Winnersville!!!

The Thrashers and Hawks were a perfect 4-0 this weekend. That was a sentence that I never thought I'd be typing when I started this blog 11 months ago, so forgive my sense of glee, even though the Thrashers were playing a home-and-home against the worst team in the Eastern Conference and the Hawks were playing the bad Celtics and then the NO/OKC Hornets without Chris Paul. Anyway, the wife and I were personal witnesses to the goings on at Philips last night, so here are my observations:

1. I honestly can't tell what the Hawks are doing on offense most of the time. They occasionally run some screen and roll, but they must be the worst team in the league at making that basic set-up work, probably because they don't have a big man who can shoot or move. Otherwise, they seem to concentrate on making individual moves and ensuring that their spacing is good enough that if the ballhandler forces a double team, they can create open shots. Despite my moaning about the offensive scheme, they were shooting 56% until the final possessions when they were bleeding clock and taking bad shots.

2. The complete inability to defend an opposing point guard continued, as Speedy Fucking Claxton (as I referred to him over and over again) lit the team up for 29 points. Neither Tyronne Lue, not Salim Stoudemire were able to keep him in front of them. That said, Lue and Stoudemire both had good offensive games, so they were able to make up for their defensive shortcomings to a degree. Still, a healthy Chris Paul would have gone for 35 and 10, not that we could use a point guard or anything. (It bothers me that the Hawks could sign Al Harrington to a long-term deal if they would have taken Paul and he's a genuinely rootable player, but now, they either trade him or he'll block the development of Marvin Williams and Josh Smith. Harrington had another very good offensive game last night.)

3. Tyronne Lue remains the barometer for the team. When he plays well offensively, as he did this weekend, the team is pretty competent. When he doesn't, they lose.

4. The Hawks are leading the NBA in three-point percentage by a full .010 over the second place Bulls, although only six teams are taking fewer threes per game, so the skill doesn't translate that well for the team. It's hard for me to explain how a team without a natural ball distributor or a post threat to force double teams can be so good from behind the arc, but I think I have two explanations. First, the Hawks have a lot of good shooters on the team. When Johnson, Harrington, and Lue are on the court, they have three very good shooters from behind the arc. Second, the primary ballhandlers are all good passers, so when Harrington or Johnson beat their men, they're good at kicking the ball out for open looks. I'll be interested to see if the team looks to emphasize three-point shooting more in the coming weeks.

5. Josh Smith and Marvin Williams combined for 23 points on 9 of 13 shooting and added 12 rebounds. Not bad from the power forward spot. If Harrington is indeed traded, their minutes will go up and it'll be interesting to see how they mesh with one another at the three and four spots.

My Final Top 25

1. Texas
2. Southern Cal
3. Penn State
4. Ohio State
5. West Virginia
6. Louisiana State
7. Virginia Tech
8. Alabama
9. Georgia
10. Wisconsin
11. Notre Dame
12. Auburn
13. UCLA
14. Florida
15. Miami (Florida)
16. TCU
17. Oregon
18. Louisville
19. Oklahoma
20. Boston College
21. Texas Tech
22. Clemson
23. Florida State
24. Iowa
25. Nebraska

Not too much thought had to go into the #1 spot. I briefly considered dropping USC behind Penn State or even Ohio State, but a team that was a half a yard from winning their 35th game in a row deserves a little more respect than that, even if the defensive issues that led me to feel like a lone wolf crying in the wilderness (or at least it seemed that way as Herbstreit preened endlessly on TV that Reggie Bush could win seven gold medals at the coming Winter Olympics) finally came around to bite them. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to rank Ohio State ahead of Penn State because I'm confident that the Bucks would be favored over the Lions on a neutral field, but I didn't have the balls.

I struggled with ranking the SEC teams, as the two best teams in the conference lost their bowl games, one at home and the other to a suspect Big Ten team that I ranked 24th in my last regular season poll, while the third, fourth, and fifth teams all had good bowl wins.

By the way, has anyone noticed how the early rankings for 2006 look almost exactly the same as the rankings at the end of 2005? And do you think that the writers composing them have any idea how many players are returning for the given teams, other than a few skill position players? I do have an early nominee for most overrated team next year: Florida. They meet both of the Charles Rogers Theorem criteria perfectly: they played better in their final two games and they return everything at the skill positions, but they replace the offensive line. The schedule is brutal next year, as well. They're at Tennessee, Auburn, and Florida State. The one countervailing factor is that they'll be in their second year in Urban Meyer's offensive scheme and West Virginia showed what properly run spread option can do to a good SEC defense, but Chris Leak probably isn't the right guy to run it and that will leave Meyer coaching a scheme that isn't his natural one.

Illustration of ABC and ESPN's Conference Preferences

According to an analysis done by the Wall Street Journal and helpfully linked and summarized by Falblogs, Oregon is apparently the king when it comes to boosting bowl ratings. This is a fairly interesting way to measure national support. It did not escape my notice that ABC's Big Ten darlings, Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State, were numbers three, six, and eight in the rankings, higher than any other SEC team. Meanwhile, Georgia, LSU, Arkansas, and Tennessee were all in the nether regions of the rankings, groping around unsuccessfully for viewers. Anyway, I have to think that there's some noise in the machine here, since the next Oregon or Washington t-shirt I see strolling down Peachtree Street will be the first. The most likely flaw in the reasoning is that the sample size is relatively low, so one or two minor bowl games in which the Ducks or Huskies outpaced their predecessors (or maybe they were just fortunate in being drawn against teams with big TV markets) could skew the results. Still, the rankings did confirm my sense that the reason why Gameday and the John Saunders trio give so much love to the Big Ten relative to the SEC is the fact that they're playing to their biggest audience. (This, of course, doesn't make the bias any easier to take, but it does provide an explanation.)

Just so I don't sprain my elbow patting myself on the back...

I picked USC to beat Texas by ten, on the reasoning that USC would score a lot of points because no defense can stop them and that Pete Carroll, with a month to prepare, would figure out ways to slow Vince Young down just enough to win 41-31 or something like that. As it turns out, Carroll could have been given a year to prepare and his defense still would have failed to defend Texas' offense because it doesn't matter how many players who put in position to make tackles if they're just going to bounce off of the quarterback. One of the signs I should have seen was the fact that USC had not seen a run/pass threat like Young in the Pac Ten. To turn HP's reasoning around a little, an SEC defense that had defended against D.J. Shockley in 2005 and Matt Jones in 2004 might have been a better fit in the title game, although neither of those players are on Young's level. Similarly, I would have been interested to see how an (interested) Miami team that did such a good job on Marcus Vick and Marques Hagans would have fared against Young. We'll never know and even if Miami or LSU would have gotten a shot at Texas, neither of them could have come close to scoring enough points to keep up with the Horns.

In Honor of Mack Brown, a Blast from the Past

Because, as my wife says, I like being right as much or more than I like my teams winning, here's one from the archives, a column that I wrote in the summer of 2002 for Pigskinpost.com when the "Mack Brown can't win the big one" and "Mack Brown isn't a very good coach" hype was at its height. I was an SEC columnist, but the criticism of Brown seemed ludicrous to me (including from the site's Big XII writer) and I've never been one to resist a giant pinata. My 2006 comments are in caps.

The Mack Dad’ll Make You Jump Jump:
Why Mack Brown Is Unfairly Maligned

If I didn't know any better, I'd say there is a fully-fledged anti-Texas backlash going on these days. Admittedly, I'm basing this opinion on an informal survey of message boards here and there, but something is definitely brewing. Heck, even Tom Dienhart, the biggest Texas supporter in the national media, has been making a joke or two about the Horns. [AH, THE DAYS WHEN I ACTUALLY READ TOM DIENHART. G-D BLESS THE BLOGOSPHERE FOR MAKING HACKS LIKE HIM SUPERFLUOUS.] Perish the thought!

Anyway, the crescendo of the Texas Backlash for me was my colleague John Ross Clark's article this Monday entitled Mack Brown and the Myth of Texas Football. His "closer look" at the head man in Austin essentially concluded that Mack has numerous failings and that the appearance of Mack as one of the best coaches in the country is erroneous. Is he going to bring multiple conference and national titles to the Lone Star State? "Sorry, Mack. Not this year, and maybe not ever." [I CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED THE CHANCE TO WHACK THAT "MAYBE NOT EVER" LINE. TECHNICALLY, IT CAN BE SAID FOR ANY COACH.]

John is a good writer, I enjoy his columns, and I respect his opinion, but I'm tired of Mack Brown getting ripped for not winning every game and for failing to live up to an impossible standard against which every coach in college football would come up short. Simply put, most of the anti-Mack arguments come from Bevo’s tail end. (In fairness, I should disclose that John didn’t make some of the anti-Mack argument that I refute below.)

Mack squanders talent

I hate this argument and always have. As a note of self-disclosure, I hated this argument when I was a student at the University of Michigan in the mid-90s and critics used it to pooh-pooh the success of Steve Fisher, as if one national title and three Final Fours are only an accomplishment when achieved with a cadre of 5’11 walk-on exchange students from Myanmar.

Here’s a newsflash: the objective for a college coach is to win while not embarrassing the school, bringing in students who plainly can't hack it academically, or presiding over NCAA violations. (Fisher's shortcoming, as it turned out, came in the last category.) Almost invariably, talent wins. Of course, it is possible to have talent and fail to win, but good recruiting is a necessary pre-condition to winning in college football just like a large payroll is a necessary pre-condition to winning the World Series. [OK, THAT'S A SOMEWHAT DATED STATEMENT ON MY PART AND SOMEWHAT IRONIC SINCE THE ANGELS AND THEIR MID-LEVEL PAYROLL WERE THREE MONTHS FROM WINNING THE WORLD SERIES. LET'S MOVE ON.]

