Somehow, I don’t think Mike Leach is all that impressed with the back to the pro formation approach being taken at places like Florida and Auburn.
WH: You helped transform the Big 12 into the most wide-open conference in the country. But college football seems to be trending the other way now. Has the spread offense reached its peak?
ML: No, I think it’s gaining steam. So many teams are starting to utilize the spread to run the ball. Whether you run it or throw it, it’s all about attacking the whole field. I think it’s gaining momentum because you see new stuff popping up every year.
Between Auburn, Florida and Washington State, which school do you figure scores the most points this season?
Get The Picture 
Washington State, but the Cougars won’t be able to stop anybody, either.
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Washington State…because they play in the Pac-12, a league where defense isn’t cool.
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Dude, defense is for rednecks.
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Don’t forget Tx Tech. They’ve pretty much dumped the spread/Air Raid.
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Yes they have. And they don’t score anymore either. 😉
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I watched the USC-Colorado game last year, Colorado’s starting CB had a LIMP from a broken leg he had suffered the year prior. Anyone not throwing 6 TD passes on that defense had only one excuse: basic human decency.
Every defense in the P12 except USC’s has a position group somewhere that resembles Sun Belt quality – making an Air Raid-type offense easy pickings. SEC offenses rarely see those sorts of athletic mismatches, much less week to week.
I don’t get the Cult of Leach. I get that he’s entertaining measured against the Tubervilles and James of the world – but please consider the standard.
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So how do you explain the Air Raid’s success at Kentucky?
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How do you explain a starting corner in a BCS conference team with a limp?
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Not sure how that follows…
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Some things are just inexplicable 🙂
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Exactly how many championships did Leach and Hal win at UK? I forgot.
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Mayor, if that’s the standard by which you judge successful offenses, you got me. I guess that means there are only about 6-10 good offensive teams in a given year, right?
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6-10? In an era when Tennessee and Florida were cranking out NFL QBs? Signature wins over 4-7 Alabama and LSU squads? Does that require explanation?
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Evidently you’ve confused the success of a football program with the success of an offense.
Perhaps you should read my question again.
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This is my opinion. Take it for what is it is worth (not much). My thinking is the reason it was successful is much like why the Option is effective for GTU. You only see it once a year, they will score points but because their D is lacking, you will usually beat them based on Talent alone. So while the DC is trying to slow them down, he isn’t going to spend a month on defending it.
Now that was years ago, do you think someone would still be as effective running it at UK, now that most of the teams have seen it so often? I do not. And lets be honest if Kentucky had the athletes that FU and AU had when they made championship runs, UK could have made a run as well. There is a reason why the spread does not last long in the SEC, even Mullen is going to do a little more Pro-Style O at MSU.
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But nobody’s running the Air Raid in the SEC right now. So by your reasoning, wouldn’t it stand as good a chance of success as it did when Mumme ran it?
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A&M will be running a version of the Air Raid next year, Kevin Sumlin having brought with him essentially the entire University of Houston offensive coaching staff. The Aggies will be breaking in a new QB, so early on Offensive Coordinator Kliff Kingsbury might lean on the run game a bit more than he would otherwise. At Houston they had roughly a 60/40 pass-to-run split.
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I read your question accurately. Is the point of an SEC offense to win SEC games or rack up yards on D-II teams and the bottom half of the SEC schedule?
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Last time I looked, the point of an offense is to score points.
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Which it failed to do miserably against the top half of the conference.
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Number of times Kentucky offense was held under 10 points in Bill Curry’s last season: 4.
Number of times Kentucky offense was held under 10 points in Mike Leach’s two seasons: 0. In fact, during those two years, UK was held under 20 points in conference play only once (by Georgia, amazingly).
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I must respectfully disagree, Senator. The point of an offense, like the point of the entire team, is to win–games, divisions, championships. Sure, you gotta score some points. But VD won with minimal points but a good D and ball control. Sometimes the offense does its part just by holding the ball and running clock. Indeed, that is exactly how UK beat UT last season. I remember well some of the Duke teams QBed by Ben Bennett that ran up hundreds of yards and dozens of points but lost almost every game. The parts of a team are supposed to work together toward a common goal–winning.
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This is too Zen for me, I’m afraid.
By the way, where did the myth about Dooley winning with minimal points come from? Here’s how the scoring numbers break down over his 23-year career:
Georgia teams averaging less than 20 ppg in a season: 5
Georgia teams averaging 20-25 ppg in a season: 9
Georgia teams averaging 25+ ppg in a season: 9
Six of his last eight teams fall into that last category, with the ’84 team just missing the cut at 24.75 ppg.
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Saw this and thought of you, Senator. Pretty funny.
http://deadspin.com/5908758/mike-leach-appears-to-have-autographed-a-copy-of-his-book-with-a-craig-james-killed-five-hookers-reference
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Yeah, it is. It’s in today’s Buffet.
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