On Coaching...

In honor of Thanksgiving, a day full of football, this post is (almost) all about the pigskin. Now, last weekend was filled with college coaches using horrible decision-making skills. The most publicised one was Les Miles telling his player to spike the ball with :01 second left, when the rules state that :01 has to be run of the clock for a spiked ball; thus the clock expired and his team lost. But that was far from the only weird decision made lately. Yale's coach did not learn from Belichick's failure on 4th and 2 and went for it on his own half of the field, despite leading, when it was 4th and 22. He also lost. I absorbed all this data and what it has done is spawn a new theory about why college coaches seldom succeed at the next level.

Now, a lot of people think it is because they can't just recruit the players they want and thus they have a harder time installing their systems once they get to the NFL. Another theory is that they need to be the biggest star in the room and college coaches, no matter how great the players they may have there, are always the faces of their programs. I now believe it is because it is just harder to coach when the playing field is level and these guys actually have to do some coaching. Think about it: Les Miles has been at LSU, a top program, for a number of years now. In all his time there, how many games has he had to coach against really, truly great opponents? In reality, it's not that often. The SEC is usually has one or two teams that are trying to rebuild and teams schedule cream-puffs with the rest of their schedule. What that does is lower the coach's ability to make big decision when they are up against a clock. How often does Les Miles need to make a tough decision in a close game: 2, maybe 3 times a season? In other words, if I owned an NFL team and I was looking to hire a new coach, I would much rather have Charlie Weis than Les Miles. Of course, if those are my only two options I guess the best call would be to sell the team.

-Speaking of getting rid of a failing commodity, I was kind of bummed to see that Northeastern is ending it's football program. I mean, I get it because it was costing a ton of money, but it still is kind of a downer. I have always liked Northeastern and once Boston University folded its football program I held high hopes that perhaps Northeastern would pick up the 1-AA slack for the area; maybe even one day take the program to the next level. But, it's time to face facts: Boston is not a college sports town. There are just too many schools, too bunched together for one program to rise up and garner support from the entire city. If you go to B.U., Harvard, Northeastern, M.I.T., Suffolk or Emerson then why would you want to support another school so close to your own? You wouldn't, so what ends up happening is that no program dominates the town. That is why pro sports will always come first here, save the random instance of a team making a Final Four run.

-Ok, off of the football topic for a second because I need to get something off my chest: If tragedy + time = comedy, then lusting after a girl for a year and half, only to find out that she has had a boyfriend for the majority of that time had better be fucking hysterical someday.