John disagrees with me on this: "[w]inning recruiting wars has seldom, if ever, resulted in a national championship on the field." Ask a Florida State or Miami fan the importance of good recruiting to their seven national titles in the past decade. Ask a Florida or Tennessee fan why they have dominated the SEC in the past decade. Ask an LSU fan why the Tigers are poised to join the Gators and Vols atop the league. Ask a Michigan fan why their team has been a consistent winner. (In the alternative, ask a Wolverine or a Buckeye how history would have been different if one Charles Woodson of Fremont, Ohio would have signed with his home state team.) They will all include the word "recruiting" in their answers. The best teams almost always bring in the best classes and send the most players to the NFL.

I'll forgive John for not realizing this reality of college football since he is a fan of the one school that escapes the rule: Nebraska. The Huskers, while certainly not slouches in recruiting, have won with a combination of the best strength and conditioning program in the country and a massive 200+ person roster that allows them to run an intensely physical offense than a smaller roster would prevent. For the rest of the college football world, winning the recruiting battles leads to winning games. To paraphrase the King, 50 million recruitniks can’t be wrong. [IRONICALLY ENOUGH, THE NEBRASKA BRAIN TRUST CAME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION AND HIRED BILL CALLAHAN BECAUSE THEY DECIDED THAT THEY COULDN'T WIN BIG WITHOUT TOP LEVEL TALENT.]

The fact that Mack Brown is a great recruiter is an asset. It is a compliment. It is not a reason to attack him. Texas is far more likely to win conference and national titles on the heels of Mack's last three recruiting classes than they were when John Mackovic was allowing the jewels of the state to escape. Sure, great recruiting creates great expectations, but isn't it better to expect 11-1 than to expect 8-4? Does anyone care how many future NFL stars are required for a coach to win as long as he wins? Don't all ten-win seasons look the same in the dark? [I THINK THAT BILL CURRY AND JOHN COOPER MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THAT. GOSH, IT'S FUN FISKING MYSELF.]

Mack can’t win the big one

Here's another "rap" that is actually a compliment. This label only follows the coaches who win all the games that they are expected to win. If Mack is coaching in a big game, then it means he did something right to get his team there. Yes, Mack's great 1997 North Carolina team lost at home to Florida State, but no one would have cared if the Heels wouldn't have been unbeaten going into the game. Yes, Mack has lost the Big XII Title Game twice, but no one would have cared if Mack was eating Cheetos on his couch that weekend after the Horns failed to with their division. Is it better to go 8-3 and never coach in a big game or to go 10-2 and lose the big game?

Let’s take a look at the list of coaches who have had the label of "can’t win the big one." Tom Osborne had the label after years of failing to beat Oklahoma followed by years of failing to win bowl games. Bobby Bowden had the label after years of playing bridesmaid to Miami. Phil Fulmer had the label after years of failing to win his own division because of losses to Florida. Joe Paterno had the label after losing a number of big games in the 70s and 80s. Switching sports for a moment, Dean Smith had the label after years of almost winning the national title before breaking through in 1982. [AND IN 2006, WE CAN ADD ROY WILLIAMS TO THE LIST.]

The best description of the fallacy of the "can’t win the big one" reasoning is explained by Bobby Bowden: "the big one is always the one you don't win." Shouldn't Texas A&M be the big one for Texas? Mack is 3-1 against the Aggies. How about Nebraska, the pre-eminent team in the Big XII? Mack is 2-1 against the Huskers. Was Mack losing the big one when Texas lost the Big XII title game in 1999 and 2001? And UT beating Nebraska and Colorado in the '99 and '01 regular seasons wasn't winning a big game? Again, Mack won the big ones during the season only to have those wins forgotten by his critics when he lost the rematches. Ergo, the big ones are selectively defined as the games Texas lost.

Mack only has a .586 career winning percentage

Yeah, this is a really meaningful statistic for a coach who coached at Tulane and then at North Carolina. Tulane, well, let’s just say that isn’t the easiest place to win. As for UNC, they had won five, five, seven, and five games in the four years prior to Brown's arrival. Within six years, Mack Brown had a ten-win season in Chapel Hill. If my math is right, Mack had as many ten-win seasons at UNC (three) as the program has had in the rest of its history. [I LOVE THAT STAT. I SHOULD HAVE STOPPED WRITING AT THIS POINT, BUT I HAD VERBAL DIARRHEA, SO WE MARCH ON.] We should all be so lucky to have such a piddling resume.

If we really want to judge Mack Brown, then his time at Texas is the relevant yardstick since UT is a school where big things can legitimately be expected of a head coach. In four years, Mack Brown has a record of 38-13, which comes out to a .745 winning percentage and 9.5 wins per season. In the two decades prior to Mack's arrival in Austin, Texas averaged 7.35 wins per season for a .647 winning percentage. Gee whiz, the guy is only worth two wins and almost 10 percentage points to his program. What a failure!

Mack bungled the Simms/Applewhite situation

Yeah, I can't disagree here. Coach Brown did not do a good job with Simms and Applewhite, probably because he either made recruiting promises to Simms to induce him to matriculate in Austin or he was simply so enamored by Simms' talent that he lost sight of Applewhite's undeniable production on the field. Oh, and while we're crucifying Mack Brown for favoring Simms, let’s write off the following coaches for also mishandling quarterback situations:

Lou Holtz – entrusted the future of his program to Ron Powlus

Lloyd Carr – platooned future Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady with a talented, but unprepared Drew Henson for much of the 1999 season [A MISTAKE THAT LOOKS BIGGER AND BIGGER WITH EACH PASSING YEAR.]

Bobby Bowden – only figured out that Charlie Ward operated best out of the shotgun after Florida State lost to Miami and was trailing at the half to Georgia Tech; also had a strange affection for Marcus Outzen

Steve Spurrier – started Doug Johnson for three years

Joe Paterno – had national title talent all over the field and pedestrian quarterbacks like Mike McQueary and Kevin Thompson under center, all the while blue chip recruit Rashard Casey never progressed

Frank Beamer – left Michael Vick on the bench for a year, despite an injury to starter Al Clark that left the Hokies starting a converted safety under center during a losing effort at home against Temple (Temple?)

Here's the bottom line: coaches make dozens and dozens of personnel decisions every year and when a program is doing well and recruiting lots of talent, mistakes (or second-guessing that creates the illusion of mistakes) will be inevitable. Mack is the same as the coaches listed above: he makes occasional personnel mistakes, but he wins and that's the bottom line. [I SURE WAS OBSESSED WITH POUNDING MY AUDIENCE WITH "THE BOTTOM LINE" IN 2002.]

Texas’s tradition is overrated

There is some truth to this, especially if tradition is defined as the post-Darrell Royal era. However, doesn't this make Mack's achievements at Texas even more impressive? To this point, his performance has been far better than that of any of the post-Royal coaches. Don't we judge coaches, in part, on their ability to surpass their predecessors and elevate their programs?

Mack doesn’t win conference titles

John advances the novel theory that because David McWilliams and Fred Akers won SWC titles, the lack of a Big XII title is an albatross for Mack Brown. I will admit that if Mack doesn't win one in the next few years, this will become an albatross, but how silly is the comparison between winning the SWC and the Big XII? Can anyone say with a straight face that beating TCU, Rice, Houston, SMU, and Arkansas is the same challenge as beating Colorado or Nebraska twice in one year as Mack had to do in 1999 and 2001? Or Kansas State and Oklahoma as conference games? Even the great Darrell Royal would have significantly fewer SWC titles if the Red River Shootout would have been a conference game during his tenure.

Mack Brown will probably win a conference title in the next four years. [AND RIGHT ON TIME IN 2006, HE MADE ME LOOK GOOD.] If he doesn't, then the criticism of him will be justified. Until then, people need to realize that there are a lot of very good teams in the Big XII and winning it is no piece of cake.

Similarly, the criticism of Mack Brown failing to win the ACC is also weak. If Florida State wouldn't have been in the league at the time, this would be a legitimate criticism. However, by the time Mack had brought the Tar Heel program around to where it needed to be, he was competing with vintage FSU teams. I didn't see many other teams anywhere in the country beating the Noles. And, to preempt the inevitable follow-up argument, Ralph Friedgen, while he did a great job last year, only showed that he could beat an FSU team that had clearly come back to the pack. No one in the ACC has shown the ability to finish ahead of a vintage FSU team. [STILL HAVEN'T, BUT THE CONCEPT OF A VINTAGE FSU TEAM IS A THING OF THE PAST.]

I hate Mack because he left Carolina

As if any college football coach can be blamed for this. Mack turning down Texas to stay at UNC would be like, oh, I don’t know, Matt Doherty turning down UNC to stay at Notre Dame. (Whoops, sore subject. Better move on.) [I NEVER MISS THE CHANCE TO JIBE UNC. THAT'S WHAT GROWING UP IN CHARLOTTESVILLE IN THE RALPH ERA WILL DO TO A GUY.]

Bob Stoops owns Mack Brown

Really? A 2-1 record means Stoops owns Mack? Well then I guess Les Miles owns Stoops since he is 1-0 against his cross-state rival. Even if one admits that Stoops has out-coached Mack Brown the past two years (and I'm pretty sure that he has), then that just means Mack has been out-coached by a guy whom many college football fans describe as the best coach in America.

Steve Spurrier owned Phil Fulmer for years, but I don’t see people writing articles about how Fulmer is an overrated coach. [PLEASE FORGET THAT I EVER SAID THAT.] I don't see writers bringing up Fulmer’s loss to Memphis in 1996 the way that John cited Mack’s losses to Texas Tech in 1998 and Arkansas on New Year’s Day 2000 as evidence against Coach Brown.

