Musical palate cleanser, lady rocker edition

Kathleen Edwards doesn’t care about the length of the SEC regular season schedule.  She just wants to kick a little ass.

Welcome back to “I Blame Bobo”.

Today’s episode looks at a couple of metrics from the good people at Coaches By The Numbers (h/t LHB).

CBTN tracks coaches by a formula which measures the average percentage of points and yards they accumulated per game with respect to the opponents’ normal points and yards averages.  (It’s similar in concept to Matt Melton’s SDPI, although more broadly applied, in that it incorporates points and non-conference FBS games.)

Anywho, if you look at this chart from CBTN ranking the performances of last year’s SEC offensive coordinators, you’ll make the shocking discovery that Mike Bobo didn’t totally embarrass himself.  (Before you ask, the defensive coordinator rankings are here.)

The point here isn’t to say that Bobo is the bestest at what he does in the wide, wide world of sports.  (Hell, he wasn’t tops in the conference, so it’s not like we need to go anywhere near there.)  But I think it does reinforce Patrick Garbin’s recent point that perhaps we should be searching for other scapegoats to pin Georgia’s 2011 shortcomings on.

Me, I’m still voting for special teams.

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The Johnson Doctrine is dead. Long live the Richt Doctrine.

Aside from attitude and verbosity, is there any difference in how the two coaches respond to Michael Carvell’s question about how each treats a recruit with a longstanding commitment who decides to take a last-minute trip to another school?  I’m not hearing it.

One thing’s for sure:  Paul Johnson’s no longer braying “you’re dead to me, kid!”.  Funny how reality intrudes upon principle sometimes.

Zen and the art of the West Coast offense

He’s only been on the Plains a short while, but Scot Loeffler is already proving to be a master of coachspeak.  Take this profound observation:

“At the end of the day, everyone’s doing the same in the throw game, everyone’s doing the same with protections, it’s all verbiage, it’s all terminology,” Loeffler said. “And everyone’s changing. You go down and visit the true, so-called West Coast people, and it’s changed. It’s completely evolving.”

Get that?  It’s all the same, and it’s all changing.  Simultaneously!  Take a deep breath, grasshopper.  He’s clearly operating on a different plane of existence from those of us who’ve never been in the arena.

By the way, if you’re wondering how to make the West Coast offense work at the college level, this Chris Brown post is as good a place to start as any.

What hath Mike Slive wrought? Stay tuned., ctd.

Judging from some of the comments I received in response to yesterday’s post, it’s apparent that I didn’t do a good job of making my point, so let me take another stab at it.

Think about this for a minute:  CBS has had the SEC contract as primary broadcaster since 1996 and the Florida-Tennessee game is the only league contest CBS has shown all 16 years.  Not the Iron Bowl.  Not the Cocktail Party.  Not Tennessee-Alabama.  Not Georgia-Auburn.

The reason for that isn’t that the game has been an instant classic every time.  Or that the fate of nations has been riding on it.  Or even that both teams have been highly ranked coming in.  No, there’s a simpler explanation.

CBS hasn’t been presented with a choice before.

For better or worse, Florida-Tennessee became the signature contest announcing the start of the SEC season on CBS.  I hesitate to call something like that a tradition (although there are plenty of events of shorter duration which insist on having that label applied to them), but it’s certainly something that’s become engrained in the rhythm of the SEC season.  And just like that, it’s gone now.

Is it the end the world?  Hardly.  Rather, it’s more a sign of things to come, which is why I referred to it in my post as a canary in the coal mine.  There’s a certain fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants quality to how this round of SEC expansion has proceeded that’s unusual in the context of how the conference has generally done big things.

The last time the conference expanded, it took far more radical steps – divisional play and a championship game – than we’re seeing this go ’round, albeit both moves had money grabs at their hearts.  Despite that, the ’92 changes came off as more purposeful and structured than what is happening today.  (And I think that’s one reason the earlier metamorphosis was so successful.)

Do you have the feeling that anyone from the SEC involved in the decision-making process has a clue about what the conference is trying to carry out with the new 14-school regime, other than to remake the TV contracts into something worth bragging about again?  I sure don’t.

Keep in mind that this first bit of fallout from expansion comes before they’ve renegotiated the deals with the networks.  The conference has to do this out of sheer expediency.  Imagine what people like Mike Slive and Michael Adams (Mark Bradley’s new trailblazer, if you’re looking for recommendations) are capable of when they’re in full whore mode.

Now if all you care about is having a few more games on the tube, this probably isn’t particularly troubling.  Congrats, you’ll feel good when they sell the new setup as a win-win for all.  But for those of us who see some of the SEC’s soul – its history and identity, in other words – being bartered away for good with what appears to be very little thought given to the process, it’s disconcerting.

They’ll waive the shiny toy of expansion’s novelty at us for a while  (I can hear it now:  Georgia-Missouri, a new SEC tradition!), but what’ll be left after the novelty wears off?  Aside from those new TV contracts, that is.