Mailbag: NCAA Reform #1, DL Moves, Coaching Evaluation, Bo Pelini's Secret Twin
SHOW ME THE HENRY
How to resolve the NCAA being terrible thing.
Brian,
My friend and I were having a discussion about the best way to compensate college players, and he came up with the idea of paying players based on performance, sort of how incentive laden contracts work in the NFL, with the stipulation that the players will not receive the money until they graduate or go pro. I thought his idea was awful and unrealistic, because the “student athletes” would now become paid employees of the university and we essentially would have a semi-pro league on our hands. BUT, that got me thinking about a possible solution…
The issue we have here is the balance of compensation between stars and bench-warmers, large schools and small schools, men’s sports and women’s sports (which could also very well be a legal issue), revenue-generating and non-revenue-generating sports, etc. Instead of trying to figure out that mess, let’s take the decision of compensation out of the universities’ hands.
The solution: allow the student athletes to sign endorsement deals. If a corporation is willing to pay for a player’s likeness, he deserves that money. However, the stipulation here is that all money earned by a student athlete through endorsements would have to be held in an escrow account, and the release of the money would be contingent upon the completion of the player’s eligibility or his/her declaration to go pro, whichever comes first. Now if a player is caught accepting benefits beforehand, the NCAA would not look hypocritical when laying down punishments. Student athletes get compensated, legal issues are avoided, and you won't have a bunch of teenagers running around campus with millions of dollars to blow/get into mischief with. What do you think? So crazy it just might work?
Go Blue,
Stephen Y
That's fine. It's a little paternalistic to tell the kids they can't have money until they get their degree, and that will be less effective at legitimizing the stuff under the table, because poor college kids will still want walking-around money. It's still fine.
I'm not sure why there's this widespread opposition to giving people money in exchange for services, but whatever middle ground you want to stake out that gives the kids their image rights and avoids Title IX issues is fine by me. Sign whatever you want, get whatever money you can acquire, and everything will be the same except compliance folk will have to find less mindlessly pedantic jobs. Worries about booster involvement are naïve—they're already involved.
The other major thing that the NCAA could do is get rid of their inane opposition to agents. If you're a legit agent with X number of current pro clients you can sign players regarded as prospects, and give them some advance on whatever they're going to make in the pros. (If you don't make the pros, that's just tough luck for the agent.) The NCAA doesn't even have to redirect any of the buckets of cash they're currently making to make the system
- less impossible to manage
- a more even playing field
- fairer to the players
-
Yeah: a more even playing field. Right now no one is going to MAC schools over major offers, but schools willing to do under the table stuff—or just not stop it—have an advantage over schools that don't. And it's tough to figure out what the more moral position is there these days.
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DL moves?
Hey Brian,
Sometimes in football, it seems that you just want to get the best guys on the field right? Do you think we might see a DL consisting of Beyer, Henry, Qwash, Black?
I would think Black could flip back out to SDE pretty easily and could fold back in to 3 tech occasionally depending on the substitution patterns. To me that gets your best pass rushers on the field more regularly and is the most likely combo to soak up OL in the run game too.
You mentioned that you expect Beyer to take Clark's job when Ryan comes back, but why not just make that switch now? Wouldn't you rather get Gordon out there with Beyer than Clark at this point?
Thanks,
Daniel
(This was sent before Clark played well against UConn.)
If Michigan was going to put out its best line for one particular play against an I-formation that might well be it, but with opponents running out all kinds of spread packages and Michigan responding by lifting their nose tackle, Black's snaps are mostly going to be spent as an interior rush-type against shotgun formations. It's probably not worth moving him midseason to get a marginal improvement. While I like what I've seen from Henry so far, there was a play against UConn where he got obliterated. (Michigan was fortunate that UConn didn't block the second level well and held the gain down.) He's a work in progress.
Meanwhile on Cam Gordon: for whatever reason they're not playing him, and it's to the point that his lack of playing time speaks to a lack of performance. Beyer's been good, but mostly as a guy with his hand in the dirt. When Beyer's been put in coverage he's shown some flaws. Gordon's not getting more time is probably just his fate at this point.
I don't get it, either. They've been giving him seemingly genuine praise for years now and when it comes down to it they just don't put him on the field.
[After THE JUMP: evaluating Michigan's coaching staff, plus Bo Pelini axe murder.]
Subbing side effects.
Given Mattison's preference for subbing regularly in the front seven, could the coaches be doing this in part to mitigate the dropoff after guys graduate? I was surprised when a preview said Michigan lost 4 starters in the front 7 coming into this season (Campbell, Roh, Demens, Ryan) because their backups got a lot of run in '12, especially late in the season. Obviously Mattison mainly likes to sub to keep guys fresh, but could it have ancillary benefits for a college program by grooming the younger players for when they start, at which point they'll rotate with still more young guys? Could this an intentional part of player development?