Bill Snyder owns Mack Brown

Really? Two wins over Brown in Brown's first two years in Austin are a big deal? The teams that Mack will put up against Snyder in the next two years are far deeper and better-rounded than his teams in '98 and '99 with Mackovic's players. If Texas loses to K-State in both of the next two years, then I will admit that Snyder has a hex over Mack Brown. Something tells me I won’t be needing to make that admission [SCORE ANOTHER ONE FOR ME!!!] and on the off chance that I do, I might just happen to mention that R.C. Slocum seems to have a hex on Snyder, so that must mean that Snyder is overrated and Slocum is much better. (PS – For the record, I like Snyder and Stoops and I would likely have both of them slightly ahead of Mack Brown in an overall ranking. I just think that the comparisons between them and Mack Brown are made in a slanted manner against Mack.)

Mack isn’t likely to win a "few national championships"

Thanks to John for creating this impossible goal. How many active coaches have won a "few," i.e. three or more, national titles? [AND THANKS TO MACK'S PERFORMANCE ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, THAT'S STILL TRUE.] I count none. Anyway, it took Tom Osborne about two decades to win his first title. It took Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno a little less than two decades. These three guys are all considered great coaches and were considered as such before they won national titles. Why? Because they were consistent winners. They put their teams in position to win conference and/or national titles just about every year. If Mack Brown continues to average 9.5 wins per season, he will join Bowden, Paterno, and Osborne on that pedestal (or at least he’ll be in the same ballpark.)

Texas is always overrated

Ah, the last nugget in the arsenal. Mack Brown must be overrated because Texas has been picked high the past few years and hasn't lived up to billing. Umm, pardon me for interjecting a little logic, but doesn’t that mean that people should be mad at pre-season prognosticators and not Mack Brown? Is it his fault that writers think highly of his teams before the season?

Texas has been rated so highly in the past few years, in large part, because of the hype surrounding their recruiting classes, but this is fallacious reasoning by sportswriters because it takes years for the full effect of a recruiting class to be felt. A great class in February 2002 will create an aura for a program that translates to high expectations when preview magazines come out that summer, but those recruits probably won’t become starters until 2004-2006. [I MIGHT JUST GO BUY MYSELF AN ICE CREAM CONE FOR THIS ARGUMENT.]

Mack Brown's first full class will be in their fourth years this fall. As I said earlier, if Mack fails to win a conference title in the next four years, then some criticism of him will be legitimate. Until then, the pundits need to take a chill pill and count the other coaches who average 9.5 wins per season in elite conferences. I’m not saying that Coach Brown is the best coach in the land, but he has done a very good job in his first four years in Austin, the future looks bright, and the Texas-bashers (a group that I have occasionally been a member of) need to stop inventing specious reasons to run Mack down.

More Picking on HeismanPundit

I went over to his site to see how he reacted to Texas upsetting USC. (His "USC will win because Texas hasn't seen a team that uses the tight end" prediction gave me great amusement as I watched David Thomas catch ten balls. Texas does practice against their own offense, do they not? But USC had to win primarily because of more sophisticated West Coast offenses and not because they have an insane amount of talent.) To his credit, he was gracious and complimentary to Texas, going beyond simply stating that Vince Young is an incredible athlete to also give credit to the Horns' braintrust for using the no-huddle offense.

Anyway, in an effort to find something to be peeved about, I scrolled down a little and sure enough, I found pure comic gold. Here are his rankings of the best teams of the past 25 years. You'll never guess which major conference fails to place a team in the top ten. From 1980-2004, the period covered by HP's rankings, five different SEC teams won national championships: Georgia '80, Alabama '92, Florida '96, Tennessee '98, and LSU '03. I guess that none of them were that good.

Post-Mortem on the Falcons

Kudos to Matt Winkeljohn for a strong analysis of what went wrong for the Falcons in 2005. Personally, as someone who picked the team to go 7-9 in 2004 and 9-7 in 2005, I'm somewhat gratified by being right that the team is essentially mediocre. As Der Wife told her mother when explaining to her why I wasn't bothered by the Falcons' poor end to the season, "Michael often likes being right more than he likes his teams winning." (The Braves and Michigan football are probably the only two exceptions. When I'm right about Michigan playing their worst football once they take a two-score lead, I'm not exactly thrilled.) To me, the message from this season is simply that the team's 11-5 record and trip to the NFC Title Game in 2004 was a fluke, the result of the team winning a number of close games (6-1 in games decided by four points or less) and benefiting from the NFC being extremely weak. Really, was it that big of an accomplishment to beat the 8-8 Rams to make it to the Title Game? Did the Falcons really look like they belonged on the same field as Philadelphia in that Title Game? Did they look like an elite team or simply an average team that had won a number of close games against other average teams and thereby earned the right to play for the NFC Championship?

A look at the stats from 2004 confirmed what we should have known at the outset of this season. The team outscored their opponents by a whopping three points and was outgained by an average of 7.6 yards per game, despite the fact that they played a relatively easy schedule. If you want to be a little more sophisticated in your statistical analysis, then note that Football Outsiders rated the Falcons 19th in weighted yardage (26th on offense and 16th on defense) in 2004, so their prediction that the team would be average this year was far more valuable than the "well, they were one game away from the Super Bowl last year and added some new personnel, so we can expect them to take the next step" reasoning that pervaded the Atlanta Mainstream Sports Media ("AMSM") in the lead-up to the season and during the team's 6-2 start.

Why is the team mediocre? Let's start with the guy under center, since every discussion about the Falcons apparently has to start and end with Michael Vick. Football Outsiders ranked him as the 26th most efficient quarterback in the League this year. He was 25th among qualifying quarterbacks in the NFL's passer rating, he averaged a poor 6.23 yards per attempt, and despite an excessively safe passing game, he was only 22nd in lowest interception percentage. Moreover, as Winkeljohn points out, his rushing yardage fell from 902 to 597. The bottom line is that he's a slightly-below average quarterback who regressed in his third full year as a starter and the Falcons have committed a significant portion of their cap to him. (To a lesser extent, the same criticism can be made of the defense, where Keith Brooking is the second highest paid player on the defense, but doesn't seem to produce on that level, although it's always hard to evaluate linebackers individually.) Vick's running threat does open lanes for the team's running game, which is pretty much the Falcons' only significant strength, so his value goes beyond his raw passing and rushing numbers. That said, the fact that we're describing the running game as the only strength on the team says a lot.

The prevailing question now is whether Vick would be better in another system. Personally, I don't see how the Falcons can keep their current offensive system, since it's patently obvious that the franchise player is not playing well in it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he would be better in another system. It is often said that Dan Reeves got much better production out of Vick in the one year that he coached him and there's some merit to that comparison, but keep in mind that Vick was a novelty in 2002. Over the past two seasons, teams have figured him out. They've figured out that he likes to roll left, they know that he likes to scramble if his first read is unavailable, and they've tailored defenses that keep him in the pocket and force him to rely on his oft-inaccurate arm. We're hoping against hope that he'll suddenly become a more accurate passer. Some skills change over time, such as the ability to read a defense. The skill of putting the ball where you want to doesn't seem like it would change. Thus, a new offensive scheme that takes advantage of Vick's arm strength would probably be a good idea, but we shouldn't overrate the effects that it would have. At this stage, Vick is who he is.

On defense, the team allowed 325 yards per game and 21 points per game in both 2004 and 2005. Despite the widespread belief that the defense declined this year, it played at the same level that it did in 2004, which means that our estimation of the defense in the off-season was excessively positive and the criticism of the defense this off-season will be excessively negative. Yes, the secondary does look weak and the youngsters in the front seven were often out of position, but we shouldn't act as if the defense was a disaster. It was average in 2004 and average in 2005. The best hope for the team is that they can compensate for a misfiring offense by developing a very good defense. If the young players on defense, namely Chad Lavalais, Jonathan Babineaux, Demorrio Williams, and DeAngelo Hall, progress in the next 1-2 years and the team can find a better corner to line up opposite Hall, then there is potential for the Falcons to have a top ten defense. Without that progression, then there are going to be a whole lot more season around .500.

What the Hell?

Some results during the bowl season seemed fairly rational. Michigan playing very poorly once they had a two-score lead. Marcus Vick doing something bitchy, in this case, stomping on a Louisville defender, Darnell Dockett style. Miami completely giving up in a bowl game outside of Florida when nothing major was at stake. (Does anyone else remember the 1/1/94 Fiesta Bowl, otherwise known as the highlight of Arizona football history?)

And then there was the Sugar Bowl last night, which took me completely by surprise, not because Georgia started the game flat, but rather because a Georgia defense that had been solid all year and had allowed 30+ points on all of two occasions in the past five years, both against balanced offenses (LSU '03 and Auburn '05,) was completely overrun by a one-dimensional offense. Despite the snobby claims of SEC fans that the spread option can't possibly work against SEC defenses because of their superior athleticism, West Virginia ran roughshod over Georgia to the tune of 382 yards rushing.

Georgia's mistake was the same mistake that Michigan has made on numerous occasions against run-based spread offenses like those of Northwestern or Texas: they played West Virginia as if the presence of three- and four-receiver sets meant that the 'Neers were going to pass. From the start of the game to West Virginia's final clinching drive, Georgia played nickel defense with only six players in the box against West Virginia's base two-back, three-receiver shotgun set. Thus, the Dawgs were trying to defend against six blockers and two potential runners with six defenders. They were outnumbered in the box, which is why West Virginia had such gaping running lanes. To employ such an obviously flawed strategy when Georgia had a month to prepare for an offense than almost never throws down the field is questionable. To do so in the fourth quarter when WVU was trying to protect a lead was borderline criminal. When Georgia scored to close to within 38-35, they should have been playing seven in the box with man coverage on the three receivers and one safety shading to the side with two receivers in the event that WVU threw a screen pass out in that direction. Instead, they played six in the box and West Virginia ran out the clock, aided by a gutsy, but rational fake punt call. (Finally, a coach who understands that a punt doesn't buy that much in terms of field position, especially in a game where neither defense could stop the opposing offense.)

