Quick Hitters
Could be worse, Auburn finished 3-9 and fired their coach just two years after winning the Natty. Former Auburn assistant Bobby Petrino is available. Incidentally Chizik’s four year record at Auburn is 33-19 overall and 15-17 in the SEC. Mack Brown’s record during the last four years is 34-16 overall and 19-14 in the Big 12. USC was ranked #1 in the pre-season and now they’re done at 7-5 with a second year head coach who seems kind of creepy. Texas A&M….uh never mind.
But seriously folks Texas’ home loss to TCU, their latest pratfall, shouldn’t be surprising. Texas is 4-4 in their last four conference home games. If they lose to Kansas St. this week they’ll be 9-9 in the Big 12 over the last two seasons. Theoretically Texas is now the third best major college football program in Texas though they do have the biggest stadium and the largest jumbotron.
As Average as every day wash—a little Darrell Royal lingo for you—as Texas has been the last two seasons, if they manage to pull of the huge upset and beat Kansas St., this season will have been somewhat successful and will include the added bonus of a Cotton Bowl invitation to face the Aggies. That would be lots of fun.
There was an iconic math teacher at Vestal High School in the 50s, 60s and 70s who taught Advanced Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus and Statistics. The worst sin in math, he told his students, was being “mechanical.” Being mechanical meant that you just memorized formulas and theorems without understanding how they were used or when to apply them. Ever since I took his class in Algebra II, Trigonometry I’ve looked at part of the world through Mr. Fanning’s prism of the mechanical versus the artful. I think Brian Harsin’s game planning and play calling is mechanical. It seems as though he’s more focused on running a large variety plays, including his bag of trick plays, and putting the ball in as many different players’ hands as possible rather than putting together a cohesive game plan. He has terribly under utilized Dage Johnson who has the potential to be Texas’ version of Reggie Bush. Why in the world isn’t Harsin getting the ball to Johnson 15 times a game on the ground and with short passes? It doesn’t seem to me that he has an artist’s vision or feel for building an offense that has an identity and knows who it is game to game.
Whatever happens Saturday versus Kansas St and in the bowl game, Mack Brown will be back next season with a more experienced team and the best senior class he’s had since 2009. There’s good reason to believe 2013 can be the break out season that Brown has been pointing to for the last couple of years. What I think we’ll see is more of the same. More lackadaisical performances against under manned opponents, more mediocre blocking by the offensive line, more lack of attention to detail on special teams and in clock management and more colossal breakdowns on defense. The under achieving mold is cast for Mack Brown’s program and I don’t see it being broken as long as he’s in charge. In an article by Scipio Tex on the Barking Carnival blog after the TCU game he wrote, “….yet another Big 12 team rolled into Austin with purpose, kicked our asses, thoroughly out-coached us, and showed what a program looks like vs. a random assembly of athletes.”
What he said.
HooK eM,
W.E.
Over/Under Results
Really stellar performances were turned in this week by Mike Frank and Helen Frink. Mike and Helen had 7 correct answers with the answer to one question, Texas’ BCS Ranking post game, impossible to get right unless you assumed that Texas would lose to TCU. Helen wins in the tiebreaker because Mike Frank picked both Oklahoma St. and USC to win. Helen squeaked out the win by picking Notre Dame to win.
John Scott finished alone in third place with 6 correct answers. Good to see these journeymen and women finishing in the top three.
W.E.
