|
|
|
Monday Morning QB - Tressel and Belichick
|
|
|
|
|
|
CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Nov 16, 2009
|
|
Jim Tressel. Bill Belichick. Double standard. A nice football conversation on a Monday morning.
|
By Matthew
Zemek
Mr. Zemek's e-mail: mzemek@hotmail.com
Follow Mr. Zemek's CFN coverage on Twitter: twitter.com/MattZemek_CFN
What Do Football Fans - And Pundits - Want?
We love college football here at the Monday Morning Quarterback. We love the Saturday sport over the Sunday incarnation for many reasons. Tradition is one. New Year's Day afternoon in the Arroyo Seco is another. The Iron Bowl also makes the short list.
The biggest reason why college football trumps the NFL, however, comes down to one thing: boldness. The college game rewards and encourages the cultivation of cojones, while the subculture enfolding the pro game doesn't. The variances among teams, positional matchups, conferences, whole regions of America, and clusters of coaches create a diversified, creative and generally more daring game than anything found in the copycat and largely cookie-cutter NFL.
If one game ever embodied the superiority and transcendence of college football over and against the NFL, the 2006 Rose Bowl proved to be defense... err, offense... exhibit A.
In that game, Pete Carroll and Mack Brown watched their offenses trade haymakers in a classic second-half battle. Field goals were for sissies, second-class citizens needed not apply, and big-boy ball was the order of the evening in the last game ever called by the legendary Keith Jackson.
The lasting difference between college and pro ball - not just in terms of the style of play, but more instructively, the way each realm is perceived by pigskin pundits - is that when push comes to shove, college football makes it easier to reward aggressiveness, while the NFL remains straitjacketed by a play-not-to-lose mentality.
Before Vince Young lifted Texas over USC on January 4, 2006, a more defining play occurred in the final minutes of that epic encounter littered with skill position studs. USC faced a 4th and 2 at the Texas 45 with 2:13 left in the game. Carroll, doing what he's always done during his career in Los Angeles, went for the first down, but the Longhorns stacked up LenDale White one yard short of the sticks. The one called "VY" used a critical third-down USC penalty to avoid a measure of trouble, and eventually cross the Trojans' goal line with 19 seconds remaining. Texas won, 41-38, and for most college football fans, the Longhorns simply proved to be a little better on a night for the ages.
Some pundits, however, couldn't believe Carroll went for the first down. Ron Higgins of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal registered his disagreement with the decision, but in a manner that was as straightforward as it was vigorous. A not-as-charitable voice of opposition came from ESPN's Bill Simmons, a guy with a lot of intelligent things to say about sports, but also a man who never forgave Carroll for doing (in Simmons's eyes) an inadequate job with "The Sports Guy's" beloved New England Patriots. Simmons, in the process of ripping Pete Carroll, proved how the NFL mindset, which plays not to lose, had so thoroughly affected his thought patterns.
In light of the football weekend that just transpired, it's not hard to sense why the 2006 Rose Bowl would be mentioned once again. There was this small matter of an NFL game Sunday night (no, the Monday Morning Quarterback didn't watch most of it, but he did check the scoreboard for updates...) in which a remotely successful and credentialed NFL coach actually pulled a Pete Carroll and cut against the No Fun League's hyperconservative grain.
You know what happened: On 4th and 2 from his own 28, and Peyton "Don't Call Me Vince Young" Manning waiting to get his mitts on the pigskin, Belichick did with the great Tom Brady what Carroll did with the great Matt Leinart (and the great LenDale White, and a decorated offensive line): He went for the win right then and there, with his best unit, his offense.
Moreover, NBC replays sure seemed to indicate that the New England Patriots received a horrible spot against the Indianapolis Colts, and since the play was not subject to an automatic review... AND since Belichick lacked timeouts... the play wasn't able to be challenged. (If the play began after the two-minute warning and not before it, an automatic review would have been set in motion. Ah, replay madness comes to the NFL. Nice system, there, folks...)
Yet, despite the fact that Bill Belichick was merely trusting Tom Big-Game Brady with his football fate, the Pats coach - not one of my favorite people, but certainly a legendary coach beyond any stretch or measurement - made a thoroughly defensible and laudably aggressive my-balls-are-made-of-brass-and-not-papier-mache kind of move.
And yet, the MMQ's non-college football Twitter feed ( http://twitter.com/mzemek ) exploded with a burst of negativity late Sunday night. Something in the area of 12-15 pundits weighed in at my corner of the vast social media site, and only two of them - Chris Brown of the blog http://smartfootball.com and Andy Hutchins of http://thearenablog.net - dared to say a good word about the decision.
NFL groupthink at its worst.
It's funny that none of the many coaching critics raised their voices earlier in the day, when Cincinnati Bengals coach Marvin Lewis took the ball out of Carson Palmer's hands on 3rd and 3 near the Pittsburgh Steeler 25 in the final minutes of that NFL game, with the Bengals leading by only a field goal near the two-minute mark of regulation. In the No Fun League, coaching conservatism is dutifully supported and approved of in most quarters. Unless my Twitter feeds are really selective, it's hard for the MMQ to think otherwise.
But oh, get an example of hyperconservative coaching in the college ranks, and all hell breaks loose.
Sure, Jim Tressel WAS too conservative in the latter stages of Ohio State's win over Iowa, but not to the extent that boos were merited as a result of that timid display between the headsets. Terrelle Pryor might have played a decent fourth quarter, but with roughly 90 yards passing entering OSU's final drive of regulation time, it's not as though Tressel's quarterback had been pushing the ball downfield with regularity. The coaching was poor (and Iowa's Kirk Ferentz joined Mr. Sweater Vest in the cowardly coaching department with his moves on the Hawkeyes' final drive of regulation), but the MMQ has seen much worse.
Moreover, Tressel's high quality in every other aspect of the coaching craft - not to mention his results - should buy him a certain amount of tolerance from fans and pundits alike. Yet, while some sports figures have that teflon-like ability to resist the most severe forms of criticism (think Ben Roethlisberger, Rick Pitino - that's no joke - and any of a number of performance-enhancer-using baseball players in recent years), Jim Tressel seems to absorb the sharpest pointed arrows from the college football cognoscenti.
The criticism of Tressel for his late-game decisions is fair. The vehemence and consistency of that criticism, on the other hand, is quite unfair. The (Twitter-based) experience of seeing scribes and fans going ape about the Belichick decision against Indianapolis only adds to the double standard being applied to Mr. Sweater Vest.
What is it that you want, football fans and commentators of America? Jim Tressel won and Bill Belichick lost, so it's not winning which is at issue here. Conservatism trumped boldness in terms of eventual results (though not necessarily quality or shrewdness of thought process), so the reason for the Tressel-bashing and Belichick-bashing can't be connected to any consistent football philosophy.
Just what is it that would make two decidedly different approaches to football - Ohio State's modus operandi late against Iowa, and New England's attack in the final minutes versus the Colts - subject to the same withering tide of verbal takedowns?
Will someone please try to explain this dynamic to the MMQ? Understanding is in short supply this week.
|
|
|
|
|
|