The game also exposed Georgia's linebackers as being fairly average. Jarvis Jackson in particular seemed to be making mistake after mistake in space. Three particular plays come to mind. One was a basic roll-out by Pat White (who I kept wanting to refer to as Stan, another quarterback from Alabama that gave Georgia problems) on a third down in the first half on which Jackson was simply beaten to the outside despite the fact that White wasn't running at full speed because he was looking downfield. The second was White's quarterback draw on third and ten from the WVU five in the fourth quarter, a play that ended up being decisive in the game. It appeared that Jackson got caught inside, allowing White to cut back and gain 13 yards. The third was on Steve Slaton's final touchdown run, when he was slanting outside for some inexplicable reason, despite the fact that most of the Mountaineers' rushing yards in the game were between the tackles. If Jackson was actually coached to give away the middle on that play, then I'll pass blame from him to an inexplicable defensive scheme.

Other thoughts on the game:

1. One nice result from the game is that D.J. Shockley's last pass in college went for a 43-yard touchdown. Also, by the end of the game, I was having a hard time keeping all of Georgia's receivers straight. They have so many guys who can present a threat down the field. Between that and their three solid running backs (although I suspect that Danny Ware sees the writing on the wall,) Georgia is loaded at the skill positions. They have the personnel to run Richt's Florida State fastbreak if they can find the right trigger man next year.

2. Did Georgia's final offensive drive remind anyone else of Philadelphia's lack of urgency down by two scores in Super Bowl XXXIX? Not that it ended up mattering because West Virginia probably could have scored again if they needed to, but Georgia could have scored quicker, given that the drive ended with the Mountaineers leaving Georgia receivers uncovered way down the field.

3. What a welcome relief Brad Nessler was after four hours of listening to Brent Musberger. A few thoughts on Brent. First of all, it's rare when any broadcaster is biased against Notre Dame, but my gosh does Brent seem to have a mancrush on Jim Tressel and the BUCKEYES!!! (Keep in mind that I was rooting for Ohio State.) His dismissive comments towards Charlie Weis for having the temerity to believe that Tennessee's defense was comparable to that of Ohio State were amusing. Notre Dame gained 348 yards against Ohio State at a neutral site. They gained 343 on Tennessee at home. Yes, Notre Dame scored 41 points on Tennessee and 20 on Ohio State, but as we pointed out after that game, Notre Dame's point total against the Vols was aided by Tennessee's less-than-competent special teams and offense. In contrast, Ohio State was supported by an offense that rolled up over 600 yards and left its defense in poor field position only once.

Musberger also brought repetitiveness to a new level. Between his constant hyping of the fact that A.J. Hawk is dating Brady Quinn's sister (in Brent's defense, he was probably told to run this angle into the ground because it would capture the casual fan's interest,) to Jeff Samardzija's pitching to Tom Zbikowski's boxing, Brent, like Dick Vitale, seems to know one interesting factoid about each player and then managed to repeat it every time that player was mentioned. Thank G-d I wasn't playing the Brent Musberger Drinking Game or else I would have been shipped to Grady Hospital to have my stomach pumped.

For a guy who hates what ESPN's become, I sure blog about their product a lot

1. Sports Guy has a mature take on Johnny Damon's much-hyped departure from the Red Sox to the Yankees. (By the way, couldn't you just feel the squeals of delight in Bristol, CT when they had a new story to hype? They've been going through withdrawals since the end of the ALDS, but now, they have their obsession back. I see them playing the Princess Leia role, the Red Sox and Yankees playing the Han Solo role, and the Damon deal freeing their true love from carbon freeze. Between that and SHAQ-KOBE: THE COLD SHOULDER!!!, it's been a good week for the Worldwide Leader in meaningless bullshit. I digress.)

Bill Simmons' take reminds me of my feelings on Tom Glavine signing with the Mets. Many Braves fans were up in arms that he would be so "greedy" as to sign a contract that was one year longer and several million dollars richer annually than the contract offered by the Braves, as if those fans would pass on millions of dollars to keep playing for fans who love you as long as you're performing and then will turn on you once you aren't (although Atlanta fans, to our credit, are far more patient than fans elsewhere.) In sports, you have the occasional case of a player giving a true hometown discount, but those cases are rare and it's unfair to expect every athlete to live up to that standard.

Here is Simmons' rationalization of why he didn't want the Red Sox to sign Damon:

"Honestly? I didn't want the Red Sox to re-sign Damon for $40 million over four years, much less $52 million. All the classic "Guy signing a big contract and going into the tank" signs were there. For one thing, he has a ton of miles on him -- over 1,500 games in the past 10 years in one of the most grueling roles in the league (leadoff hitter, centerfielder) -- and by the end of last season, he was breaking down like Denzel Washington at the end of "Man on Fire." Physically, he's had ongoing problems with his right shoulder and post-concussion syndrome (the latter stemming from his ugly collision with Damian Jackson in the 2003 playoffs). His offensive numbers have dipped after the All-Star break for every season in the last four, including a dramatic drop last season (hitting .343 with an .859 OPS before the break and .282 with a .740 OPS after the break). And he's hitting his mid-30's next November."

Contrast that with this paean he wrote in mid-August, extolling Damon as an overlooked MVP candidate. Seems like someone is hyping a guy when he's playing for his team and then trashing him as soon as he leaves town, no? To Simmons' credit, he does say later in the article that he thinks that Damon is going to have a big year in '06, just like Pedro did, but that seems a little schizo with the quoted passage above.

Simmons' rationalization, unfortunately, reminds me of my own every time a player leaves the Braves. I decided that Rafael Furcal was the key to the Braves' surge this July, and then I decided that he was easily replaceable once he took the money and ran west. I thought that Raul Mondesi would come close to replacing J.D. Drew in right field at a fraction of the cost. (Well, he was cheaper.) I extolled Leo Mazzone as a payroll multiplier, getting good production out of cheap pitchers, and then when he left, I decided that he was replaceable and, after all, he was in charge of that atrocious bullpen last year. We sports fans have a delicious ability to delude ourselves.

One other thought: when Damon signed his deal with the Yankees, I was fairly amused because it gives me another arrow in the "Red Sox/Yankees rivalry is overrated" quiver, namely that the players clearly don't care if they're all too willing to jump from one team to the other. And then I remembered this prick and I realized that my argument doesn't hold water unless I want to concede that my archetypal rivalry is not really a rivalry:



By the way, don't think that I'm not extremely proud of myself for finding an image of Figo and the pig's head that was chucked at him at the Nou Camp.

2. I'll admit that after my threatened boycott of SportsCenter because of their ludicrous "Is USC the best team of all-time? We say yes!" feature, I actually watched one of the features the other night. It would have been hard for the segment to fail to meet my expectations, which resembled Rafael Belliard's on-base percentage, but it managed to do so. For those of you who haven't seen it, it involves Fowler, Herbstreit, and May sitting together in the L.A. Coliseum (as if these clowns didn't have enough trouble being objective with their ten-minute memories, they're in the home stadium of the team they're comparing against the best in history) and discussing the opponent for the day, before concluding that the opponent does not have the athleticism to stay with USC and Reggie Bush will be the difference.

The worst segment of this wretched series so far was the one matching USC against the '55 Oklahoma team, mainly because May and Herbstreit picked USC big because players now are faster than players from 50 years ago. (The least they could have done is gotten all Fisher DeBerry or Paul Hornung and pointed out that Oklahoma would have had trouble with USC because that OU team was all white.) If we're going to take the time machine approach, as opposed to asking the more legitimate question, which would be "which team was more dominant in their era?", then what was Oklahoma '55 even doing in the competition, as opposed to Oklahoma '85 or Oklahoma '00, both of which also had far more athletes with better nutrition and more skin pigmentation? Why even bother having them in the tournament if you're simply going to point out the obvious. A bunch of 200-pound white defensive tackles are going to struggle to tackle Reggie Bush after being blocked by 320-pound linemen who have been taking part in sophisticated weight training regimens for years? Really? Does water also flow downhill?

And I've yet to see Herbstreit or May mention that USC might have a few question marks on defense and that defense might actually be a relevant issue to discuss when determining which team is the best of the past 50 years. Apparently, May picked USC to beat '97 Michigan 49-14. Really? The same Michigan defense that held Washington State, who scored 42.4 points per game and were, at the time, the most productive offense in Pac Ten history, to 16 points is going to give up 49 to USC, or one fewer than mighty Fresno State allowed. Stop it, Mark, you're making me blush. The crowning glory of this pile of excrement is going to be the match-up between USC and '95 Nebraska, where Herbstreit and May will apparently inform us that USC's freshmen linebackers are going to dominate the best running game in modern college football history. Can't hardly wait.

An addendum: as a military history buff, I can't believe that I missed this chance for comedy, but hats off to Texas fans, who have a 20-page thread of predictions for USC tangling with great armies from history. Since we all know that Wehrmacht Group South couldn't have handled Reggie Bush's speed, how quickly would Barbarossa have been repelled with the Trojans serving under Stalin in June 1941?

3. And while we're on the Worldwide Leader, I also want to point out the shortcomings in this piece by Len Pasquarelli. I like Len's work and his "Morning After" columns are usually a nice summary of the prior day's games for those of us who prefer to read about the NFL than attempt to watch it in between 469 commercial breaks. Len certainly avoids the hero worship and general pomposity of Peter King. That said, his position that the Steelers are playing better because they're running the ball more and playing "Steelers football" is really weak.

The Steelers have won three in a row because they've allowed 12 points in those three games. They're winning because of their defense. Running the ball has very little to do with it. I suppose you could argue that running the ball has allowed Pittsburgh to control the clock, but there are two easy responses to that:

a. Forcing opposing teams to go three-and-out a lot also helps control the clock; and

b. If the Browns can't score a point in 25 minutes of possession time, then how much more would they score in 35 minutes?

