.32	2
2001	27.56	1	1	5	1	8.57	1
2000	26.35	0	1	0	1	5.32	4
1999	24.68	0	0	3	1	7.71	2
1998	25.51	1	1	3	2	5.52	4
1997	25.58	2	1	3	2	10.68	1
1996	24.38	1	1	3	2	6.04	2
1995	26.67	2	4	0	2	5.86	3
1994	26.17	2	1	1	2	6.98	2
1993	24.33	2	2	1	3	6.13	4
1992	21.63	1	1	2	1	4.96	3
1991	24.26	2	0	0	1	5.74	2
1990	23.15	1	1	2	0	1.89	6
1989	23.07	0	0	2	1	7.17	1
1988	22.06	0	0	1	0	4.52	2
1987	24.74	1	1	2	2	8.47	1
1986	23.18	1	1	2	1	6.26	2
1985	22.72	0	0	3	1	9.24	1
1984	23.98	0	0	2	0	8.91	1
1983	21.91	1	1	1	1	11.22	1
1982	23.43	0	1	1	1	9.09	2
1981	19.63	1	1	1	1	7.49	2
1980	21.94	0	0	1	1	9.80	1

There are two major points to be made here.  First, look at the difference between the SEC before and after Spurrier as compared to the SEC before and after Meyer:

Before and After Spurrier

Year	PPG	Top 10 Total Offense	Top 10 Scoring Offense	Offensive All-Americans	Offensive Heisman Top Ten	SRS	SRS Rank
1980-89	22.66	4	5	16	9	8.21	1.4
1990-2001	25.02	15	14	23	18	6.28	2.83

Even accounting for the fact that we are comparing a ten-year period against a 12-year period, there can be no argument that Spurrier wrought a massive change to the SEC.  Look at 1995.  That year, there were four SEC teams in the top ten nationally in scoring offense, or one fewer than the SEC produced in the entirety of the 80s.  So much for the claim that only Florida was moving the ball in the 90s.  Tennessee, Georgia, Auburn, South Carolina, and Kentucky all appeared in the top ten in scoring or total offense during the decade, with Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia all appearing multiple times.  Also in 1995, SEC teams averaged a touchdown more than they did in 1991 and a half a touchdown more than they did in the last season before Spurrier.  That is some fast, significant change.

If you want the kicker, look at the SRS numbers.  Despite the fact that the SEC was a defense-heavy conference in the 80s, the league was better in that decade relative to the rest of college football.  According to SRS, the SEC was the best conference in the country six times in those ten years and second in the other four years.  During Spurrier’s 12 years, the league finished outside of the top two six times.  The conclusion here is simple: offensive success does not correlate to overall strength.

There is also a conclusion to be drawn that success in the form of national titles isn’t necessarily evidence of a strong conference (although I certainly take that position a lot when the topic of the Big Ten comes up).  The SEC was extremely strong in the 80s, but the decade did not produce a national champion for the conference after Georgia’s title in 1980.  There were certainly close calls, specifically for Georgia in 1982, Auburn in 1983,* and possibly Tennessee in 1985, but no SEC team even played in a bowl game billed as a national title game after 1982.  Maybe the conclusion to be drawn is that a defense-heavy super-conference is less likely to produce a national champion than a more balanced one.     

* – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the fact that Miami was a unanimous national title in 1983 is indefensible.  Auburn finished with the same record and played the toughest schedule in the nation.  According to SRS, the Tigers played five of the top ten teams in the country.  Miami didn't play a single team in that category until they had the good fortune to play Nebraska on their home field in the Orange Bowl.  In short, the voters overrated Nebraska in 1983 (dominated a schedule that turned out to be fairly soft) and then overreacted to Miami upsetting Nebraska.  And to think that we might have been spared the entire era of Da U if voters were more rational.   

Take Auburn as an example.  In 1988, the Tigers had an epic defense and missed out on a shot to play Notre Dame for the national title in the Sugar Bowl because of the Earthquake Game, which Auburn lost 7-6.  Fast forward to 2010 and Auburn went unbeaten and won the national title despite playing in more close games than the ‘88 team.  The team with a great defense and average offense lost a game did not play for the title; the team with the great offense and the average defense did.  Is this a lesson that a defense-oriented conference is less likely to produce national champions?

