bo

Hey Brian,

I was wondering if you could give me some insight on why we haven't taken the leap in going Varsity with our lacrosse programs. We appear to have one more women's sport than men's at the varsity level (women's rowing is varsity, men's rowing is club), so would that make it easier to add a men's sport under Title IX? If Lacrosse were the next sport to go varsity, would we also take the women's program?

Thanks,
-Mike

Title IX compliance isn't based on the number of sports but the number of participants, which gives football a big overhang and usually forces everyone to carry at least one more women's sport than they do men's. For some reason, even rostered walk-ons count in Title IX calculations. Here's an ESPN article about K-State's 124-member football team that takes the stance that the problem in this scenario is lots of walk-ons and not the stupidity of counting a player who's not adding anything more than the cost of his pads to the athletic department's expenses.

Adding lacrosse as a varsity sport will necessitate the addition of a women's sport. I am not aware of any that have the organization or success that lax does, but some club team is going to get lucky.

Title IX, at least as it applies to college athletics, seems outdated to me. When 57% of college students are women the gender to be concerned about has switched, and when a sport like football takes in millions of dollars it seems like it shouldn't count at all. It's supposed to be about equal support, and football doesn't require support in many places.

Brian:

Have you ever determined, if it's even possible to determine, how many national championship games Bo would have coached, if the BCS system existed while he was a coach?

Thanks,

Jack Turner

It will depend on what crazy mixed up BCS system you want to adopt. Since the Harris Poll didn't exist when Bo was around, you can't replicate the current system. Since that current system is the final expression of "the voters are always right," though, we can just use the AP poll as a proxy. If we're going by that, Bo would have played in the national title game in 1976, when  Michigan was #2 and had eight first-place votes. They would have played #1 Pitt.

There were a ton of close calls, though: 1989 (#3), 1986 (#4), 1985 (#5), 1978 (#5), 1977 (#4), 1974(#4), 1973 (#5), 1971 (#4 despite being 11-0). With many of those votes close and between teams will wildly varying schedules, the computers might have been able to swing Michigan into a title game in one of those years.

Hey Brian-

this thought was spurred by your mention of Boise St potentially being included in the Mtn West. Do you think that if Big 10 expansion steals Missouri & Nebraska away from the Big 12, it might lay the groundwork for TCU & Utah (maybe Boise, as well?) to step in to fill those vacated spots? Given these recent bits I've read about the Pac 10 and Big 12 working together to seal the deal on TV contracts west of the Mississippi, it seems to make sense that both leagues might be up for welcoming in the hot non-BCS schools out there. In fact, maybe the PAC-10 opens it's doors to Boise??

I know you've been critical of teams like Boise rising into the spotlight, due to strength of schedule issues. I definitely see where you're coming from, but I think it's great for the game to have teams like that step up. I do think this kind of seismic shift/realignment/expansion is an opportunity for these non-BCS teams to come to the table with the big boys and really prove their worth. Funneling teams like Boise, Utah & TCU into the 2 major conferences on the left side of the country really would make things pretty interesting, and, IMO, ends the possibility of BCS-busters, at least for awhile. Boise St joining the MWC really just continues the problems that already exist, even if the conference moves toward an automatic bcs bid. I think I'd rather have the good teams from the MWC sucked out into the BCS conferences, and have the remainder of the WAC & MWC relegated into a B-league with little chance of bursting the BCS bubble. What do you think?

Will be interesting to follow, for sure.

-Jon

The way the current system is set up there is almost nothing a team like Boise State can do to actually deserve placement in the national title game. Any team from a BCS conference with one loss and a decent nonconference game or two is going to vastly exceed Boise's worthiness. One or two games against Pac-10 teams a year does not make a viable candidate when the chances of you, or any other serious national title contender, losing against the remainder of the WAC is close to zero. That's my only problem with Boise. Move them to the Mountain West and now maybe we're talking.