Basically, the Steelers have the luxury of pounding their running backs into the line over and over again because their defense is dominating some really bad offenses. (Seriously, they just beat the 25th, 26th, and 28th best teams in terms of total offense. Cue the Wolf.) In the playoffs, they'll play opponents who can actually make first downs and complete passes, against whom they'll actually need to score. I love the argument that they lost to Cincinnati because they threw too much. Hello, here's a little primer on cause and effect. They threw a lot because they needed to score points instead of viewing offense as a fun sidelight. If they would have played "Steelers Football" and run Bettis over and over again, then the final would have been 38-21 instead of 38-31.

And one other note for Lenny: if January is the time when running the ball is so critical and it's the centerpiece of Steelers football, then why does the team have such a lousy record in home games for the AFC Title?

"Boo Hoo Hoo! Recruits Are Finally Wise To Our Dreadful Offensive Scheme!"

Other than the college football blogosphere and the occasional Stewart Mandel column (when he's not being a jackass and irrationally criticizing the SEC to provoke nasty e-mails so he can then pick the one with the worst grammar and the weakest reasoning to make himself feel like Norman Einstein), my favorite source of college football opinion this year has been Bruce Feldman's blog, which is worth the $4.95 per month for Insider, even if that $4.95 also requires me to haul ESPN the Magazine out to the dumpster every two weeks. (Maybe I'm just bitter that the "O.J. Misunderstood" cover that I predicted years ago when the Magazine was taking the side of every jerk in sports never materialized.) I usually like Feldman's writing, he took the time to respond to an e-mail I sent him when Miami signed Willie Williams, and he's a Member of the Tribe, which is so rare in the media these days.

That said, I'm not sure if Bruce was just looking for a straw man or just wanted to humor a Seminole, but he printed and responded to a letter from "Carter in Atlanta" (would a first name be too much to ask?), whining that recruits are signing with Florida under the mistaken impression that the Gator offense is better than that of the Noles. Since I don't have to be polite like Bruce, here's what I think of Carter's iron-clad reasoning:



1. Florida State fans hate Jeff Bowden. Chris Rix and his father hate Jeff Bowden. Fred Rouse hates Jeff Bowden. Lorenzo Booker hates Jeff Bowden (or at least he ought to, given that Bowden has taken the #1 running back from the 2002 recruiting class and led him to a whopping three 100+ yard games in his three-year career.) Anyone with a pulse who wants to see Florida State succeed (admittedly a small class) should hate Jeff Bowden for taking the keys to one of the most talented offenses in the country and driving it into the Grand Canyon. Jeff Bowden is going to stay as the offensive coordinator because he shares much of the same genetic material as the head coach of the Seminoles. Is that not clear enough?

2. Recruits make decisions on how given programs are going to be for the next 4-5 years. Given that context, it's foolish to look at one year worth of results. Urban Meyer's offense has been successful everywhere he's been. Jeff Bowden's offense? Not so much. If a recruit takes a four-year look backwards as opposed to a one-year snapshot, then the picture is much rosier for Meyer than it is for Bowden. Additionally, in projecting forward, a player needs to figure out with whom he's going to be playing. Florida just signed the #1 quarterback in the country, a quarterback who is a far better fit with the Meyer offense than Chris Leak is. Is any quarterback a good fit for Jeff Bowden's confused scheme?

3. As for this year, Florida State did average more yards per game than Florida did, but look at the distribution of those yards. 629 against the Citadel, 512 against Syracuse, 587 against Wake Forest, and 539 against Duke, as compared to 170 against Miami, 227 against N.C. State, 226 against Clemson, 334 against Florida (many of which were in garbage time after the Gators had pummelled the Noles like Sonny pummelled Carlo,) and 272 against Virginia Tech. What is a player like Percy Harvin going to gain by playing in an offense that destroys teams that are hopelessly outmatched athletically, but can't move the ball against a good team? Yes, Florida didn't set the world on fire against good defenses, but their performances were at least comparable and they got better as the season progressed and Meyer figured out that his scheme was not a fit for his talent, whereas FSU's offense got worse and worse.

4. And this statement by Carter is simply wrong:

"This is all because the media has completely got sucked in by Urban Meyer, even though his vaunted spread option, which by the way ain't that revolutionary (see: West Virginia) completely tanked in the SEC this year."

West Virginia's offense is spread option, but it is significantly different from Meyer's, which uses motion far more and breaks down the difference between wide receivers and running backs. West Virginia's offense is not that dissimilar from the offense run by Texas under Vince Young (or some of the looks that Alabama used with Andrew Zow and Freddie Milons in '99 and '00); Meyer's offense is a whole different beast, which is why teams struggled so much to defend it in the MWC and MAC.

5. In any event, it's not useful to make too much of recruiting rankings right now for two reasons. First, Florida is getting the bounce that every major program gets from a new coach's first full recruiting class. Second, Florida State will close strong, like they always do, because they most likely have several silent verbals that will spring forth on Signing Day. Carter's probably just bitter that Harvey wasn't one of those silent verbals.

...But Those Other Birds Sure Are Hot!

Thrashers: 4-0-1 in their last five. Hawks: 4-1 in their last five (and got legitimately screwed in the fifth.)

The Thrashers' season got off to a disappointing start for a very simple reason: because of injuries to their top three goalies, they were forced to do the equivalent of the Braves starting a AAA rotation. Imagine if Kyle Davies would have been the ace of the staff last year. That's the equivalent of the Thrashers having to play Michael Garnett and Adam Berkhoel every night. The team is next to last in the NHL in save percentage and it's virtually impossible to win in the league when your goalies' collective save percentage is .876.

Fortunately, Kari Lehtonen is close to returning (although, as the article's title makes clear, this isn't the first time we've heard that song. Also, Michael Garnett seems to be getting the hang of this whole stopping the puck business, which has allowed the Thrashers to be patient in returning Lehtonen to the lineup. (The team's last two wins represent the first two wins this season in which the team scored fewer than four goals. Garnett's save percentage in those games was .944, which is as good as his previous stats were bad.) More importantly, Garnett's improved play has allowed the team to be patient in returning Lehtonen to the fold.

The team is now a mere three points out of the last playoff spot, although 8th placed Toronto has two games in hand over the Thrashers. The good news is that the season is very young. On the day after Christmas two years ago, the Thrashers beat the Lightning to take an eight-point lead in the Southeast Division. The Thrashers responded by winning two of their next 21 games, while the Lightning went on to win the Stanley Cup. The point is that a lot can change over the next several months and the team certainly isn't out of the running for a playoff spot, despite their goaltending issues at the outset of the season. The rest of December, after what ought to be a gimme at home against Washington on Thursday night, is tough: four games against teams ahead of them in the Eastern Conference (New Jersey, Montreal, Philly, and Buffalo.)

As for the Hawks, the win over San Antonio does appear to have been a springboard, as the team followed up with wins over Cleveland, New York, and Denver, along with being the victim of a complete screw job at the hands of Steve Javie's screw in Philadelphia. Joe Johnson is stepping into the role of team leader, averaging 24.6 points and 6.4 assists over that timeframe. Al Harrington and Tyronne Lue have been playing fairly well on offense, which has generated open shots for Johnson and his offensive game seems to flow from the threat of hitting threes. (I might have that backwards.) The team struggled for the first quarter of the season because they didn't have a third scoring threat and in their recent hot streak, that third threat has emerged in the unlikely persona of Lue, who has averaged 15.4 points per game during the hot streak, including some big late shots against the Spurs and Nuggets. Given that Lue is probably the same player who answered to that name over the first 7+ years of his career, a sustained period of scoring at that clip (or hitting over 55% from behind the arc, which Lue has done this year) seems unlikely. Still, it'll be fun to see how long the Hawks can ride this whole "Lue as very good player" thing.

Of more import to the Hawks' future, Josh Smith played his best game of the year yesterday. He's developed a reliable jumper, which he didn't have last year, and his passing skills are progressing. (He had a nifty behind-the-back feed to Zaza yesterday on a critical possession towards the end of regulation.) He's always been a good rebounder, but his game seems to be maturing, which is nice for a player who John Hollinger said before the year was statistically most similar to Tracy McGrady after one season at age 18. This leads us to the Al Harrington question. The Hawks are clearly a better team with Harrington, although the upside for the squad is probably 30 wins or so, whereas they're a 20-win team without him. He's a free agent at the end of the year, which means that they need to make a long term decision on him. To my mind, there's no way that they can keep him, since they are committed to Joe Johnson long-term and keeping Harrington would crowd out minutes for Smith, Josh Childress, and Marvin Williams. The only alternative would be to give up on Marvin, but that seems a tad rash 23 games into his NBA career. (Don't think that every Chris Paul highlight doesn't make me wince.) The most likely result is that the team is going to trade Harrington to free up minutes for their young players at the three and the four. The team will be worse initially before the trade and there is a concern that at some stage, they need to start creating and sustaining momentum, rather than continuing to build for the future. Still, I can't see how they can build for the future and keep Harrington long-term.

"Don't Criticize Me When We're Winning."

No, Michael? How about now? How about after a night on which you averaged a robust 3.8 yards per pass attempt and threw two interceptions (although one of them was not an interception, but was rather a dreadful call that made your coach enter the Bobby Knight ballistic zone)? How about after a game in which you led your offense to three points, despite the facts that (1) your starting running back averaged 4.8 yards per carry and (2) your first three possessions started on your own 44, your own 43, and the Bears 35?

Somehow, I knew that Vick was not going to play well last night when the ESPN broadcast opened with a shot of him on the sidelines, sitting on the bench, cowering in a giant parka and looking reluctant to come out and play. The fact that that parka reappeared every time he came over to the bench, usually brought by some flunky whose job it was to make sure that the franchise's star player was warm, added to the comedy of the evening. That was a perfect metaphor for the way the Falcons coddle Vick. From his giant contract extension to Arthur Blank wheeling him around when he had a broken ankle to the team protecting him from the media at every turn to Jim Mora making excuse after excuse for his average play, the Falcons have done everything in their power to make Vick totally unaccountable. Now, they're in a position where they have the highest paid player in the league, he is not playing at an average level, let alone a level commensurate with his salary, and the one factor that justified his sloppy play - the fact that the team generally won when he was under center and generally lost when he wasn't - has ceased to exist. Good luck reaching Mike now.

