As the fantasy season waned my inbox waxed with more flow than Common. I noticed a trend the past two weeks has been a lot of traffic for our non-fantasy related content. While I fancy myself “the nation’s premiere fantasy college football analyst”, I am inspired by the reception of some of our recent articles on the hot topics of the day. Below I share the recent debates/exchanges/flamewars for your entertainment.

Only a few names have come up for the Auburn gig. Turner Gill from Buffalo and the Louisiana Tech (Vince Dooley) coach have come up but other than that not much. Auburn will find a good coach and it will work out, right? – Matt P. (Auburn, AL)

VM: I hope so, but they violated one of my favorite rules of coaching hires – “Do not fire a guy unless you got a better guy ready to go”. Tommy Tuberville has a great resume yet epicly failed this season in two respects – poor handling of the Tony Franklin hire/fire and his finishing below .500.

Re: Franklin – bringing in the “spread guru” then not running his spread is like hiring a gritty salesperson only to make him/her wipe out the microwave and do light janitorial work because his grittiness rubbed others the wrong way. Not only a waste of talent but a waste of your own time that smacked of desperation and a lack of a principled hire in the first place. The poor offense was a result of these HR issues moreso than a fault with the talent or Franklin – just grab some mor chick’n and watch last year’s bowl game.

The coaching search has taken on a cinematic twist…

—-

Why does Blake Gideon’s name keep coming up as the goat for Texas? There were two blown assignments that were drastically worse.

One: 89 seconds left on the clock. Clock management is the responsibility of the quarterback and the coach. On Texas’ last possession, Colt McCoy snapped the ball with over 15 seconds on the play clock. (In fact, I thought there was about 20-seconds on the clock, but I’m not going to go back to do the research).

Two, there were two defenders in the area when Crabtree caught the ball. One defender went for the breakup of the pass. The other defender, coming in a fraction of a second after Crabtree made the catch, didn’t position himself between Crabtree and the goal line, but instead ran on the other side of Crabtree in an inexplicable attempt to “pull” him away from the end zone.

The coach is paid to manage the clock. The defenders are assigned to getting BETWEEN the ball and the end zone. Gideon’s position is NOT assigned to catch the ball. As arm chair players we forget that Gideon’s reaction mindset required him to go from “tackle the receiver” to “pluck a ball out of mid-air” in a fraction of a second. – Gary K (parts unknown)

VM: I got more reaction to this piece than I have for any in a while. I said to my crew at the time of the drop that he may have just cost his team a nationl championship but I didn’t commit it to pixels until last week. Gary, Your points are all valid. But all those sins (before and after the drop) could have been erased if Gideon just catches the ball. Granted, the Texas DB kept turning his back to the ball the entire drive and Harrell threw the stop twice. But even that is irrelevant if Gideon just catches the ball. I know it is tough to flip that mental switch you mentioned (and as Mrs. Mullins always says “that is why he is on defense”), but to me that was the play that stood out so that is how I focused the article.

I had a couple of interesting responses to the Blake Gideon article from Deadspin readers – a sampling:

Seriously. Congrats, Vince Mullins, you’re the biggest douche I’ve come across today. – OchentaYCinco

Christ. I haven’t read that much about tortured, misplaced regret since my sophomore Russian Literature class. Who wrote that post? Puskin? – BrockMiddlebrook.

Good stuff – i guess I hit the nerve at which I aimed. I don’t get all this misplaced vitriol – if he catches it I would without question put him in as a write-in candidate for state senator.

—–
BCS Committee – They’re a bunch of monkeys. – Henry L. (Austin, TX I assume)

Good gag, had to link to it and I appreciate the shameless self-promotion. If I may riff, I went on record last Thursday with Dave Cokin on ESPN Radio Las Vegas (who kinda rocks the Common fashion vibe, an unexpected reference) that I would be happy with any matchup that included Alabama, Florida, Texas or Oklahoma. Any of them deserved a shot and the performances of the last weekend solidified what I had expected from the top two teams in the nation. The BCS did its job to identify #1 and #2, it wasn’t designed for anything else and as I said above that any manipulation by voters to force a different matchup, as long as it included the Big 4, was kinda all right with me.

One concept that I liked to compare the four was who had the worst loss? At the time Texas did in their last second loss to Texas Tech, followed by Oklahoma’s often referenced head-to-head 45-35 loss to Texas but Alabama by far had the best loss after Championship weekend. Florida had the worst one to Ole Miss but they have a face-up win over the #1 on the last weekend in a conference that values such events.

And back to Henry and his primates – monkeys would rule in a playoff scenario too no matter how deep you made the playoffs. Eight teams? Numbers 9 and 10 will bark. Four teams like this year? USC would raise a Jacquizz-Rogers-sized ruckus. The playoffs would just cause a different argument.

Previously referenced Cokin has a pretty cool idea that I could get behind – all conference champs (9) and seven at-large teams make a 16-team tourney similar to the other divisions. Pretty similar to hoops and sounds rather fair. Unless Notre Dame petitions for Sun Belt inclusion. Wait – am I sure they could beat Troy this season? maybe i can get Dave to commit this idea to paper…

Hit me on email or on my blog at Ning – I truly enjoy hearing from each of you.

Related posts:

1. Big 12 Preview: Texas Tech Red Raiders
2. Longhorn fans should blame Blake Gideon for BCS snub
3. Texas takes over the #1 spot
4. Big 12 Preview: Texas Longhorns
5. Alamo Bowl: Texas Tech vs. Michigan State

Tags: VMAIL