Andrew S.
That is a salutary side effect, yes. If you know you're going to get at least a few snaps it's a lot more likely you are focused in practice than if you know the only way you're getting in the game is through injury typhoon. That helps development. It also helps with recruiting when you can point to players X and Y getting time as freshmen.
At some point—probably this point—there will be a time to cut down on that rotation and focus on the guys who are giving you quality time. I think we've seen that process start, as Glasgow hardly got a snap against UConn.
The obligatory coaching Q.
Brian,
Out of all the post-game analysis I have read or heard, your comment that there is nothing that the Michigan line does particularly well scares me the most. I was feeling that DB made a great hire, that this staff could recruit at a high level, teach and develop talent well and had great football minds in Borges and Mattison. I know it is just one game, but I am now questioning the latter two points. I am worried about Hoke's ability to keep up with Urban Meyer. What is your overall opinion about this staff?
Peter
The defensive staff is unimpeachable. They immediately turned around GERG's clownfraudshow and have maintained a high level of performance without having anything resembling a player the NFL is highly interested in except Mike Martin. (I'm not counting Will Campbell, who is now an OL.) They developed JT Floyd from one of the worst corners to ever see the field at Michigan into a guy who got the maximum out of his ability.
Even now they're dealing with a talent level far below the one they'll have in the near future. Michigan's starters-plus-nickelback on defense are still mostly unheralded recruits. Only Quinton Washington, James Ross, Blake Countess, and Jarrod Wilson are consensus four-star types (Black and Taylor got one four star rating apiece from 3 and 4 services, respectively), and Washington was supposed to be an offensive lineman. They're still very young: they bring back all but five guys on their two-deep next year. And they pulled in Jabrill Peppers and are likely to grab Da'Shawn Hand and Malik McDowell. The trajectory here is looking excellent.
On the other side of the ball the jury is still out. Hecklinski seems to have done a fine job with Gallon and Dileo. Chesson is still a work in progress, and his other charges are Reynolds and Jackson. Running back coach is usually a place you stash a recruiter because playing running back is something you do or do not. Fred Jackson's probably retiring in the near future anyway. Ferrigno is the TEs guy, and he is going to get an incomplete for at least another two years. Funchess and AJ Williams both would have redshirted on a team that had any other scholarship tight ends, and Michigan would be gingerly working them both into the lineup behind Jerame Tuman types in any normal situation.
But this entire question is probably about two guys: Darrell Funk and Al Borges.
I still think Funk is in a similar situation as Ferrigno is: he's still trying to dig out of the bomb shelter. In retrospect the Braden-as-guard thing this spring was a major warning sign. Bryant can't stay healthy so your collection of non-freshman, scholarship options on the interior line is Jack Miller and Jack Miller. You know, the guy they were trying to replace. He's hamstrung by Borges's desire to run pretty much the opposite kind of system as they did last year and the lack of coherence in Michigan's running offense, but more importantly he's still in a situation in which he pretty much has to play three and only three guys on the interior OL. Bars is obviously not ready, Bryant is in and out of the lineup, and past that it's Joey Burzynski and true freshmen. When that's your fate sometimes you get stuck with guys who can't play.
In that vein: Funk should be given major points for acquiring and developing Glasgow, who I think is Michigan's best interior OL right now and will be a three-year starter. Where's Michigan without that? Starting Kyle Bosch, probably.
Next year is the real test for Funk. He'll get both guards back, but he will be replacing both tackles with guys he recruited and possibly the center. If there's not significant progress then, caterwauling should begin in earnest.
As for Borges, I find him maddening a lot but when I go check things out I often find that the stuff he called was open but his players biffed it. Still, you never know if you're going to get something like 40 points on Notre Dame or an inexplicable fart. I watch opponents tee off on Michigan's run game without getting punished for it. One of the fun things about breaking down Rodriguez games was waiting for the knockout punch when RR figured out what you were doing to his run game and tweaked something that left you holding your guts and choking on his dust. I got how that system worked.
Borges… I don't know, man. Half the time I think he's great, half the time I think he's a goober. He, too, is stuck with one and only one quarterback.
Whoah.
I can't believe I never noticed this before, but I think Bo Pelini has a long lost twin.
Sincerely,
Chris Banish '96
Whoah. (Also you know that Pelini has killed someone with an axe and put them in a woodchipper.)
September 24th, 2013 at 1:41 PM ^
Ability trumps positional experience, even there.
Last year, we moved a guard/tackle backup who had hardly played center and had little talent (Mealer) to the starting spot rather than playing the lone true center (Miller) recruited for the position. Plus Khoury, who was a center, did not return (by either his choice or the coaches). You'd think if having a pure center was that important they'd have pushed him to return.
This year, Glasgow almost beat out Miller despite being a guard and a walk-on.
