College Football, 2021-22

[PDH]

It's gonna be a long season.

[Berkut]

Arizona opens against SDSU Saturday on CBS. 

SDSU is playing in their brand new stadium that looks pretty awesome, and they took Arizona apart without much trouble last year.

But Arizona has replaced about 50% of their entire roster since last year, and at nearly every position on offense, they have upgraded their talent considerably - but not so much their experience.

SDSU is favored by 6. I think it is going to be a very, very interesting game....

[grumbler]

I always liked Jedd Fisch's playcalling at Michigan.  I don't know if he's going to work out as a head coach, but his passing game should be good and the man can recruit.

[Berkut]

I always liked Jedd Fisch's playcalling at Michigan.  I don't know if he's going to work out as a head coach, but his passing game should be good and the man can recruit.

I've been saying for...decades?...(in the context of Arizona football, of course) that when it comes to coaching college football, you can talk all you like about Xs and Os and motivation and coaching and teaching all you like. And those things are important.

But none of it means anything at all when it comes to competing at the highest levels if you cannot recruit. You are never going to be, over time, better then the kids you recruit. 

And when it comes to recruiting, the reality is that overall, the ranking services mostly get it right. Not always of course, but overall, they are reasonably accurate when it comes to evaluating high school talent.

So all the "diamonds in the rough" and "coaching them up" is basically code words for "we failed at attracting the best talent, so we are really fucking hoping our guys are actually better then they appear to be".

Fisch going in and grabbing some really high end talent impressed me a lot, especially since he did it swimming against a horrifically bad last....decade? There are not too many Power-5 schools with a less attractive record to new high school recruits then Arizona.

Who knows what he can do if they actually get mediocre and go to a bowl game or two!

Of course, what will likely happen in that case is he leaves to go coach at a true top-25 football school.

[Valmy]

But none of it means anything at all when it comes to competing at the highest levels if you cannot recruit. You are never going to be, over time, better then the kids you recruit.

Yeah in order to win at the highest levels everything has to be working. Culture, resources, X's and O's, and recruiting and the rest of it. It is a delicate balance that is hard to sustain...unless you are Ohio State then everything just works out of you perfectly decade after decade year after year. Fuck those guys.

[grumbler]

...unless you are Ohio State then everything just works out of you perfectly decade after decade year after year. Fuck those guys.

"Some guys are born on third base but are convinced that they hit a triple."

[grumbler]

So, it's going to  be a different start to the season for Michigan fans, at least emotionally.  Gone is the Black Pit of Negative Expectations, as Brian Cook called it.  It is not impossible to beat Ohio State in the modern era, as last year showed. Beat them like a drum, in fact.

That doesn't mean that I don't think that OSU has the edge in the Big Ten race this year, because they clearly do.  Just like last year.  But what it means is that every Michigan fan can reasonably hope that out team beats their team.

An MgoBlog poster described this preseason anticipation perfectly:

Remember FOOTBALL?

Yes, I know football never goes away, even during the offseason. We've spent months talking about conference realignment and NIL and division structures and NIL and the transfer portal and NIL and coaching salaries and recruiting rankings and ticket prices and NIL. But that's football. I'm talking about FOOTBALL.

One does not discuss FOOTBALL. FOOTBALL is not an active, purposeful decision. It is an involuntary reaction. An irresistible response to a stimulus planted deep in one's soul. Those of us who are afflicted are the sleeper agents of chaos. Manchurian Candidates of loud noises. And from January through August we wait.

FOOTBALL is the thing that makes you yell stupid, obvious things like "FUMBLE" and "THAT'S A HOLD" and "GET HIM." It causes you to sing Mr. Brightside from the diaphragm to no one in particular. It causes a full body-and-soul reaction when you see a wheel route developing and you realize OH MY GOD IT'S COMING OPEN, or when you see that the blind side corner blitz is going to get home and you find yourself praying to the Gods of Old ⁠— I prefer Marduk, but Quetzalcóatl is also a fine choice ⁠— that the quarterback won't get rid of the ball in time. It's the thing that causes your body to try to expel 37 thoughts at once, but they all come out as LETSGOOOOOOOOOOAAAAGGGHHHHHH.

It an ancient impulse, dating back to the first human to master fire; this thing had a million practical implications, but in that moment all he could do was to stare into the blazing tinder and yell HOLY SHIT WOULD YOU LOOK AT THIS THING.

It's Touchdown Manningham and Wide Open Is Gallon and O-JA-BO. It's a punt return against Ohio State and a punt return against Ohio State. It's Braylonfest. It's the spittle that is still welded to your screen from the profanity you spewed when Karan Higdon got called for holding or Khaleke Hudson got called for pass interference. It's Ronnie Bell breaking open for a long touchdown and Blake Corum hitting the outside and Erick All screaming down the sidelines in direct defiance of the collective will of 100,000 silent white statues. It's the hurdles. My god the hurdles.

