Football Articles
The Big 12 Zebra Preserve
Posted by Scipio Tex on May 26th, 2009 under Football
Last week, Tom Osborne received deafening silence for his idea that the Big 12 sit struggling officials. Insiders speculate that this is punishment by other athletic directors for Osborne insisting that he be called a Doctor, despite his doctorate being in something as completely bullshit as educational psychology.
Tom Osborne goes apeshit!
This led Dr. Tom to launch a profanity-laced tirade aimed at other Big 12 athletic directors and “various Armenian advocacy groups” in which Dr. Tom claimed that “certain motherfuckers in this room are trying to test me” and culminated with him pelting A&M Athletic Director Bill Byrne mercilessly with detritus from a break table: a chocolate dipped pretzel, a half consumed bottle of Evian, and a Mounds bar.
Forgetting that Osborne is a maniacal hothead, I actually applaud his push for greater accountability. However, I don’t think that the Big 12’s spotty officiating is the consequence of rogue referees, but rather is a systematic failure countenanced by its head of officials, Walt Anderson. The Big 12 head of officials made a decision to feature scoring offenses and it’s setting back the quality of play.
Holding is now a legitimate basis for constructing an offense: stock your OL with 350 pounders that can’t be bullrushed and let them grab any greyhound who tries to sprint past. With QB exposure now a minimized risk, you can gleefully send out five receivers. You also get a false sense of your passing game’s efficacy and neglect your running game. Is it coincidence that Tech was stymied by Ole Miss blitzing, Texas was defensed effectively by Ohio St, and OU was shut down by Florida? Amazing how those high-flying offenses crashed to earth against good athletes allowed to play the game by competent officials.
Pass defense is now a crapshoot. Perfect coverage is assumed to be interference if the receiver can look properly aggrieved, any notion that the defender has an equal right to the ball has been scrubbed, and defensive coordinators rejoice if they hold the opposing offense to a field goal.
We can argue back and forth whether this style of play is desirable, but I’m fairly confident that you’ll continue to see 45 point per game Big 12 offensive machines scoring half of that in big games with neutral officials when receivers encounter normal DB contact and OL find themselves warned after the first snap to stop grabbing or they’ll get a flag.
Right now the guy who needs to be sat down for a while is running the whole officiating show. And that’s not going to happen.
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coloradoag:
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Ha ha ha ha! It’s Joel Osteen’s world. You just live in it.
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admin commented on the blog post Bracket Analysis: The South is a Bear of a Bracket 3 hours, 30 minutes ago
Ha ha ha ha! It’s Joel Osteen’s world. You just livesin in it.
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admin commented on the blog post Bracket Analysis: The South is a Bear of a Bracket 3 hours, 30 minutes ago
Ha ha ha ha! It’s Joel Osteen’s world. You just live sin in it.
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Ag_in_TX commented on the blog post Bracket Analysis: The South is a Bear of a Bracket 4 hours, 46 minutes ago
Of course not.
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Kevin Berger commented on the blog post Bracket Analysis: The South is a Bear of a Bracket 5 hours, 6 minutes ago
Ag, cool, I agree with pretty much everything you say except your claim that you dictated tempo to UNM. But no biggie.
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Hiphopopotamus commented on the blog post We talkin’ ’bout brackets 5 hours, 18 minutes ago
I’ll say the same thing I did at March to March…
I love this Baylor team. They’ve got all the pieces for a run and they’re in a ridiculously underwhlemingly regional, BUT…
It’s Baylor. They haven’t won a tournament GAME since I think 1950…now we’re expecting them to go out and win 4 in a row?
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Hiphopopotamus commented on the blog post We talkin’ ’bout brackets 5 hours, 18 minutes ago
I’ll say the same thing I did at March to March…
I love this Baylor team. They’ve got all the pieces for a run and they’re in a ridiculously underwhlemingly regional, BUT…
It’s Baylor. They haven’t won a tournament GAME since I think 1950…now we’re expecting them to go out and win 4 in a row?
Certainly those
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Triston, wow, that’s a great number. Nice work.
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Kevin Berger commented on the blog post Bracket Analysis: The South is a Bear of a Bracket 5 hours, 32 minutes ago
Speaking of history, when was the last time Duke got out of the round of 16?
Villanova has something going on underneath the surface. They look beatable.
Baylor’s playing really good ball with really good players. I guess that’s why I picked them, but I’m probably overthinking things and should have written Duke in.
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Kevin Berger commented on the blog post Bracket Analysis: The South is a Bear of a Bracket 5 hours, 36 minutes ago
Ag in TX, have you watched them play?
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TaylorTRoom said:
May 26th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I don’t think the Big 12 wants to change. They look at the October to mid-November series of ESPN Gameday matchups, and think that not calling holding is a great idea.
Steve Nebraska said:
May 26th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Tom Osborne would outlaw the forward pass if he could.
Also, I thought the Big 12 was entering into some regional ref-sharing type of arrangement with the Mountain West and/or WAC…or is that just something I completely made up?
intellectual type said:
May 26th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Why in the name of Zeus’ butthole would the Big XII enter into an agreement like that?
The General said:
May 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Why in the name of Zeus’ butthole would the Big XII enter into an agreement like that?
Because, unlike entry into the Olympian’s Hershey Highway, Big XII officiating can’t stink any worse.
If they told me they were entering into a cooperative self monitoring program with Enron, Bear Stearns, and AIG, I don’t think it would get worse.