September 24th, 2013 at 6:35 PM ^
September 24th, 2013 at 6:43 PM ^
I honestly don't know how anyone plays center as well as they do.
But to add to your point, there is a reason people line up a nose over the center almost every play. Because it is damn hard to snap the ball under that kind of pressure and then not only make the block, but not get blown up. Defenses do this because they know it's really damn hard to play center.
September 24th, 2013 at 6:50 PM ^
September 24th, 2013 at 12:51 PM ^
It's one thing to be starting one young player. It's another to have young players be all of the interior line, including center.
Glasgow is the guard I have the most faith in. He has blown the fewest plays and does not get physically overmatched. I think there is a good argument to be made that he has simply performed above expectations.
The issue, to me, is that a previous coach completely biffed on OL recruiting late in his tenure. We don't have a junior or senior player who may be "just a guy" but has three years of lifting and practice to plug him in and not make mistakes. Michigan has known for two years that it is counting on Kyle Kalis to be a starter at right guard and that there is no other option; he's ok, but there is nothing in front of him.
I am agnostic about the OL coaching right now, because I think the guys should be better. But it is quite possible that they will be, and as we know the recruiting on the line is going to fix at least the talent issue in the coming years.
I think things should be better. Young guys should be able to block MAC level defenders. That they aren't is troubling. Still, it's hard to tell where the issue is coming from--it is evident that Miller is struggling to get up to speed, but how do we know that's coaching? Michigan does not have other players ready to take his place and could not be expected to have such players ready. It was Miller or bust.
September 24th, 2013 at 1:26 PM ^
pretty darn good for Oregon and would be starting here, but that is one of the downfalls of coaching changes. O line is probable the hardest place to recruit and get it right. One top of losing Fisher, Pace medicalled, Posada quit, and QWash was moved to D. Yes the O line was left thin by the previous coach though some of it was no fault of his own.
September 24th, 2013 at 1:46 PM ^
It is easy to blame RR for OL but he was very successful with OL recruiting while he was here. He was justified in focusing on other priorities in '09 and '10 classes when he felt confident he could fill the void in the never-completed '11 class.
It was a mistake to take so few OL in '09 and '10 but a semi-defensible one.
On paper, a spread OL with Lewan-Washington-Miller-Schofield-Fisher with Bryant plus whoever else from the '11 and '12 classes providing depth would look pretty good.
September 24th, 2013 at 3:39 PM ^
You should never go two consecutive years with few OL recruits. There really is no justification for that. OL is one of the trickiest positions to evaluate in recruiting, so it's very risky to bring in only 1-2 guys in a class and hope they pan out. You really should bring in 3-4 every year.
September 24th, 2013 at 3:42 PM ^
Which is why I think Hoke should bring in at least one more this year and should bring in more than people are reporting he will next year. My opinion is that you bring in at least 6 OL over a two year period no matter what.
September 24th, 2013 at 4:38 PM ^
Everyone on MGoBlog seems to have penciled in Braden-Bosch-Kugler-Kalis-Magnuson as an epicly awesome OL but Kalis is the only one who has played yet. There is still a great deal of uncertainty, especially at tackle.
September 24th, 2013 at 4:36 PM ^
Rodriguez was justified in loading up on D recruits once he got his offense stabilized.
September 24th, 2013 at 5:36 PM ^
There are 85 scholarship spots, and we were below that figure throughout RR's tenure anyway. I don't think it would have been that hard to bring in a few more linemen.
September 24th, 2013 at 12:00 PM ^
And not HR-rep diversity. But really, if executed properly, a full-scale playbook by Borges is impossible to defend, because it can attack you no matter what you try to do. The small nuances you can do with blocking, with receivers, with route concepts, with your QB, in general, give it more weapons. Maybe those weapons aren't as powerful, and maybe it's picking up chunks instead of scoring TDs, but it is more weapons and more things for defenses to prepare for, if it's executed and used to its potential.
Spread, in general, must be simpler because it depends so much more on reads that need to be made live. Now, that makes it in general more difficult to defend, because it's not necessarily "here's the play, go stop it". But by its nature it is less complex. If you can stop the play, if the defense has the personnel to stop the play, regardless of the read, then it's dead, and to a high degree that's regardless of execution. The same isn't necessarily true with what Borges wants to do.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, because I honestly don't believe one is better than the other. My personal preference has always been closer to what Borges does, though I definately see the advantages of a spread and like many of the concepts and its simplicity. But you have to run what you believe in more. It's really just the way it is.
FWIW, and people forget this about Rich Rod, but he desperately wanted to install I-form within his offense. That's because of the things that it offered that were counter to what his spread offered. But he never really had the personnel to run it, or the time to install it properly. Towards the end he also desperately started realizing the value of the TE position to the future of his offense. In the end they'll all start to come back to the other, because there are different advantages and benefits of both - again, because neither is necessarily better, just different in philosophy. At least that's my general point of view on the whole thing.
