If Mark Emmert did a football power poll…

Don’t laugh… well, at least don’t laugh until you see it.

Hi, I’m Mike. I’ll be your playcaller. Would you like to hear about our specials?

From the Mike Bobo presser today:

Q: What led you guys to make the changes you did in terms of no-huddle?

Bobo: Well we wanted to get more plays, which we didn’t do on Saturday. But we’re committed to doing it, and more plays equals more opportunities, and more chance to score. We went and looked to last year, and when we had more opportunities to score in the red zone we were very efficient. But we just didn’t have as many opportunities as some other teams, and we scored points. But we thought more plays would equal more opportunities and more chance to get points on the board. That’s the main thing, to get more chance and more opportunities.”

If you play faster, you run more plays over the course of a game.  More plays mean more opportunities to score.  Who could be against that?

Well, now that you mention it, Mike Bobo.

Q: Mike when it did go into the philosophy of line it up, look to the sideline, that kind of style, what advantages does that give you?

Bobo:“Well it gives you the advantage of seeing what they’re doing defensively. It gets you into the right play. As opposed to, it’s easier to see it upstairs instead of the quarterback level, as to how they might be playing in the perimeter. There’s still a number of things we do at the line that Murray did. But there’ll be some more of we look to the sideline and get that play.”

You want speed or you want the opportunity to observe the other guy’s defense and react to it?  Nothing necessarily wrong with either approach, but it’s kind of hard to pull ’em both off simultaneously.  In trying to have it all, the likelihood is that you’ll wind up with a bunch of tentative offensive players.  Which is what we saw more than once Saturday night.

I know this is the cheapest of cheap shots here, but keep all of that in mind as you read this comment from Mike Leach (h/t EDSBS):

Mike Leach: We definitely worked hard to keep it simple.  Anything you do that restricts a player’s ability to quickly pull the trigger is counterproductive.  You can be the smartest guy in the world and make it so intricate that a player is slow to pull the trigger and that’s when  you hurt yourself.  Sometimes the smartest minds in football create hesitation and you hurt yourself.   People who hesitate are slow.  A 4.5 guy could become a 4.7 guy if he hesitates.  But at the same time, as you do things offensively that can cause the defense to hesitate, that will effectively speed your offense up without complicating things for your own players.

I have a working theory about restaurants with large menus.  Kitchens that try to do too much wind up not doing much of anything well.  I fear Mike Bobo is turning into The Cheesecake Factory.

A brain aneurysm waiting to happen.

For the part of Georgia’s fan base who thinks the team’s biggest problem is that Mark Richt doesn’t show enough emotion on the sidelines, honey, Brian Kelly’s your guy.

Holy Mother of Crap.  I kept waiting for his head to explode.

Sometimes they make it so easy.

I’ve been waiting for Elkon to fire a certain shot in Heisman Pundit’s direction after I heard the results from the LSU-Oregon game.

Bang.

So let me get this straight.  The fourth-best coach in college football took his team to a quasi-neutral site to play the worst coach in college football.  The worst coach, a guy who delegates a lot to his coordinators, came into the game with his offensive coordinator just having been diagnosed with Parkinson’s.  His starting quarterback was suspended for his active participation in a bar fight.  So what happens?  LSU 40 Oregon 27.  It’s just amazing that LSU keeps winning games against quality opponents despite the fact that they have a coach who is worse than Ron Zook, worse than the Queen of England, and worse than Mike Locksley.

Looks like he picked the wrong week to quit running the I-formation.

At least it did to this jaundiced, never been in the arena eye.  The math doesn’t lie, either.

… 78% of all offensive plays in Saturday’s game were out of the shotgun formation.  Does that sound like UGA football to you?

Honestly, the stat by itself doesn’t really matter that much.  Sure, Georgia is traditionally a power-I team that runs the ball with a lead fullback and then passes from under center, usually with a play-action fake.  But it isn’t necessarily bad to try new things more often… as long as they work.  The problem isn’t that 78% of plays were out of shotgun; the problem is that when good old fashion play-action passes and under center plays actually worked, we abandoned them and returned to the flashy deep snap.  The problem is that our offensive play calling has recently had a tendency to stick to things that don’t work, and abandon things that have success.

By the way, all six sacks came on plays run out of shotgun formations.

But give Richt credit for the courage of his convictions.  Mike Bobo insists he’s all in this week with the new order of things.

… Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo said the Bulldogs plan to stick with the no-huddle offense they unveiled in the Georgia Dome. He said the decision to switch in the offseason was an attempt to run more offensive plays. But the Bulldogs ran just 60 plays last Saturday to Boise State’s 71.