If we're talking about my ideal version of college football, it would be seven setups like the Pac-10 has now: ten team conferences that play a round robin. This would never happen, of course. Personally, I'd rather have the MWC as a second Big East than jamming more and more teams into big conferences with no clear winners.

Brian,

Attached is a spreadsheet showing our redzone efficiency since 2003.  I have tracked various stats from the 2003 season forward and this happened to be one of them.  This is % of points scored based on 7 pts per trip.  Before the Illinois game we were right about average on offense and much better on defense (about the only thing the defense had consistently done well, thank God, otherwise things could really be ugly).  I couldn’t find the national numbers prior to 2007 so I used an average of 2007-2009 (to date).  The national numbers are assuming no 2 pt conversion and no missed xps. At that sample size I can’t imagine the other years straying too far from this figure. 

Trent

BGS 2003

National average: 69%

What does this say? I'm not really sure other than maybe Red Zone efficiency isn't incredibly important. The horrible 2008 offense was not that far off the average and actually better than the 2004 and 2005 teams; the beyond horrible 2009 defense was actually considerably above average.

Earlier this year when one Ohio State blogger who pops his head up around here from time to time invoked what must be the second most-dread name in coaching* to an Ohio State fan considering the leadership of his favored program, I basically scoffed at the comparison:

I'm not saying Jim Tressel is Lloyd Carr, but... what separates Lloyd Carr in say, 2002 or 2003, from Jim Tressel right now? This is a line of thought I've been seriously following for the better part of a year now. I'd like some input from Michigan fans on this.

Here's my input: that's way hasty.

Though Jim Tressel shares many of Lloyd Carr's philosophies, he's been much better at making sure his unwavering belief that he has a kick-ass defense, great special teams, and pounding ground game is accurate. This made his philosophies actually work on the field. It makes way more sense to play Lloyd/Tresselball when your quarterback is Craig Krenzel and your middle linebacker is AJ Hawk than when your quarterback is Tom Brady and your middle linebacker is Zack Kaufman.

And Tressel has consistently displayed an aptitude for pulling out the stops when it comes to The Game. The single play that leaps out to me from Tressel's oeuvre that demonstrates his mastery of Michigan came midway through 2006's Football Armageddon. Ohio State rushed to the line after a nine-yard gain, aligned in a power formation, snapped the ball almost as soon as it was set, and ran play action that sucked Ryan Mundy up and led to an easy touchdown. That touchdown represented the four points separating a win from a loss and spoke of meticulous, wily preparation. (And, of course, the fact that Michigan safety play was consistently awful for ten years.) Jim Tressel is only a dinosaur when it suits him, which is usually but not always.

"Usually" is fine when you're going up against teams you've out-recruited for a decade. It's not when you're going up against USC or Florida or Texas, and in the aftermath of Ohio State's six straight failed attempt to prove themselves something other than a local bully, Ohio State fans got antsy, even angry. Then Chris Brown of Smart Football unloaded on Jim Tressel in a guest post at Doctor Saturday. You've probably seen it already. It instantly became an internet sensation everywhere from here to Ohio State message boards to, apparently (and possibly apocryphally), Tressel himself on Columbus radio. It's remarkable in a number of ways, but mostly for the strident tone Brown adopts. Brown has established himself as the blogosphere's most knowledgeable and perceptive observer of football, and he's done so without depressing a key in anger. The effect of the piece was similar to Bill Cosby calling someone you hate a stupid caveman:

[Tressel] is not good enough of a tactician to win against the national elite who, unlike practically everyone he schemes against in his conference, have the talent to match Ohio State's, and those are the only games where coaching really matters. With his facilities, talent, and resources, winning the Big Ten is not the test.

Look at the numbers. Ohio State's failure to beat a quality opponent since defeating Michigan to punch a ticket to the national championship game in 2006, Tressel's teams have been outclassed, outsmarted, outplayed and outprepared in every big game they've played.