There is a lot to hate about football. But football holds the trump card: it can ⁠— and will ⁠—boil the stupid, stupid universe of football down to its essential elements, stripped bare of all the bullshit and hypocrisy and foolishness. And the powers that be know that. They know we will tolerate football because of FOOTBALL.

The ratio of football to FOOTBALL has been steadily increasing over recent years. Perhaps eventually it will hit a tipping point where the FOOTBALL is no longer worth the football. Who knows how much longer we will care the way we care. Who knows how much longer I will be writing this stupid column every week. Who knows how long until we, one by one, shrug and silently walk off to the rest of our lives.

But this is not that time. This is still, for this moment at least, a time of FOOTBALL.

And, of course, the video that predicted this 12 years ago:

[grumbler]

I've been saying for...decades?...(in the context of Arizona football, of course) that when it comes to coaching college football, you can talk all you like about Xs and Os and motivation and coaching and teaching all you like. And those things are important.

But none of it means anything at all when it comes to competing at the highest levels if you cannot recruit. You are never going to be, over time, better then the kids you recruit.

And when it comes to recruiting, the reality is that overall, the ranking services mostly get it right. Not always of course, but overall, they are reasonably accurate when it comes to evaluating high school talent.

So all the "diamonds in the rough" and "coaching them up" is basically code words for "we failed at attracting the best talent, so we are really fucking hoping our guys are actually better then they appear to be".

Fisch going in and grabbing some really high end talent impressed me a lot, especially since he did it swimming against a horrifically bad last....decade? There are not too many Power-5 schools with a less attractive record to new high school recruits then Arizona.

Who knows what he can do if they actually get mediocre and go to a bowl game or two!

Of course, what will likely happen in that case is he leaves to go coach at a true top-25 football school.

Recruiting is getting less important now with the portal essentially allowing college players to consider themselves free agents.  Mel Tucker at Michigan State, for instance, builds the core of his teams off of the portal.  That's an area where Arizona might prosper, given the reputation of the school as a place to cultivate "a good set of friends and a bad set of habits."  In other words, famous for the beauty of the female students.

[Berkut]

Well, no question that the transfer portal has been very, very good to Arizona.

[Valmy]

Bijan4Heisman!

Though I guess that depends on next week 

[grumbler]

Some stats from Iowa's gritty 7-3 win over FCS South Dakota State (in which, despite the score, no touchdowns were scored):

The scoring drives in this game combined for 7 total offensive yards: a 5 yard Iowa field goal drive, an 11 yard SDSU field goal drive, and two safeties totaling -9 yards.

Iowa's Spencer Petras averaged 3.3 yards per dropback. But the worst part is that he was the only Iowa quarterback with a pass attempt. Kirk Ferentz said afterward that he never really considered going to the backup, and that he doesn't anticipate making a QB change going forward. For reference, in his last 9 games, Petras has completed 51% of his passes for 5.9 YPA with 1 TD and 8 INTs.

Iowa's offense put up 2.7 yards per play against an FCS opponent.

Even after you factor out sacks, Iowa managed 1.7 yards per carry on 34 rushes. One third of their carries went for zero or negative yards.

The teams combined to go 7 of 33 on 3rd down. Combined, they ran one play in the red zone; it was a fumble. They combined for 286 yards of offense and 936 yards of punting. They punted a total of 21 times and gained a combined 16 first downs.

I suspect that Ferentz will continue to set new records with this team going forward.  It's worth noting that the Iowa defense is its usual outstanding self, but with this pile of shit they are shoveling onto the field and calling an offense, I foresee a lot of 7-3 type games, but going the other way.

[Valmy]

Apparently since starting to play in 1894, Texas has never lost in the game after the death of a British monarch. I fear that streak is in considerable danger this Saturday.

[grumbler]

Another very Iowa stat (unverified by me, but believable):  since 1897 (when modern scoring was adopted), teams whose offense gained fewer than 170 yards and scored only three points have a record of 7-17456-4.  Six of the wins and all four ties were by Iowa.  Only Yale has also achieved that feat, and they did it in 1903.

[grumbler]

Don't look now, but Texas is back.  If they'd had either a run game or good refs, Alabama would have gone down hard.  Hell, if they could just tackle, Texas would have won.  Texas was clearly better a better team than Alabama in this game.

[Valmy]

Don't look now, but Texas is back.  If they'd had either a run game or good refs, Alabama would have gone down hard.  Hell, if they could just tackle, Texas would have won.  Texas was clearly better a better team than Alabama in this game.

It was a big step forward but it came at a cost. We will see if the injuries to Bijan Robinson and the QBs will be a problem for long.

But Texas is still in this thing. If they can play defense like that the rest of the way (well...except for that one missed tackle...) they can do something special this season.