Before and After Meyer  

Year	PPG	Top 10 Total Offense	Top 10 Scoring Offense	Offensive All-Americans	Offensive Heisman Top Ten	SRS	SRS Rank
1999-2004	25.98	2	2	12	5	6.65	2.5
2005-10	27.23	3	6	14	8	8.13	2.0

Yes, there is a difference, but it is not as pronounced as the difference pre- and post-Spurrier.  Scoring has gone up, but not as much as the Spurrier era versus the 80s.  SEC offensive players have been more likely to receive individual accolades, but how much of that is because the offenses are better and how much is because the teams are outstanding?  (Counterpoint: SEC teams were excellent in the 80s, but they didn’t have a raft of award-winners, so simply winning isn’t enough.) 

That said, the last four years have seen an offensive explosion.  In two of the past four years, the SEC’s scoring average exceeded 30 points per game.  There is a strong parallel to be made to the Spurrier era.  Offensive change does not occur overnight.  It takes time for other programs around the conference to look at what the Gators are doing and ramp up what they are doing offensively.  In the Spurrier era, it took five years.  By 1994-95, SEC teams were scoring 3-4 points more per game than they had in the 80s.  In the Meyer era, it took only three years for the conference’s offenses to see similar progress, followed by a major regression in 2008 (apparently, Meyer’s influence isn’t complete) and then a progression back to 30 ppg in 2010. 

Coming later this week, an answer to a follow-up question: did the changes in scoring in the SEC after Spurrier and Meyer track offensive changes in college football overall?  In other words, did scoring go up simply because of a rising tide of points in college football generally?

You're Just a Sweet Memory / And it Used to Mean so Much to me

I am a few years older than Brian Cook, so I remember the Fab Five very well.  I remember my first “holy shit!” moment for the Fabs: Webber’s 360 dunk in Columbus, a game in which Michigan played extremely well for a half and then got beaten up in the second stanza.  I went to the team’s first two NCAA Tournament games at the Omni against Temple and East Tennessee State.  (Ah, the good old days when Arizona blowing a first round game was a veritable rite of spring.  Mister Jennings had his way with them.)  The second round game was incidentally the first time that a rival fan told me to “Go Blow!”  So creative.  I remember the overtime of the regional final against Ohio State, which was Michigan’s best period of basketball between the 1989 run to the national title and the 1993 game against Kentucky.  I remember not noticing that the team had unveiled black socks for the opener their sophomore season against Rice at the Houston Summit, but instead being impressed by Juwan Howard’s passing from the high post.  I remember Alan Henderson blocking Webber’s potential game-winning shot in 1993 at Crisler in a game that effectively decided the Big Ten title and then remembering that play every time Henderson festered on the bench for the Hawks while Webber was putting up 24-12-7 games routinely for the Kings.  I remember Michigan almost blowing their sophomore season against UCLA in Tuscon before taking care of George Washington in the game in which the establishment finally turned on them.  (Wait, Jimmy King just dunked the ball and he’s in the face of an opponent?  The horror!) 

Finally, I remember the ‘93 Final Four very, very well.  I remember reading Curry Kirkpatrick’s story in USA Today on the way back from Spring Break, the story about how Michigan didn’t stand a chance against Kentucky.  I remember the Fabs playing their best game in college, showing once and for all that a team could win without relying on threes.  I remember Webber abusing Gimel Martinez after Jamal Mashburn fouled out of the game.  I remember the serious looks that the Fabs had for the final, the shooting performance from Donald Williams that won the Heels the game, the ridiculous performance that Webber put forward that was obscured after the timeout, and the ending.  I had received my rejection letters from Dartmouth and Princeton that day and had already made up my mind that Michigan was ahead of the University of Chicago in the pecking order, so when Webber screwed up and my brother taunted me, I threw a shoe (black, naturally) at him and proclaimed “I’ll see you in Charlotte next year!” before storming off to my room. 

There’s a point to the repetition of “I remember.”  The Fab Five are indelibly etched in my memory and, given the chatter about the 30 for 30 entry about the team, I’m not alone in this respect.  With college basketball teams trending towards the unmemorable as the cult of the coach has fully taken over, there aren’t teams that invade the public consciousness anymore and certainly not like this particular team did.  They had charisma, they fit together as a unit (a fact that the critics who dismissed them as playing streetball never quite grasped), and they inspired strong feelings on both sides of the love/hate divide.  Hell, Duke won the national title last year and I couldn’t even work myself up into a feeling of anger.  It was like the end of Return of the Jedi when Darth Vader becomes a sympathetic character.  When the villain is no longer vile, it’s time to end the series … or come up with an embarrassing prequel involving a platypus with a bad Jamaican accent.