“We wanted to get more plays, which we didn’t do on Satuday,” Bobo said. “But we’re committed to doing it. More plays equals more opportunities, more chances to score. Last year we just didn’t think we had as many opportunities as some other teams.”

I’m not being facetious.  This represents a sea change in offensive philosophy for Georgia in the Richt era.  Everything used to be keyed on controlling the game flow on offense by slowing the game down.  That had the benefit of making the defense’s work easier.  But it also meant that Georgia faced tougher sledding keeping up with more dynamic offenses, as we saw in last year’s Auburn game.

Given what’s at stake for Richt this season, I have to admit to some admiration for him sticking to his guns here.  Because it’s obvious from last Saturday night that Georgia’s offense has some growing pains to go through.

“No matter how you operate offensively, the bottom like is you’ve got to execute,” Richt said. “And you execute well whether you no-huddle or you don’t no huddle. We didn’t have much trouble as far as the operation of it. The problem was once the ball was snapped. That’s when we had problems.”

Okay, fine.  The problem for Richt is that if he has to repeat the same comment for the next three or four games, it’s likely this will be the last season he’ll be saying it in Athens.

Helluva gamble, Coach.

Oh oh domino

So, it looks like they’re really gonna do it.

An official announcement of Texas A&M’s move to the Southeastern Conference is expected today in College Station.

School officials spent Tuesday preparing for a news conference at Kyle Field to celebrate the move, pending a favorable vote from SEC presidents to extend an invitation. The SEC presidents met Tuesday night and approved an invitation to A&M, said sources with knowledge of the situation, but the SEC made no formal announcement.

A&M officials have indicated they would accept an SEC invitation. The move would be effective for the 2012 football season.

And now the race to the 16-school super conferences begins… at least that’s what they’re telling us to expect.

… Schlabach said if Oklahoma and Oklahoma State bolt the Big 12 for the Pac-12 — as appears likely now — it’s almost certain the Pac-12 will expand to 16 teams.

The other conferences will feel compelled to move quickly to follow suit — some just to remain viable — and the college football landscape likely will be changed forever, he said.

Schlabach sees this development pitting money versus tradition, and when you read quotes like this, it’s hard to argue with his viewpoint:

… Oklahoma football coach Bob Stoops may have upped the ante during a Tuesday news conference in efforts to expedite a decision from Texas, saying he doesn’t consider it “necessary” for the Sooners to remain in the same league with the Longhorns. Stoops added that the annual Red River Rivalry game in Dallas could be a casualty of the realignment process.

“I don’t think it’s necessary to keep the OU-Texas game if we do move out of a conference with Texas,” Stoops said, adding that he plans to leave the realignment decisions to Boren and athletic director Joe Castiglione.

“I know no one wants to hear that, but things change. If it changes, you’ve got to change with it. I love the game, but if it doesn’t work out we will find other places to play and get excited about.”

Except I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a bit of gamesmanship at play here, simply because I’m still having trouble figuring out why Texas would want to bolt the Big XII (even a hastily re-jiggered version) for a chance to become a member of a Pac-16 where it would lose the Longhorn Network, face far more daunting logistics (expensive ones for non-revenue sports) and deal with longer odds on playing for a football national title.  All that would seem to apply to Oklahoma as well.  So maybe there’s a little talk ’em off the ledge before it’s too late going on with this.

And then there’s the money aspect, supposedly the raison d’etre for contemplating the jump in the first place.  Are the dollars really there, especially if Texas has to ditch the Longhorn Network in the process?  I suppose they could be if the Pac-12 is willing to make it worth Texas’ while.  But there are risks involved with that.  Just ask the last commissioner of a 16-team conference.

“There wasn’t enough money at that time to satisfy 16 mouths so to speak,” WAC Commissioner Karl Benson said Tuesday. “A 16-team WAC failed from within, not from the outside. There wasn’t enough money to go around, and there was jealousy about who contributed more to the overall value. The 16-team WAC had geographical issues and academic disparities.”

You can argue that’s not a fair analogy because there’s a load of difference between a major and a mid-major conference.  Maybe so.  But I can’t help filtering Benson’s comment through a comparison of Texas and, say, Washington State and wondering if there really will be much of one at all when push comes to shove.

One thing seems plain to me.  The hastier these schools are about jumping to where the grass appears greener, the more likely it is that things get messier over the long haul.  Hell, over the medium haul…

Teach me how to footie.

Rice University puts on introductory football clinics for its international students, and the results are actually pretty charming.

I’d suggest something like this for Georgia Tech, except for the cultural barrier.  It’s one thing to get a student from China interested in football.  It’s quite another to get a nerd out of a Star Wars imperial stormtrooper get up.