Are you ready for some football?

A sure sign of increased interest:  as of yesterday, August was the most trafficked month of 2011 at GTP.  It’s pretty much a lock that this month will be the second time I’ve gotten more than 300,000 hits here.  So much for fan apathy.

Thanks for dropping by.

Mike Leach on balance

I just finished reading Swing Your Sword (thumbnail review:  even if you don’t care one whit about the whole Texas Tech/Craig James kerfuffle, it’s a quick, entertaining read) and there’s one passage that really jumped out at me, for reasons which I doubt I’ll have to explain:

… To me, a balanced offense is one where each skill position touches the ball, and every position contributes to the offensive output.  There is nothing balanced about running it 50 percent of the time and throwing it 50 percent of the time if you are only utilizing two or three offensive skill positions and only attacking part of the field…[Emphasis added.]

… I think it’s almost imp0ssible to have a great offense if you have only one or two guys touching the ball.  That one guy had better be really, really special, a Hall of Fame type of talent, like Herschel Walker was at Georgia in the early ’80s…

…  People get overly impressed by that artificial balance, where it’s half run, half pass, but with only a couple of players touching the ball.  You can run the ball every snap, but if you’re in the wishbone, and everybody touches the ball, that’s real balance.  Or you can throw the ball every snap, and if everyone touches the ball, that’s real balance.

— Swing Your Sword, pp. 99-101.

Now Mike Leach knows a helluva lot more about moving a football up and down the field than I’ll ever know, so in response to the question “what if you have a super star like A.J. Green – don’t you have to focus on getting him the ball?”, I’ll assume he’d respond by pointing out that spreading the ball around makes it more difficult for a defense to key on said star.  (Don’t forget that Leach enjoyed the services of Michael Crabtree for three seasons.  There never seemed to be a problem getting Crabtree the ball.)

So Mike Bobo, if you feel like you absolutely have to keep track of something Saturday night to adjust in the fourth quarter, why not try counting who’s getting touches?  It can’t be any worse than calling a few futile rushing plays into a stacked defensive front that every single person in the stadium knows are coming because you think the pass count’s gotten out of whack.

Maybe this is all it takes to turn things around.

One thing Mark Richt and Bear Bryant have in common – after a couple of disappointing seasons, they both cussed at fan meetings.

Monday morning buffet

With an extra dash of Bronco for flavoring…

• To hear them tell it, Boise State didn’t lose to Georgia in 2005 just because Jared Zabransky had a meltdown.  They prepared the wrong way, too.
• This will come as a shock to HeismanPundit, but Gary Crowton says they didn’t run his offense at LSU.
• Urban Meyer told Will Muschamp that playing in the SEC isn’t like playing in the Mountain West.  I think most of us knew that already.
• The Boise State play-by-play guy is a Georgia grad.  Small world, ain’t it?
• So much for conventional wisdom.
• Here’s an article breaking down the Boise State secondary.
• USA Today looks at one way in which some student-athletes are already getting compensated beyond the cost of their scholarships – Pell Grants.
• Mark Richt is not the only coach keeping preseason practice developments a secret.

Boise State may make Brandon Boykin’s day.

Emphasis on the word “may”:

Georgia kick returner and cornerback Brandon Boykin (@BrandonBoykin2) posted a message to Boise State coach Chris Petersen on Twitter on Saturday:

“Dear Coach petersen, I DARE you to Kick to me…. Sincerely, Me and my #dawgs”

Boykin is the only player in Southeastern Conference history with three 100-yard plays in his career — all kickoff returns for touchdowns.

He might be in luck. Here’s what Boise State special teams coach Jeff Choate told me earlier this month about the Broncos facing three dynamic kick returners early in the season:

“We’ll have our hands full. But that’s why you do this. I don’t think we’ve ever backed down from a challenge. It should be fun.”

After you read that, scroll down to the bottom of the linked article for the updated BSU roster.  By my count, the Broncos will start seven seniors on offense and ten on defense.  Whoa.  They may be smaller in spots, but they sure won’t lack for experience.