Meanwhile, let's not blame everything related to the fact that this team is 8-6 on the guy under center. The defense simply is not very good. Maybe Rex Grossman is the second coming of...er...I can't think of a good Bears quarterback from my lifetime. Anyway, the point is that the Falcons made Grossman look like an absolute star last night when he came into the game, with one notable exception: Keion Carpenter's diving interception. Keion being Keion, he followed up a great play with a killing play - a fumble on the team's own one-yard line - and he managed to do so one second after making the interception. Carpenter, Vick, DeAngelo Hall, they're all Hokies and since we're on a metaphorical kick, they represent that program beautifully. One second, they're doing something great and the next second, they can't get out of their own way.

In Vick's defense, this game was always going to be a bad match-up for the Falcons because their offensive line isn't very good and the Bears' defensive line is awesome. Vick rarely had time to throw because his blockers (and I use that term loosely) were getting pushed back into his face on a regular basis. It reminded me of those games against the Bucs back when Tampa had a very good defensive line and Vick was forced to scramble into Derrick Brooks' loving arms on just about every play. Last night, the Falcons needed a quarterback who would take five steps and then fire, because they couldn't protect the pocket for any longer than that. Shockingly enough, Mike Vick is not that guy.

The end of the story is that I turned the TV off after the T.J. Duckett fumble and started reading Richard Evans' "The Coming of the Third Reich" because I thought that might be more uplifting than watching this sorry-ass team. At least the Hawks are cute and lovable when they're losing.

Arthur Isn't a Blank Check for the Braves, Har Har Har.

If this article by Tim Tucker is to be believed, then Braves fans are all a'twitter at the prospect of Arthur Blank buying the team (and his non-denial of interest is certainly an encouraging sign.) While Arthur has done a great job with the Falcons, the notion that he's going to ride in on a white horse and re-establish the Braves as one of the biggest spenders in baseball is a pipe dream for several reasons.

The basis of the assumption that Blank will be much better for the Braves than Time-Warner starts with the belief that Time Warner has been bad for the team, but in reality, they've simply been operating as any rational business would. The Braves were one of baseball's big spenders in the mid 90s when they were drawing close to three million fans every year and TBS was a major revenue stream for them. Now, attendance has settled at about 2.4 million every year, which places the Braves in the middle tier of baseball teams, and MLB's rights fees charged to TBS have become onerous, as they want ESPN to be their chief vehicle for showing games nationally. It's far more profitable for teams to show games locally now than it is to take the SuperStation approach. Thus, the Braves have lost the two chief assets - attendance and TBS - that made them one of the richest teams in baseball in the mid 90s. The notion that the Braves should have been spending with the Red Sox and Dodgers, both of which draw more fans, sell more expensive tickets, and have greater local TV revenues, is not right and the resulting criticism of Time Warner was always unfair. Yes, it would be great to have an owner who was willing to take a $20M loss on the team every year in order to field one of the most expensive teams in baseball, but it was impossible to assume that Time Warner would do so, especially since its primary interest is to serve its shareholders and said shareholders would not have been happy to see their dividends diminished so Larry in Kennesaw can watch a $110M roster every night.

Blank would be slightly more likely to take a loss than Time Warner was, since he doesn't have shareholders to answer to and could therefore indulge a little if it made him happy. That said, he didn't become a billionaire by taking losses to assuage his ego. I would be mildly pleased to have an owner who has a personal, emotional stake in the team's success (as Blank clearly does with the Falcons,) but it's important not to overrate how much money Blank would be willing to lose to scratch that emotional itch.

And Blank's personal investment in the team could also be a negative. One advantage of the Time Warner approach was that they stayed out of baseball operations. Like any disinterested investor, they simply set financial parameters and then let the baseball people make decisions. That has been a very successful approach for the team, dating back to the time in the second half of the 80s when Ted Turner reached the same realization and got out of the way so Bobby Cox could start building the franchise. Blank, on the other hand, has been anything but disinterested in his role as the Falcons' owner. The shots of him wheeling Michael Vick around when Vick had a broken ankle are memorable, but what's more troubling for me is the fact that Blank inserted himself into the negotiations with Peerless Price and Keith Brooking, fell in love with both players based on his interactions with them, and was likely a major reason why the Falcons overpaid for both of them (Price moreso than Brooking.) I'm uncomfortable with the idea of Blank inserting himself into negotiations with the Braves, especially since baseball deals have longer term impacts than football deals since the contracts are guaranteed. What if he drives the price of Andruw Jones' renegotiations in a few years because he takes a shine to Andruw and we end up paying through the nose for the tail end of a great career?

(One note in Blank's defense: in a competitive free agent market, his personal touch is often a positive factor for the Falcons. For instance, Pat Dye Jr. and Rod Coleman have both said that Blank's interest in Coleman was a major factor in drawing Rod to sign with the Falcons over the Giants and he has certainly been an excellent addition to the team. An interested owner can make bad decisions, but he can also be more attractive to play for than a nameless corporate monolith.)

Overall, Blank has certainly done a good job with the Falcons. Yes, he has benefited from Michael Vick, who was acquired before he bought the team, but he's also done dozens of little things, from cutting ticket prices to improving Falcons' tailgating from awful to merely mediocre to increasing the team's media profile in the local market, that have made the team far more popular than it was when it was owned by the Smith family. He would likely make the same efforts with the Braves, but it's important not to overrate his potential impact. When he bought the Falcons, they were one of the worst run franchises in the NFL, so a customer-savvy owner was a major difference. The Braves, on the other hand, are one of the best-run franchises in MLB, so his impact would not be as great.

All that said, it would be amusing to see him in his impeccable suits wandering through the home dugout at the Ted, through a miasma of dirt, sunflower seeds, and dip spit.

Reason #862 Why ESPN Is Terrible

So the big lead-up to the Rose Bowl on SportsCenter is a competition between this year's USC team and the alleged 11 best teams from the past 50 years? Leaving aside the fact that USC still faces the minor detail of playing the Rose Bowl against unbeaten and largely unchallenged Texas (my goodness, if I were Mack Brown, I'd be furiously sending this link to every one of my players and titling it "guess we shouldn't bother to show up in Pasadena on the 4th,") as well as the fact that Texas might, gasp, be better than USC this year because, gasp again, they have a better defense, how did they come up with this list? More pertinently, how does ESPN not survive the charge that they are biased in favor of the Big Ten when their list of the ten best teams from the past 50 years is the following:

'55 Oklahoma
'69 Texas
'79 Alabama
'88 Notre Dame
'94 Penn State
'95 Nebraska
'97 Michigan
'99 Florida State
'01 Miami
'02 Ohio State

When a Big Ten grad accuses you of being hopelessly biased in favor of Big Ten teams, then you have a real problem. This is exactly the sort of "promote the popular schools with whom the Disney conglomerate has an exclusive contract" behavior that LD at the nattily-named Corporate Headquarters of the San Antonio Gunslingers has been ably railing against all year.

(As a preliminary note, ESPN picked only one team per school, so in their defense, they aren't saying that '02 Ohio State was better than '71 Nebraska, since ESPN already listed the '95 Huskers.)

What are my specific problems with the list? Got an hour? Let's start with the fact that Big Ten teams have won a grand total of two national titles since 1968, but there are three teams from that period on the list. Look, I have an irrational love for the '97 Michigan team that borders on a DSM Axis-II Disorder, mainly because I was seriously worried that I was going to spend my whole life rooting for Michigan and never see them win a national title, but I'm just not convinced that they were one of the ten best teams of the past 50 years. One of the ten best defenses? Absolutely. However, that offense was just too limited. 21 points in the Rose Bowl, 20 points against Ohio State, 26 points against Wisconsin, etc., and that was all with a defense that consistently gave them good field position by forcing opponents to go three and out. Washington '91 is on ESPN's wild card list and I'd be lying if I said that '97 Michigan could beat '91 Washington anywhere but my Playstation (and of course, that match-up has been played on several occasions.)

And that said, Michigan '97 was better than the other two Big Ten entrants on the list. '94 Penn State was the inverse of '97 Michigan - great offense, average defense - but (1) a great defense usually beats a great offense, and (2) if the voters in 1994 didn't think that Penn State was the best team THAT SEASON, then how can they be on a list of the ten best? Alternatively, if we're disregarding the voters and simply going based on how good a team was, then '02 Ohio State might not even be on a list of the five best Ohio State teams of the past 50 years. From my lifetime, the '98 Bucks would have killed the '02 Bucks because they, oh, how shall I put this, had an offense good enough that they didn't require miracles to beat the mediocre teams on their schedule. I refuse to believe that a team that required a dropped winning touchdown pass by Cincin-frickin-nati could be one of the ten best of the past 50 years. I strongly suggest that ESPN spring for the cost of one of their fancy new encyclopedias so their web site staff can read up on the '68 Bucks, who only went unbeaten, beat an 8-1 Michigan team 50-14 with the Big Ten title on the line, and then beat previously unbeaten USC (and Heisman winner O.J. Simpson) by 11 in the Rose Bowl.

While every decent Big Ten team from the recent past finds their way onto the list, SEC teams are strangely absent. I guess ESPN figured that they couldn't make the list without including an Alabama team (although Tide fans might prefer the '61 team over the '79 team, but that's a minor issue,) but that's apparently the only SEC program worth mentioning. '80 Georgia is on the auxiliary list, as is '57 Auburn and '98 Tennessee (a team that was completely indistinguishable from '02 Ohio State, but they're not from the Big Ten, so they must have been lucky rather than gutty.) Inexplicably, '96 Florida, which I put in my personal pantheon along with '91 Washington, '95 Nebraska and '01 Miami, isn't on ANY of the lists, but '84 BYU, the weakest national champion of my lifetime, is on the second list. ("We can piss on Southerners 'till the cows come home, but let's not get an avalanche of angry Mormons!") '58 LSU? Missing. '62 Ole Miss? Missing. And where are those glorious South Carolina teams that won the Outback Bowl? (OK, kidding on that one.)