In watching the documentary, I was struck by how much I was reminded of watching highlights of the Clockwork Orange Dutch sides of the 70s.  Think about the parallels.  The Fab Five and the Dutch both lost consecutive finals, but are remembered far more than the teams that vanquished them.  (That said, Jalen Rose was wrong about one thing: I can name the starting five for the Carolina team that vanquished them: Phelps, Williams, Reese, Lynch, Montross.  What’s my prize for wishing that they all die in a fiery blimp accident for all these years?  Also, there are at least two major parallels between ‘78 Argentina and ‘93 UNC: both teams wore light blue and were coached by liberals.  However, Cesar Luis Menotti is an avowed lover of playing attractive football, so he would have little time for the coach who almost ruined basketball with the Four Corners.  I digress.)  Both teams are noted for their style of play and cultural impact.  When I watch highlights of the two teams, I feel intensely bittersweet feelings: joy for my teams at their apex, pain for the ultimate failure to win the big one. 

Sports are full of teams that captured the imagination, but not silverware.  Soccer is especially replete with such examples because the difference between teams that play well and teams that play negatively can have such a big impact on the viewing experience.  Thus, there is a special place for ‘74 Holland, ‘54 Hungary, ‘82 Brazil, and ‘86 Denmark.  In college football, ‘83 Nebraska comes to mind because of Tom Osborne’s decision to go for two in the Orange Bowl.  In the NFL, the Bills teams of the 90s are a great example, although moreso in retrospect as the full extent of Buffalo’s sports trauma has played out.  The Fab Five are a little different in their own, larger-than-life way, but they are best remembered (there’s that word again) as one of the teams whose ultimate losses added to their fame rather than detracting from it.  

One Thought on Oversigning

The Senator's post on the possibility of the NCAA acting to rein in oversigning is interesting because of the political implications. Here is the concluding paragraph:

It’s hard to see how that changes. And if that’s the case, how long is it before Jim Delany decides he has no choice but to lead the charge to get the NCAA to tighten up the rules on class signing numbers? No doubt he’d couch it in terms of doing what’s best for the student athletes, but we’d all know what that’s really about. And it would be fascinating to see where the battle lines get drawn in that fight – the Big East and the mid-major conferences would seem to be natural allies for Delany, but would the Pac-10 and Big XII commissioners stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mike Slive?

The programs that ought to be the most aggressive in condemning oversigning are Florida and Georgia. The Gators and Dawgs don't oversign, but they compete in the same conference for the same titles as the worst oversigning offenders. Thus, they stand to benefit the most from closing this loophole and denying their competitors the advantage of an extra recruiting class every five years. Georgia and Florida ought to be in Mike Slive's ear about the practice, which would cause the SEC Commissioner to be neutral in the event that legislation is discussed on the NCAA level. At that point, there would be no committed opponent against Jim Delany if he tried to push through legislation that would create a hard 85-scholarship cap that applies throughout the year as opposed to the beginning of the season.

(Get ready for an analogy that will be uncomfortable for people in Alabama and Mississippi in 3, 2, 1...)

There is an analogy to be made between efforts to end oversigning and the efforts to end Jim Crow laws. In both instances, a minority of entities were engaged in an exploitative practice to further their own self-interest. (Note the states where oversigning takes place and see if there is something of a correlation with the states that engaged in massive resistance to Brown v. Board.) The practice went on for a period of time until attention from the national media turned the minority of entities into outliers subject to intensifying criticism. Without the ability to filibuster NCAA legislation, I suspect that the schools that engage in oversigning will meet a similar fate.

Jim Delany as Paul Wolfowitz

In light of the recent Marist poll reflecting that the Northeast is a college football wasteland, doesn't the Big Ten's rumored interest in Rutgers or UConn look like a colossal risk? The Big Ten expanding into the Northeast would be like the US's adventure in Iraq: an attempt to bring a concept - representative democracy and the political culture that accompanies it in the case of Iraq; football that doesn't require manufactured excitement in the case of the Northeast - to a culture that has no recent experience with the concept.