If you haven't read it already, stop everything immediately and do so. The thing is pure porn for Wolverines, especially because the counter-example to stupid is the guy currently calling the plays for Tate Forcier.

You'll note that the other side of the ball was ahead of USC's curve. This seems like less of an accomplishment than it did a week ago, but this kind of statement from an offensive lineman…

“We spent all night trying to adjust to what they were doing up front. They did not come with the stuff we practiced against.”

…is the precise opposite of what Michigan fans will remember hearing and loathing whenever Michigan made a Rose Bowl against teams that would bash their heads in with a stick. That's high praise for the coaches and something that keeps Ohio State afloat even when they've got wonky quarterbacking—which, by my count, has been all but two years of Tressel's tenure.

This is about adaptation. In Michigan's win over Notre Dame, Tate Forcier threw 33 times, which was eight more attempts than Pat White ever had at West Virginia. Meanwhile, Tressel attempts to pound a square peg into a round, arm-punting hole. This goes beyond just the playcalling, though you'd never think it given the postgame reaction.

There was a minor hubbub about Tressel dropping something analogous to Rich Rodriguez's infamous "get a life" quote, albeit in exquisitely Senator Tressel fashion:

"When I read some of them I feel terrible for them because there's no way they're happy," he said. "They've got to be some of the most unhappy people in the world, and I feel bad because we just made them less happy, and I hate to be a part of making someone less happy. I mean, they're already miserable."

Exact same sentiment as "get a life," but respun in a way that defuses the hubbub. Yea, truly, Jim Tressel is a brilliant politician. But Holy God the only person to not totally ignore the big story from that press conference was Adam Rittenberg, who spent a bunch of his post on the matter detailing the ridiculous decisions Tressel made en route to defeat:

Tressel, who said he makes most of the play calls even though Jim Bollman has the title of offensive coordinator, disdained going for a touchdown in favor of an easy field goal on fourth-and-goal at the USC 1 early in the second quarter. He also favored punting on fourth-and-1 at the USC 45 in the third quarter.

With around 8 minutes left in the game and Ohio State gripping a 15-10 lead, the Buckeyes drove to a first down at the USC 35. After a run gained 3 yards, quarterback Terrelle Pryor threw an incompletion and then was sacked for a 4-yard loss that meant kicker Aaron Pettrey would have a 53-yard attempt on fourth-and-11 at the USC 36. Tressel elected to punt again.

That punt led to the Trojans taking control for an impressive 86-yard drive that won the game.

Ohio State is going toe-to-toe with a program they consider their equal. They're actually a significant underdog, with USC favored by seven. And Tressel kicked a field goal from the one yard line, punted on fourth and one on USC's side of the field, and punted from the USC 36. All of these things are insane by the numbers and more so when you've recruited a 6'6" beast of a quarterback who can fall forward for a first down behind the swamp-beast of a guard who you stole from Michigan. Tressel shriveled up and reduced variance in a game he is the underdog in because he finds it extremely hard to shift gears. By doing so he set his team up to lose a narrow lead late. His decisions can be directly blamed for the loss. Ohio State should never have been up only five points in that game. Engineering students of Ohio State, welcome to the same level of hell I was on after the 2005 Ohio State game. May you reside here long and painfully.

This is a failure to adapt. For twenty years Tressel has operated at a significant talent advantage relative to almost all of his peers. With the relative collapses of Michigan and Penn State—who has beaten OSU of late when the talent scales approach even—there has been no local program fit to challenge Ohio State recruiting star to recruiting star, and he's rolled up conference championships and victories only to be smacked down when the big guys from elsewhere roll into town. Tressel is fixed in his ways and has not been challenged sufficiently to re-evaluate his philosophy. At this point it's hard to imagine him doing so simply because of inertia. And the big games continue to roll by without victories. Tressel, at this point, is not a version of Carr waiting to happen. He's Bo Schembechler. 