Though cross training with the NBA would definitely bring down the Big XII’s lofty standard.
intellectual type said:
May 26th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Haha, fair enough. I suppose you’re right that it could only help the quality of officiating in the Big XII. Also, of the limited WAC and MWC games I’ve watched, I never had any problems with any of the officiating.
jinx said:
May 26th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Dude, that is the best phrase ever. Everything is going to be in the name of Zeus’ butthole for the next week or so. Thanks i.t.
Strunk and White said:
May 26th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Zeus’s butthole
Ojnab Bob said:
May 26th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Well said Scipio; we’ve beaten these points to death over the last year, but I don’t see the conference changing.
The Big XII, in addition to warping the game of football beyond all recognition, is doing itself a disservice in getting its teams ready for bowl games.
coach Callahan said:
May 27th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Tom Osborne would outlaw the forward pass if he could. You should watch some of Nebraskas games when osborne was the coach. He was the master of setting up the play action pass to kill teams. Osborne would use the run like a baseball bat to the ribs time after time then suddenly stab you right in the ear with the play action pass.
Kafka said:
May 27th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Scipio’s theory makes sense to me. My guess is that Walt Anderson did not instigate this go easy on holding policy. More likely his boss, with the encouragement of Big 12 ADs, is the one pulling the strings. The fact that Osborne’s proposal (an obviously good idea) got no traction among the other ADs indicates that the fix is probably in.
The first step to fix this mess is to measure it (if it is worth doing, it is worth measuring) by comparing Big 12 holding to, for example, SEC holding. Right now there is no objective comparison of the quality of officiating between the various conferences.
Will said:
May 27th, 2009 at 11:12 am
So Colt throwing for over 400 yards against Ohio St. was our offense crashing to Earth?
I completely agree that the league lets too much holding go on, but I think each team’s failures were a bit more complex than their tackles being unable to hold defensive ends.
Mack Tripper said:
May 27th, 2009 at 11:22 am
So Colt throwing for over 400 yards against Ohio St. was our offense crashing to Earth?
——————–
My bad, I thought Quan’s miracle play at the end to win the game was necessiatated by our trailing on the scoreboard. I guess those passing yards would’ve won the game for us anyway.
Scipio Tex said:
May 27th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Will:
Colt had 58 attempts to get those 414 yards and he was sacked four times. We also scored 24 points despite running 86 plays from scrimmage. Yes, that’s an offense coming down to earth.
Tim said:
May 27th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
You UT guys have got to get over the holding conspiracy. Texas Tech didn’t have any more holding calls than usual(2) against Ole’ Miss with Pac 10 officials.
I don’t remember OU having any additional holding calls against Florida. Ya’ll just think that because UT had some overhyped DE’s that underperformed and you needed a reason why, other than they were just overrated.
If you really want something to gripe about, how about officials that throw a flag on block in the back calls on punt returns. Then mysteriously wave the flag off after an obvious block in the back. That even Colt McCoy loving Musbuger saw.
HenryJames said:
May 27th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Texas Tech didn’t have any more holding calls than usual(2) against Ole’ Miss with Pac 10 officials.
Really, Tim? No more than usual? I decided not to take your word for it and looked at the stats for Tech’s games against Kansas State, Nebraska, A&M, Texas, Oklahoma State and Baylor. You had one holding call against your offensive line in those six games. One.
TaylorTRoom said:
May 27th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
One per game for six games? That’s impressive. That means Tech doubled their average on holds in the CB, with PAC-10 refs.
HenryJames said:
May 27th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
No. One holding call total from the offensive line in six games.
dick said:
May 27th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
“Texas Tech didn’t have any more holding calls than usual(2) against Ole’ Miss with Pac 10 officials.”
and they got their shit pushed in. coincidence? I think not.
Tim said:
May 28th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Honestly 2 holding calls, and that some how makes you idiots right? If what you morons are saying was right I would expect 4,5, or 6 calls from Pac-10 officials. I don’t think 2 justifies as a conspiracy.
But hey you idiots need an excuse for the reason Texas Tech kept UT out of a NC game, I get it. I do like how all of you have completely ignored the block-in-the-back call on Shipley’s return, or Crabtree’s phantom PI call. Without those two calls, it wouldn’t have been such a great game. Gald the refs could keep McCoy in it, just to see his face in the final :01.
Nordberg said:
May 28th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
“Gald the refs could keep McCoy in it, just to see his face in the final :01.”
Yeah that Colt is a real asshole.
“Honestly 2 holding calls, and that some how makes you idiots right?”
Well, it was twice as many as in the previous six games combined, so by definition, yes. Are you like six years old or something?
Will said:
May 28th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Colt had 58 attempts to get those 414 yards and he was sacked four times. We also scored 24 points despite running 86 plays from scrimmage. Yes, that’s an offense coming down to earth.
———————————–
Ok, but how can we extrapolate that the offensive line being unable to hold like they do in Big 12 games was the cause?
Don’t most teams tend to suffer a drop off in their bowl game when they don’t reach the game they want to be in? Notable examples of this being Georgia vs. WVU in 2005, Utah vs. Alabama last year, Cal vs. Tech in 2004, etc. and so forth.
We had 8 penalties in that game, which seemed to be pretty average for us.
I just figured our lack of offensive firepower to stem more from mistakes, a Senior laden Ohio State defense that was highly motivated, and our guys being let down because they were forced to play the Bucknuts instead of getting a title shot against Florida like they deserved.
Will said:
May 28th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Mack Tripper:
Yeah, I thought our defense being completely unable to stop either Wells or Pryor definitely wasn’t an issue as to why Ohio St. was in the lead near the end of the game.
It was absolutely all Colt and the offense’s fault. Glad you were able to catch that, champ.
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