September 24th, 2013 at 12:08 PM ^
You're absolutely right that Rodriguez wanted to have it, and it wasn't just about holdovers. He recruited bigger OL like Bryant and bigger backs like Hopkins.
I'm not sure I buy the "full-scale playbook is impossible to defend" because I haven't seen an impossible to defend pro-style/west-coast offense in a long time. Every impossible-to-defend O I can recall in the last 10 years either had a special talent or a schematic advantage (i.e., was a spread-oriented attack with reads of some sort).
Simplicity seems advantageous, particularly so at the college level.
Going back to Rodriguez's I-form: Absolutely, you want wrinkles and counters, but it seems they have to build on your core competancy. Michigan hasn't been able to establish a core competancy under Borges other than "run QB - run for your life".
September 24th, 2013 at 12:43 PM ^
In that sense no offense is impossible to defend. I think SC's point is that Borges uses a playbook and a philosophy that has an answer for every defensive question. Whether those answers are easy to execute is another matter, but it is there.
I love spread offense, but let's not pretend that they haven't struggled from time to time. When Oregon played Auburn and then LSU, their offensive line was blown apart by superior DL athletes, and as a result they simply could not function as they would normally expect to. Oregon played the title game right down to the wire, but much of its offense came through the good-but-not-great arm of Darron Thomas, and he benefited from a very inconsistent Auburn defensive backfield. LSU punched Oregon in the mouth and Oregon had no answer.
All impossible-to-defend offenses have special talent, and most are at least schematically thorough. There has not been a national champion in recent memory that has won with an offense that gave it a schematic advantage but did not exploit it with unique talent.
September 24th, 2013 at 1:20 PM ^
Certainly not a Michigan fan alive in '08.
Oregon has come close to winning a title without any special talent. Their next great NFL player will be their first since the spread was installed. It's been entirely about scheme. Texas Tech was another school that came close with Leach.
Yes, any team can be torn apart by huge a talent disadvantage. But Auburn only managed to slow Oregon down, not shut them down entirely. If the 'struggle' results in losing to the best D in the country by a FG, that's not so terrible.
September 24th, 2013 at 2:05 PM ^
I think it's perilous to judge how good a college player based on how good they are as a pro. Does Reggie Bush's mediocre NFL career make him a worse college player?
Regardless, they've turned on a pro-bowl center, two NFL tailbacks, and a WR since Chip Kelly became their head-coach. I feel comfortable saying that Barner and Thomas will be in the NFL too.
That's pretty respectable in...4 years?
September 24th, 2013 at 4:40 PM ^
Bush has had a very good NFL career IMO.
You're right to an extent, but there's a long list of system players whose skills didn't translate at the next level. I'd nominate a lot of UM running backs into this category actually.
Fair point that Chip Kelly wasn't there that long.
September 24th, 2013 at 2:06 PM ^
I'm sorry, but your last two paragraphs are just not accurate.
Oregon's scheme was and is excellent, but they had in guys like LaMichael James truly remarkable talents that were well-suited to what they ran. And yet they were substantially disrupted by Auburn's defense.
...Which is the even larger problem. Auburn wasn't even close to the best D in the country. They gave up 24.1 ppg, good for only 53rd in the country. They gave up almost 260 passing yards and over 100 rushing yards per game. This was in the not-so-offensively-brilliant SEC. They were, nonetheless, able to hold high-flying Oregon to 19 points, a cool four touchdowns below their season average.
September 24th, 2013 at 4:43 PM ^
A 3rd string NFL RB is not a remarkable talent IMO. Comapre to say, JaQuizz Rogers just up the road from Eugene. The difference in accolades in college is enormous, but Quizz was the better player.
I stand corrected on Auburn.
19 point is nothing to sneeze at. You can't hold Oregon's staggering production AGAINST them, in an argument about how bad they are. They were slowed down, not stopped. Other teams have won championships with 19 points - so if you want to talk talent discrepancy maybe Oregon's D is a better place to look.
September 24th, 2013 at 2:07 PM ^
Did you mean to write "losing to the 68th best D in the country by a FG?"
And that's only the second dumbest thing written in that passage.
September 24th, 2013 at 2:12 PM ^
And Auburn wasn't close to the best D in the country. They were ranked in the 50's in but yardage and scoring.
September 24th, 2013 at 2:27 PM ^
Here are some numbers.
Oregon has the 10th most players in the NFL. Tied with OSU.
In the past 5 years, they have had 3 first rounders and 6 second rounders. Michigan in that time span has only managed 2 of each.
The 2010 team, that was so bereft of talent had the Doak Walker winner.
September 24th, 2013 at 4:50 PM ^
but yeah - Oregon has had more good players than I thought
and they have been recruiting a much higher talent level in the last few years
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