-----------

POSTSCRIPT: The exercise of comparing Rodriguez to Tressel, Carr, and Schembechler is largely left to the reader, but I'll refer you to an earlier piece that has been reinforced by the first three weeks of this season and the Smart Football article above. Money (ha) graf:

Rodriguez comes from a wholly different background than Carr, coming up through the ranks at NAIA schools and Tulane and Clemson and West Virginia. Until Pat White showed up he never had a significant talent advantage against the vast majority of opponents. He never, ever had the luxury of lying back and thinking to himself "if we out-execute the opponent we will win," and it shows. He invented a whole new offense and used it to exploit inefficiencies in recruiting. To seal the Sugar Bowl against Georgia he called a fake punt, exploiting inefficiencies in fourth-down playcalling. For the past seven years he has played Moneyball at West Virginia.

*(Number one.)

Pre-emptive apologies: the sound quality of this recording is wretched. During bits of it my mp3 player's hard drive kicks in and makes a deeply irritating whirring noise for a couple seconds. I wish it was better, but present it to you anyway because Lloyd Carr's speech at the Bo memorial was amazing.

Lloyd Carr

This is why I tried to verbally choke anyone who so much as looked funny at Carr and his "hot seat" before the year, and judging from the reaction of the crowd today (and at the beginning of the season), I'm not alone.

I have a report that Bo Schembechler collapsed again at the taping of Big Ten Ticket; this time it was serious enough that he did not leave under his own power and did not tape the show. He's been rushed to the hospital.

Bo, seriously: you gotta make it one more day.

Update: Word around the hospital is a severe heart attack.

Update II: Channel 7 reports that Bo has passed away.

Buckeye Concerns: I didn't think Troy Smith's thumb thing was a big deal watching the Northwestern game. Some Buckeye fans are concerened, though. Awash in a sea of bad sports-talk-radio impersonation, Men of the Scarlet and Gray worry(-ies?) thusly:

Troy Smith's thumb. (I don't care what the "official" line is about his throwing hand being fine. Troy hasn't been able to throw the deep ball for three weeks now, the same number of weeks he's had his thumb and wrist taped. He's underthrowing every deep ball, forcing Ginn to slow down to get under it, effectively removing the weapon that torched OSU's opponents for the first half of the season.)

I dunno, Smith's throw to Ginn at the end of the first half versus Northwestern look AOK to me.

Meanwhile, The 614 notes that the Buckeye depth chart still lists Alex Boone behind Tim Schafer and, oddly, has Kirk Barton listed as "OR" with his backup. Probable relevance? Slight, though the 614 speculated Boone might be magically healed "after the first couple series." I doubt he misses any time, personally, if he's actually healthy. Also of note: with the Buckeyes going up against a lot of spread attacks lately, weakside linebackers John Kerr (disappointing senior) and Ross Homan (true freshman) haven't seen much time. Potential mismatch there?

Midwestern Bias noted something not many did in OSU's clobberation of the Wildcats:

Despite the turnovers, I was terrified by the way the defense was shredded in the first half. Not getting to the QB, falling for screens constantly, and generally poor tackling were all-too-prevalent in the first 30 minutes. Keith over at BC gained a little optimism by the defense holding NW to about 60 yards after intermission, but I'm still nonplussed to say the least: all season long, when competent opposing offenses have presented the threat of both the run and the pass, this defense has been brutal. What has saved them has been the proclivity of the Buckeye offense to jump out to sizable leads early in almost every game, as teams have had to abandon the run and commit to the pass. And as mediocre as the D has looked early in games against the run (and occasionally against the pass), they've throttled teams once they got to the point where they knew passes were coming and could pin their ears back and go apeshit rushing the QB, without having to worry about rushing plays. Will we jump out to a 2+ score lead early against Michigan? Doubtful. The Wolverines will play the entire game with all offensive options a plausible possibility on every single play, and I'm worried about our defense's ability to stop them.