Incidentally, the poll reflects that a higher percentage of people in the Midwest follow college football a great deal. I'd like to see a breakdown of the states that comprise the Midwest and the South. I'd bet that the Deep South's score would be high and then it would be diluted by the responses from the Border States. This leads me to a uncomfortable conclusion: you can probably track intense feelings about college football to the states that first seceded from the Union in 1861, possibly in order.

You Know You're Grasping at Straws When...

1942 marked the turning point of World War II. In three major theaters of combat, the Axis Powers suffered defeats that reversed momentum in the war. In North Africa, Rommel was defeated at El Alamein, ending the Germans' hopes of conquering Egypt and threatening Great Britain's oil supplies in the Middle East. In the Pacific at Midway, the Japanese Navy lost four of the six carriers that had carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor and moved from a position of comparative strength against the U.S. Navy to a position of inferiority that would only get more pronounced over the course of the conflict. Midway came on the heels of the Battle of the Coral Sea, when the U.S. Navy first stopped the Japanese from achieving a strategic objective. Finally, the advance of the Wehrmacht was stopped at Stalingrad. The Germans lost an entire army when the Soviets cut off and then reduced the Sixth Army. In the process, the Germans had to withdraw their forces ploughing south in the Caucusus.

With that history in mind, does Ohio State really want to invoke 1942 when they play Michigan this year? A year that represents a massive reversal of fortune in a conflict that had been totally one-sided in the preceding years? If Michigan can win the game by virtue of stealing Ohio State's signs, I would have a nerdgasm. If they won the game by stealing signs and the sign for Dave is "AF," I would spontaneously combust.

[Update: I added a link so this post will make sense.]

The Post in Which I Compare Texas to France

I am about two-thirds of the way through Paris 1919, so naturally, it's time for more tortured historical analogies.

With the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Versailles firmly in the front part of my brain, I read Dr. Saturday's post last week on conference expansion and immediately thought of France pushing its hand too hard after WWI. Margaret MacMillan doesn't mean to do so, but she certainly makes the French out to be incredibly shortsighted. In many instance, the U.S. and Great Britain were arguing with France and trying to restrain the latter from following through on unreasonable positions. One can understand the French wanting to impose a punitive peace on Germany and Austria-Hungary after losing hundreds of thousands of casualties and seeing its countryside and coal mines ripped to shreds. Still, with the benefit of hindsight, specifically the knowledge of how Germany would react to Versailles and how they would take their vengeance against the French, Clemenceau and Foch made major mistakes. They pushed for serious reparations against Germany. They neutered the German military to such a degree that paramilitary groups (like, say, the Nazis) became important for maintaining order in Germany in the economic chaos that followed the war. They lopped off German-speaking populations in the east and west, thus leading to another source of resentment. In sum, the French took a hardline position that seemed to be in their interests at the time, but ended up being a colossal mistake that led to blowback from their historical rivals to the east.

I mention this because Texas may have made a similar mistake in the formation of the Big XII. Most articles that discuss the motivations for Colorado, Nebraska, and Missouri potentially leaving the conference discuss the unequal sharing of revenue. Because the Big XII doles out revenue based on TV appearances, the marquee programs in the conference - most notably Texas - do far better in terms of income. When one adds the revenue and recruiting advantages that Texas already has with an unequal distribution of TV money, you have a situation where the northern members of the conference are going to feel a good deal of resentment. Going from memory, Tom Osborne expressed these concerns when Nebraska decided to join the Big XII. He was worried about the Huskers being left behind in a Texas-dominated conference. Thus, it was not at all surprising to read Osborne express interest in Nebraska joining the Big Ten, a league that has a more redistributionist revenue scheme. Thus the conclusion that Texas may have made the same mistake that France did: pushing for an arrangement that benefits it, but in doing so, planting the seeds for future problems.

The problem with this analogy is that Texas may not suffer the same blowback that France did because it is in a better position. France imposed a punitive resolution on Germany because Germany was bigger and more economically powerful after unification. In short, France was scared of Germany, so it acted to weaken the Germans. Texas, on the other hand, is much stronger than Colorado, Nebraska, and Missouri. Let's say that Colorado went to the Pac Ten and Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas joined the Big Ten. At first glance, that would leave Texas in an eviscerated Big XII. However, the Horns would still have options. One suspects that the SEC would jump at the chance to add Texas along with Texas A&M or Oklahoma, as would the Pac Ten. Thus, as fun as it is to insult Texans with an analogy to cheese-eating surrender monkeys, we don't have a perfect fit.