In conclusion, I would threaten to boycott SportsCenter for running such a shoddy, biased, premature promotion, but I'm not watching the show anyway and riding up to Bristol to throw Smokey's droppings on the front gate seems a little rash.

Examining my NFL Ennui

Sunday afternoon, with the Falcons playing on Monday night and the TV therefore full of good NFL viewing options, I assembled a desk, chair, and computer while listening to the Thrashers game. Sunday evening, the wife and I went to a holiday party (waiting for the wrath of Bill O'Reilly in 5, 4, 3...) where the Chiefs-Cowboys game was on a giant HD screen and yet, I didn't watch any of the game, instead opting to chatter about a co-worker's revelations about her partner and his equipment. Last night, with the Falcons playing an important Monday night game, I watched about one quarter of the game, instead deciding to watch an Ali G DVD (I'm about two years behind in incorporating "Respek!" and "Booyahkahsha!" into my lexicon) and then go to sleep with the Birds leading by four in the third quarter. You would think that this would be an ideal time to be a Falcons fan, with the franchise poised for its first back-to-back winning seasons ever and Mr. Excitement closing in on a second straight season without a major injury. And yet, I can't really muster up the desire to watch a game from start to finish. Is there something wrong with me? Did my Sunday afternoon with Lifetime (scroll to the bottom) function as chemical castration? I'm looking for answers:

1. The combination of a demanding job and a wife have forced me to prioritize my sports viewing options. This seems like the most obvious explanation. Since I've been zealously guarding my fall Saturdays as a holy day, and probably drag Andrea to about 25 Braves, Hawks, and Thrashers games over the course of a year, some things simply have to be trimmed and my NFL watching was the most obvious candidate for cutting. I can roll my chores (like "assemble this desk and don't worry if the instructions are in Portuguese") into Sundays.

2. Falcons tickets are hard to get and I don't get that excited about a team that I can't watch in person. Tickets to the cities' other teams are easy (Hawks tickets are easy like Morganna's boobs were big) and so I go watch them, but the Falcons are a tough ticket. That said, I've always found the experience of Falcons games, even when the game is good, to be underwhelming. The idea of tailgating in a giant gulch underneath an overpass never struck me as the Platonic ideal of pre-game festivities. Plus, I found over the years that I got sleepy at Falcons games, most likely because the NFL has destroyed any flow from its games by the constant commercial breaks. (One of my aspirations is to do a study of how many plays are run in the average college football game as opposed to the average NFL game. I'm convinced that the NFL crams more commercials into the time slots for its games by having the clock run [by rule] almost constantly, but the braying American public hasn't noticed, probably because they're too busy marveling over the mystery of their own navels.) This is also a reason why I wasn't interested in watching a game on Sunday. Inevitably, the endless commercials drive me away until I get sucked in by one of the Die Hard movies on FX for the 7,000th time. (I am SUCH a sucker for a German villain.) The other deterrent from going to a Falcons game is that I feel like I'm being manipulated from start to finish. Cheer now! Order a Coors Light now! Look at the kid baby on the scoreboard now! Yell "Defense!" now! It all seems like such manufactured excitement. Everything about the NFL is plastic, right down to the cheerleaders' chests. Hell, I'll just make this a separate heading...

3. I don't really love this Falcons team, despite the fact that they're hyped to the nines in the local market. I still feel conflicted about Michael Vick because he's a good player, but not a superstar and the Falcons are paying him to be the latter. His enormous cap number is going to make it hard to assemble a championship team around him. Also, his standoffishness this year, specifically the "don't criticize me if we're winning," is less than endearing. DeAngelo Hall has also developed an attitude, pining for a Pro Bowl trip while missing tackles on a regular basis. (That said, he is clearly the team's best DB, but that's more of an indictment of the rest of the secondary.) Generally, the defense is very young, which means that they're athletic, but they don't know how to tackle and they're often moving very fast in the wrong direction. This team is not a threat to go to the Super Bowl, so really, the only major goal for the season is to finish with a winning record. (Is a wild card and out season really that different from 9-7 and no playoffs?)

4. There are too many things about the NFL that irk me, such as:

a. The announcing teams. Is there a single announcing team that isn't some degree of annoying? The fact that the second-most prominent NFL broadcast - the Sunday night game - is manned by a crew that's more universally panned than Battlefield Earth says all that needs to be said about the NFL. Is there room for one Ron Franklin in the NFL, an understated guy who provides the information a play-by-play guy is supposed to offer and does so with a modicum of class? Would Pat Summerall be hired today or would a studio exec be too busy trying to find the next Kevin Harlan to hyperventilate every time a three-yard pass is completed?

b. The erosion of free broadcasts as a viable option, combined with DirectTV's monopoly on Sunday Ticket. What other sport does so much to screw its TV watching fans through arcane rules that deprive them of good match-ups on free TV (Why can't I watch another game when the Falcons are at home and the game is a sell-out? Why is Jacksonville considered Atlanta's "home" AFC team?) and then refuse to let cable systems sell the Sunday Ticket package? I'm not going to friggin' get DirectTV because Paul Tagliabue says I need to. And is this related to the fact that halftime shows show so few highlights these days?

c. I know that punditry for most sports is filled with banal statements these days, but the NFL seems to be a refugee camp for idiots. How does Michael Irvin have a prominent role as an analyst? And who likes Sean Salisbury propounding yet again with gusto about how the quarterback has to be the leader of the team? And if Peter King is the dean of NFL journalists, then why does he manage to piss me off every week with some new OUTRAGE!!!

d. The fact that the League holds every market hostage for a new stadium and has kept a team out of the second largest market in America for years as leverage. I perceive the NFL as a Republican sport and it's a perfect metaphor for Bush conservatism, in that it holds itself up to be the representation of American values, but a good chunk of its profits come from the government teat. (In a cynical way, maybe that is a good representation of American values.)

e. The uniforms. I had no idea that Any Given Sunday was going to be so precient. The Falcons' old uniforms were sharp; their new ones look like the result of a kindergarteners' finger-painting. Gaudi would love them (although he wouldn't approve of the colors.)

5. I'll freely admit that I'm something of a contrarian on the NFL, as it has never been more popular. In fact, that might be why I'm rebelling against it. I feel like it's being forced down my throat in a dozen different ways and, whereas I was always happy to be a college football fan first and an NFL fan second, I now feel like I'm a college football fan as opposed to being an NFL fan because they represent two different ideals, a game marked by tradition and played by young men who give a damn as opposed to a game marked by ruthless profit-making and played by guys who are as loyal as the whisperings in their ears by Drew Rosenhaus.

All this being said, I'll probably pay attention once the playoffs start, just like I do with every sport other than the one where the playoffs start in week one.

Assorted Thoughts

Braves - Yet again, Schuerholtz shows how to operate properly within the confines of a budget. The Braves are getting Edgar Renteria for three years at $6M per season, or less than half what the Dodgers are paying for Rafael Furcal. Here are Furcal's OPS numbers for the past three years: .710, .794, .758, .777. And here are Renteria's: .803, .874, .728, .721. Edgar is two years older than Furcal, so his last two seasons might be evidence of the beginning of his decline, especially if he's older than 30. However, is Furcal really worth twice as much as Renteria? I'm quite willing to write off Edgar's 2005 season to transition problems to the AL, as well as playing in a more demanding, negative environment (and Edgar has added the Fenway infield as a culprit,) but he mediocre 2004 with St. Louis is cause for concern that last year was not a blip on the radar. Giving up Andy Marte was inevitable, as he's blocked at third base by Chipper for the foreseeable future and he would lose some of his value at first or in the outfield. His pedestrian AAA numbers last year, along with his struggles in Winter Ball this year, make the loss of the Braves' former top prospect a little easier to live with.

The question now turns to the closer spot. The free agent market was never going to be a solution, since it is badly inflated at all positions this year, and especially at closer after the Blue Jays lost all sense of proportion with their signing of B.J. Ryan. (The Jays remind me of a teenager first learning to drink this off-season. It's like they get to do something new and they are showing their naivete by drinking 11 Gatorade & Vodkas in one sitting, not realizing where they're going to end up in a few hours.) One option might be to find a good starter and move Smoltz back to the closer spot, although I suspect that he'll resist that move. The second option is to trade for one and the Braves certainly have the chips to do so, although they would have to find a willing partner. The third option is to find a closer on the staff, but I'm not sold on the idea of rolling Joey Devine or Macay McBride out there right now.

Hawks - Was the solution for the team's woes a threatened ziggy for Mike Woodson? The team responded to the rumored demise of their coach by beating San Antonio, a team that was merely 13.5 games ahead of the Hawks one-quarter of the way into the season. The result illustrated the "Josh Childress as Rafael Furcal" hypothesis. JC was the best player on the court in the fourth quarter and the team rallied to its best win in ages. When Childress does not play well, which is unfortunately a majority of the time, the team loses. The result, in a weird way, also serves as something of an indictment of Mike Woodson. If his team is good enough to beat the best team in the league, or beat the Pacers on the road, then shouldn't it be good enough to be better than 3-16? Or do we simply chalk those wins up to "anything is possible in the NBA"? Is Woodson failing to motivate the team, so they play well where the motivation is provided by a quality opponent, i.e. the Michigan State factor? Who the hell knows.