(Seems a little negative... "brutal"? I would classify Texas as competent, even with McCoy in his second start, and seven (admittedly turnover-aided) points isn't bad.) I bring it up because I've watched OSU for a good portion of the year and if I say that I think their defense seems remarkably vulnerable for one of the nation's leaders in, well, everything I'm a big fat homer. But that guy's got a picture of Boban Savovic on his blog! Concerns are real!

Along those lines: Treasured commenter Colin drops science:

So you know how Football Outsiders had that article where they talked about run yardage distribution? I decided to go back (via Yahoo Sports) play by play and create a similar running total for three games for Mike Hart (ND, Wisc, PSU) and three games for the OSU defense (Tex, PSU, NW). I picked games based on perceieved competence of the run defenses faced. I probably should have thrown in Garret Wolfe too, but that would have probably made the Buckeye defense look worse.

To the numbers:

HART (80 documented carries)

min.yds 10.00% -15
0-4 yds 55.00% 82
5-9 yds 22.50% 112
10+ 12.50% 155

As expected, he rarely loses yards, but also doesn't break that many long gains. Notre Dame was by far his statistically most deviant game, with an actual five yard loss to his credit. Wisconsin was his most consistent, but least fruitful in terms of long games with PSU somewhere in the middle. I'm not overly surprised. ND's linebacker play wasn't that great and led to good gains, but their DL play that day was superb. Wiscy had little penetration, but cleaned up solidly. PSU had the best combo, but a weak DE which we exploited eventually. So how does OSU look?

tOSU (69 documented carries)

min.yds 8.70% -12
0-4 yds 50.72% 87
5-9 yds 23.19% 104
10+ 17.39% 191

I took off the last NW drive because it was clearly garbage time...it would have made OSU's third stringers look bad anyway. Whatevs.

So, it would appear that OSU likely has a fairly poor run defense against competent backs. Hunt, Young, Charles and Sutton are varyingly talented, but certainly at least solid and capable backs with at least decent run blocking at their disposal. The lack of negative plays to me suggests a lack of DL penetration against the run (which may well be part of the scheme) and, considering the additional numbers, a lack of discipline and tackling ability in the linebackers.
Colin | 11.13.06 - 3:58 pm | #

I think there's a little cherry-picking going on here (Why NW instead of Minnesota, who got shut down?), but that's a fairly large sample of Michigan's rushes against competent run defenses and Ohio State's attempts to defense competent rush offenses; it suggests that Hart can expect a slightly more proficient day than he had against ND/UW/PSU. Against those teams he rushed for 327 yards on 80 carries -- 4.1 YPC.

I think there's substantial evidence Michigan will be able to run.

Really unverified, but Cross Cyed thinks Jim Harbaugh will be the next coach at Iowa State. I scouted around the ISU Rivals and Scout sites, found a ton of message board posts I can't read discussing Harbaugh, and the ISU Rivals sites' equivalent of Inside The Fort featured a front-page picture of the man himself. At the very least he's a serious candidate and may be the front-runner.

This would be outstanding for Michigan. If Harbaugh succeeds at ISU he'll rocket towards the top of appealing head coach candidates when Carr retires.

Youtube!

Many highlights of the past:

You can't spell "College Football iyknh" without "Nick Lachey":

Uh-oh. Antonio Bass had another major surgery ten days ago and may miss next season as well. The probability he ever plays again is dropping rapidly. Makes you wonder if Greg Mathews' redshirt-burn and the wide receiver fiesta that is t he 2007 recruiting class were decision made with Bass' status in mind.

Etc.: Pictures of the proposed renovation from inside the stadium I still like it, but I wish they would give the stadium a bit of a buffer and add in some extra rows. Since the seats are going to widen, everyone's going to get moved around, and while I have no problem moving back a row or three if I'm suddenly shifted down ten yards there will be blood. Maisel on Bo; I heart Bo. Forde on potential rematch. EDSBS files a special report on the chaos and anarchy reigning in Columbus.

Oh my god... there is so much more. I'm just going to dump this installment out and continue gathering.