I was just looking back at
this football-based post from a couple of days ago, prompted to do so by a blogger email letting me know that Vik had added another comment, and started to add a comment. It got long, so what the hell, here's a full post about it. You can skip right ahead if you don't care about US football games.
I sometimes have an idle daydream that I'm a football coach. Not in the pros, but in college, where a coach can really make a huge difference with innovative plays and motivation and such. I'd be horrible at the job in real life, since I am not a "Rah rah!" speech type of guy, and I'd hate recruiting and trying to get young men to go to class and not beat their girlfriends and not take money from boosters and all the other happy shit you've got to deal with as a college coach. But none of that stuff interferes with my idle daydream, since in it (usually as I'm drifting off to sleep on a Friday night and thinking about watching some college football the next day) I'm just watching my brilliant plays work perfectly and befuddle some heavily-favored, traditional powerhouse program with them.
It's nothing I'll ever do, but it does happen from time to time, and it's fun to watch. Urban Meyer did it last year with Utah, taking them to 13-0 and humiliating Pittsburgh in a BCS Bowl Game, before promptly zooming off
to the greener pastures of Florida. Coaches bring down programs more often than they build them up though; Joe Paterno got old and Penn State has fallen off, Florida has floundered since Spurrier left, Colorado and Washington nosedived after coaches left in the late 90s, Notre Dame hasn't gotten it back since Lou Holtz left, Nebraska was the best team of the 80s and 90s until Osbourne quit, etc.
There are always a few major schools with a new coach that they hope will work miracles, and sometimes they do. More often they don't improve things, or even make them worse; long-time NFL coach Dave Wanndstedt hopped
from the pros to Pittsburgh this year and has them off to a woeful 0-2 start. I saw part of their second game, and it was completely unwatchable in terms of offensive ineptitude; the score was 17-10 and the 3 TDs came on a kickoff return and two INT returns. The first game was more interesting though, as they lost at home to Notre Dame, a team that has their own new coach from the pros, and is off to a 2-0 start after beating Pitt, and then the #3 team in the country, on the road.
Charlie Weis is the new
Notre Dame coach, and he was the offensive coach for the New England Patriots, who have won the last 2 Superbowls, largely due to their innovative coaching. There was much speculation about how his clever offensive schemes would work in college, and if the college players could pick them up in their limited practice time. Well, ND destroyed Pitt (a win that looks much less impressive after Pitt's second game) and then won on the road against the 3rd best team in the country. I taped the game and watched it Saturday afternoon, and it wasn't very pretty for ND. They were perfect on their opening drive and scored effortlessly, then basically did nothing the rest of the day, only winning 17-10 because Michigan turned it over 3 times in the Notre Dame endzone.
I didn't think ND's play calling on offense was that brilliant either; they were perfect pecking away underneath on their first possession, but after that Michigan put more guys up close and their defensive line and linebackers dominated the game. ND responded by putting in more conservative lines, with more blockers and TEs, which just let Michigan pack it in even more. ND didn't have the personnel to power run it, and they should have tried to throw some bombs or longer passes to loosen things up and get the Michigan safeties and LBs back in coverage, rather than bird dogging the rush and short pass. But they won and it's hard to argue with that, even though Michigan soundly outplayed them and only lost on turn overs in the red zone. Hell, if Michigan had just kicked 3 FGs on those 3 empty trips down there they'd have won by 2. But a win is a win, and it's fun to watch a coach try to change things around on the national stage.
In fact, generally speaking I prefer football on Saturdays to Sundays. With 8 or 10 college games on, and up to 3 or 4 at the same time in the afternoon, it's hard to go wrong. Especially since in college they tend to play a higher-scoring, more exciting style of football. I am somewhat hampered by not having any favorite college teams, but I root against a few powerhouses that always win, and in other cases I just pick the underdog, or the team that looks to be trying harder or running more interesting plays.
Plus it's good being in CA for college football, since we mostly get PAC 10 games, and they tend to be quite high scoring and fun. Just today (Sat the 10th) I turned on the set in the early evening and flicked past the big name but boring/low scoring LSU/ASU and TEX/OSU games (they both got good at the end, but were crap in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, when I was watching), and found
Boise State at Oregon State. I could have cared less who won, but there were plenty of points, and in the last 8 minutes of the game (all that I saw) Oregon scored 10 points to come from behind and win by three, while the home crowd went crazy and the announcers yelled themselves hoarse. It was great fun to watch, at least partially because I would have been happy with any outcome. I liked that Oregon kicked the game winning field goal with a minute left, but if it had been blocked and run back by Boise and they'd won instead, I would have had just as much fun watching the home crowd fall into a stunned silence as the visitors celebrated. And both outcomes were far more likely than the odds of any given NFL Sunday game being wild and crazy and exiting at the end, with the much more controlled and scientific and conservative play at the professional level.
Nevertheless, I'll likely set the VCR to record the early game Sunday, and watch it in FF mode in the early afternoon after sleeping until around noon. I actually try to get up around 1, when the late games start, since then I can watch the early game on tape in an hour, while the late game(s) on TV get underway, and then can watch the rest of the late game if it's any good, or do other things if it's not. We've actually got errands to run and lunch to eat out tomorrow, so most likely it'll be other things. And that's fine, since I pretty well got my football fix Saturday, and there are good pro games on Sunday night and Monday night anyway.