The World Cup Draw - Grant Wahl had the same reaction that I did when the U.S. was drawn with the Czech Republic: this is just like the Portugal match from 2002. A talented European side without a World Cup pedigree, but coming off of a very strong performance at the most recent European Cup and led by an outstanding left-sided midfielder who's getting up there in years and this is therefore his last big chance on the biggest stage. Wahl's distinguishing factor is that the U.S. isn't going to sneak up on anyone after making the quarters in the last tournament. Mine is that the Czechs have Peter Cech, the best goalie in the world, between the sticks instead of the pedestrian Vitor Baia. The US is going to see Cech and Gianluigi Buffon in their first two matches, so quality shooting is going to be absolutely critical. (Seeing Kasey Keller in practice will be good preparation.) Italy is also not an overly imposing foe, at least in the group stages, because they traditionally start tournaments very slowly. Hell, in South Korea, they couldn't beat Mexico in their last group game when they needed a win and the Mexicans had already clinched the group, and then they failed to get out of their group at Euro '04 in Portugal. This team is not unbeatable. They are solid in the back and have some very good strikers, but they're soft in the middle.

All that said, the Czechs and Italians all have stars from the biggest leagues in Europe. Even Ghana has Michael Essien, who is better on the European stage than any American player. The U.S. is going to have to ride great goalkeeping and Bruce Arena's tactical nous (a term that I've never heard outside of the soccer context) to get out of the group. And if they finish second, then they almost certainly draw Brazil, so the US's suspect defensive right side can match up with Ronaldinho. Yay!

More Gang of Six Debate

HeismanPundit was kind enough to respond to the argument that USC's offense is not especially complicated. My responses are below.

First of all, the argument that you 'impaled' was not mine, but College Football Resource's.

Sorry. Got my "Boise State is going to beat Georgia and it won't be close" authors mixed up. My bad.

Second, I think you have a real misunderstanding of what my whole 'Gang of Six' argument was about. It was basically that these six teams--each of them at different strata in the college football universe--were better than they would be otherwise thanks to their offensive systems, each of which are/were revolutionary in their own way. Unfortunately, people took it to mean that I was saying these teams were unbeatable or something. That's not what I was saying at all. I was merely pointing out that if it weren't for their system--if they ran a simple SEC-style offense, for instance--Boise would never have even been in the conversation at the beginning of the year as to whether they could beat Georgia. They would not have been ranked. Thanks to their system, they WERE ranked and only a six point underdog. They certainly weren't a six point dog because people thought they had legitimate talent. The system made their lack of talent better. That is the point of the Gang of Six. It was that those teams were better than they would be otherwise.

The basic point that certain teams run better offensive systems than others is incontestable, but the flaw in HP's reasoning, as well as in the Gang of Six model in general, is that it has no value. If the teams in the Gang of Six really run better offensive schemes than the rest of college football, then why is their success somewhat variable? Let's look at last year's Gang of Five and how they performed this year:

USC - Possibly the best offense since the 1945 Army team, despite losing their offensive coordinator. (His loss, if scheme was more important than talent, should have caused USC some heartburn.) As one personnel director said, their scheme has little to do with their success.

Boise State - Got shut down by Georgia and Fresno State, despite returning most of their offense. Apparently, their scheme can be defended after all, including by a Fresno team that does not have a good defense and does not have much more talent than Boise State.

Louisville - Productively offensively (as one would expect when they replaced their quarterback and running back with blue chippers Bush and Brohm,) but as West Virginia and South Florida showed, not unstoppable.

Florida - Ah, the real piece of evidence against the Gang of Six. A scheme that ripped the Mountain West to shreds was thoroughly ineffective in the SEC, finishing 62nd in the country in total offense (despite returning every significant starter other than Ciatrick Fason) and reducing the head coach to tears in Baton Rouge. Apparently, SEC defenses aren't good solely because they play against simple offenses.

Cal - 31st in total offense, aided in part by a ridiculously easy out-of-conference schedule (although, in their defense, they probably didn't know that Illinois was going to commit seppuku by hiring Ron Zook.) Interestingly, every team in the low-tech Big Ten met or exceeded the 35 points that Cal put up on the Illini.

Anyone can pick out the top offenses in the country and then claim that they're more sophisticated, but what value does that designation have if those offenses often fail to repeat their success the following year? And this would be even more evident if we went back and looked at programs that would have been labeled as "Gang of Five" in past years. Joe Tiller, anyone? How about the Tennessee offenses of the Peyton Manning era, which met all of the criteria for membership other than underuse of backs and tight ends? Or Ralph Friedgen's Maryland/Georgia Tech offenses, which met all of the criteria?

Look at Gang of Six member Notre Dame as a perfect example. In 2004's system, they were shit. In 2005 with a new system, they are very good. What is the common denominator?

A crappy prior regime? HP will get no disagreement from these quarters that Charlie Weis has worked wonders with the Notre Dame offense, but let's also acknowledge two points:

1. Notre Dame's prior offensive regime was complete crap.

2. Notre Dame's offense is replete with blue chip high school talent. Just about every starter on the offense was a four- or five-star recruit in high school. Moreover, the offense was almost exclusively comprised of juniors and seniors. Thus, Weis was stepping into a perfect situation to turn the offense around.

But if we want to quibble, Notre Dame probably fails on the "run when the other team knows you're running" part of the test, as the Irish were an underwhelming 49th in the country in rush offense and averaged only 3.68 yards per carry.

As for USC, to say they don't do anything revolutionary is silly. I can care less what a single scout says. There were scouts in the Sporting News that said that USC had no chance to beat Oklahoma last year, that Leinart was overrated, etc. I know several scouts personally and most of them don't know shit. So, just because you can quote a scout who says otherwise does not prove anything. The fact that a ton of teams around the country are trying to use their backs in the same manner as Bush is used at USC is proof alone that the Trojan offense has been influential.

Note that the quote was not from a scout, but rather from a "personnel man," which is a step up from your average rank-and-file scout. There's also a big difference between making observations about USC's offensive system, which is exactly the kind of thing that a scout or personnel man can do well, and then making predictions, which are difficult for anyone, especially for a game like the Orange Bowl between teams with divergent styles and no common opponents. And the fact that USC is copied doesn't mean that the sophistication of their offense is the primary reason for their success, rather than their overwhelming talent.

If you think that USC is just out-talenting people to win 34 in a row, then you have your head in the sand. USC has a lot of talent, but so do Texas, LSU, Tennessee, etc. It is USC's system, combined with that talent, that has made them untouchable. To ignore that is just ignoring reality.

Did I not say that coaching, especially on the defensive side of the ball, was a major reason for USC's success? Did I not mention Paul Hackett? Reading comprehension, my man. My point is simply that USC's offensive scheme isn't THAT revolutionary and that the "Gang of Six" concept is mostly useless as a predictive tool.

So, once again to recap: The Gang of Six theory does not ignore defense or other factors in football. It merely picked out six teams that had separated themselves in offensive sophistication, with the result being a rise in their program's success. USC is an elite school, but was struggling until the system arrived. Cal was shit for years and suddenly got good. Now, it is to the point where they can lose a first round pick at QB and have a bad replacement, but the system still enables them to go 7-4 (coulda easily went 9-2, but lost a couple last minute games). As disappointing as Louisville has been, they replaced Shelton and the nation's pass efficiency leader and went 9-2. Think it was because of talent or that system that kept them together? Boise went 8-3, but they have serious talent problems. If they ran a straight I formation, they are a 5-6 team, easy.

I can agree with most of that, although I also point out that Michael Bush and Brian Brohm were significant talent upgrades over their predecessors, so L'ville didn't exactly have to overcome Herculean odds to have a good offense this year.

Again, if you have impaled any theory, it wasn't mine.

It's hard to say what I'm impaling these days.

One other thing: If just having better players than everyone else means you win every game, then why isn't LSU undefeated right now? Why does any less talented team beat more talented teams? It happens all the time. Like I said, not all scouts are phi beta kappa.

See above, Reading Comp Scholar. I'm not denying that coaching has a major effect, but HP still overstates the complexity of USC (and others') offense relative to the rest of the country.

An Interesting Nugget on USC

This quote from a "veteran [NFL] personnel man" caught my eye in Don Banks' article on why Reggie Bush is in the lead to be the #1 pick in the Draft ahead of Matt Leinart:

"But with that team [USC], if you watch it closely, the guy that stirs that drink is the tailback. The guy is clearly the factor. They don't do anything revolutionary on offense. They just have better players than anyone else. They're backed up on their goal line, but they give him the ball on a simple hand-off and he goes 70 yards. He's a special player."

Gee, that sure seems inconsistent with Heismanpundit's "Gang of Six" Hypothesis that we impaled this off-season. It's a lot more fun to imagine that your program wins because it has smarter coaches and more sophisticated schemes as opposed to simply having better talent as a result of sitting in one of the most talent-rich areas in the country and having little or no competition for the talent in that region. Anyway, this quote piles more dirt on the "Gang of Six" hypothesis, not that Urban Meyer's struggles at Florida or Boise State's destruction in Athens didn't already do the job. (Heck, Les Miles always had effective offenses at Oklahoma State and his more talented LSU team couldn't get out of their own way for much of the year, which means that either SEC defenses are actually tough [and not the product of getting to play weak offenses] or the Big XII gets thrown into the mix with the SEC as a conference full of neanderthals who don't know how to script beautiful plays while sipping a lovely pinot grigio.)

Upon re-reading the paragraph above, I do want to point out that USC isn't guaranteed success because of their proximity to talent (see: the Paul Hackett era) and they do have a very good coaching staff. Coaching is still important and there are differences between USC's staff and the staffs of most other college football teams. I do think that Heismanpundit overstates the differences between the USC offensive scheme and offensive schemes throughout the rest of the country. He also seems to misunderstand the primary reason why his own program is so successful: unlike the rest of their conference, they can play defense. That's what separates USC from the UCLA and Oregon teams that were on top of the league in the late 90s. Pete Carroll is an excellent defensive strategist and he has loads of talent with which to work. Great defense has always been the common thread for national championship teams and it's Carroll's work on that side of the ball, rather than some sort of revolutionary offensive concept, that has USC going for a three-peat in the Rose Bowl.