Corey Surrency: swallowed by the system?

Florida State wide receiver and senior-to-be Corey Surrency's life has taken several twists. As the Orlando Sentinel reports:

Surrency dropped out of high school in the ninth grade, he said, to support his family. He served jail time, 90 days, after being charged with various crimes, some felonies. He decided to make something of himself. Earned his diploma. Began playing football. Wound up at a California community college, then at Florida State.

. . .

Before enrolling at Florida State and before enrolling in El Camino Community College, where Surrency played for two seasons, he played with the Florida Kings, a South Florida "minor league" football team that has helped athletes with troubled pasts to earn opportunities to play in college.

Quite the saga. But there's a new twist, and it's the cruelest yet:

A little-known NCAA rule has jeopardized his future.

The rule is No. 14.2.3.5 in the NCAA Division I Manuel. It is titled, "Participation After 21st Birthday," and it mandates the following: If an individual participates in an organized sport after his 21st birthday, but before enrolling in college, that participation "shall count as one year of varsity competition in that sport."

. . .

Surrency played with the [minor league] Kings after he had turned 21. Had he not, he might never have had the chance to go to college. Regardless, though, his time with the Kings has cost him his final year of eligibility — at least for now. Florida State is appealing on Surrency's behalf.

If FSU loses the appeal, Surrency's college football career would be over. It's likely, too, that his pursuit of earning a degree in criminal justice — Surrency would become the first member of his family to earn a college degree — would also be over.

Sad stuff. Dr Saturday rightfully rails against this rule as "tone-deaf bureaucracy par excellence, and I have little to add to that.

But I was curious: does Surrency have a chance on his appeal? Unfortunately, my tentative answer is no. I don't have all the resources and I'm no NCAA expert, but Surrency is behind the eight ball having already been ruled ineligible, and things from here look bleak.

His best shot is on his appeal before the NCAA, being fought for him by Florida State. I tried in vain to locate all the standards for NCAA eligibility appeals, but it looks to me they don't have the power to just cast aside a rule that should otherwise apply. In that case the only way around the rule is for the NCAA, through its rulemaking body, to remove it. But in that case it wouldn't even be clear that the removal could work retroactively in Surrency's favor. The upshot is that unless the NCAA appeals body decides to (and has the power to) act charitably in direct defiance of the rules, Surrency will probably lose.

So what does that leave? Litigation. But litigation on these eligibility questions rarely goes well for the would-be student-athlete. There's not much of a hook to hang it on: you have to find a source of law that allows you to overturn what some NCAA body does -- or, more precisely, tells the University to do: the NCAA doesn't have the power to fire employees or take students off the football teams, they just threaten the University with fines and sanctions if they don't comply. This is relevant when it comes to litigation because, while the University typically supports the student during the appeal to the NCAA, after that the school tells the kid to get lost lest it lose money, wins, or scholarships, so the student often winds up suing both the NCAA and their school that had formerly supported them.

Anyway, there is no constitutionally protected property right to participate in college sports, and further undermining any suits against the NCAA grounded in the constitution is that the Supreme Court has ruled that NCAA is not a "state actor." (Set in stone in the famous NCAA v. Tarkanian case involving former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian.) This is important because only governments and related "state actors" can violate people's constitutional rights; private parties aren't restricted by the various amendments, something many people -- including plenty of public officials -- don't realize.

So what could he say? Well, when Ben Mauk, former Cincinnati quarterback, sued to get his seventy-third year of eligibility, sued he tried to hang it on a theory that the NCAA had deprived him of a a shot at playing professional football by -- and this is important -- making an erroneous factual finding that his redshirt year at Wake Forest was not injury-related. The court didn't buy it, partially because the standard is so high and the supposed harm to Mauk (a ruined shot at an NFL career) was so ephemeral. (I can only imagine a trial where Mel Kiper Jr. is an "expert witness.")

And that's really about it. Any hope for Surrency? I guess he could try for the Mauk "this-is-killing-my-pro-career," but it's not like it worked for him, and I'm not even sure it's a real lawsuit even if you could prove it. The NCAA has been deemed a private body, and their even arbitrary rulings on who gets to play a college sport are, rather understandably, something courts don't want to be in the position of constantly second guessing. (And I leave aside the issue of whether Surrency can afford all this costly litigation as compared with Mauk.)

But that means that just about all of Surrency's eggs are in this NCAA appeal, and it appears that the rule was properly applied to Corey; it's just that the rule itself is stupid.

Good luck to Surrency and FSU, and I'll leave him with the last word.

Surrency said this experience has worn on him. He is beginning to question his love of football. He said, "It's killing me, man. I'm losing my fight for the game right now."

Sid Gillman, "Father of the Modern Passing Game," notes on passing offense

Sid Gillman, along with Paul Brown, basically invented modern football. Bill Walsh left his stamp, but he was largely just making systematic what those two had already created. Brown, an approach to football itself -- gameplanning, huddling, drawing up plays (the modern convention of Xs and Os and diagrams looking how they do can basically be attributed to him).

With Gillman, he transformed football from the rugged, beat-em-up rugby derivative it was into the orchestrated, finely tuned passing game we see now. He basically invented the concept of "timing," and calibrating quarterback drops with receiver routes. And, unlike many such "bridge" innovators -- who connect an older time to a newer one -- he continued to be on the forefront largely up until his death: he coached many great NFL teams in his later years, most notably helping with the Philadelphia Eagles when Vermeil was there and further consolidating and perfecting the "pro-style" offense. (Basically everyone nowadays who talks about being "pro-style" is trying to be like Sid Gillman.)

Anyway, here are some notes from Gillman on passing offense, courtesy of Coach Bill Mountjoy.

Sid Gillman Passing Game

Timing of Pass:

1. The timing of the delivery is essential. It is the single most important item to successful passing.

2. Each route has its own distinct timing. As routes and patterns are developed on the field, the exact point of delivery will be emphasized.

3. Take mental notes on the field on timing of the throw.

4. If you cannot co-ordinate eye and arm to get the ball at it’s intended spot properly and on time, you are not a passer.

5. Keeping the ball in both hands and chest high is part of the answer.

6. Generally speaking, the proper timing of any pass is putting the ball in the air before, or as the receiver goes into his final break.

7. If you wait until the receiver is well into his final move, you are too late.

Attacking Defenses:

1. You must know the theory of all coverages. Without this knowledge, you are dead.

2. You are either attacking man for man, or zone defense.

3. Vs. Man for Man Defense, you are beating the Man. Vs. Zone Defense, you are attacking an Area.

4. Not knowing the difference will result in stupid interceptions.

5. Study your coverage sheets so that by merely glancing at a defense you know the total coverage design.

6. Man for Man Defenses

a. Hit the single coverage man. This will keep you in business for a long time.
b. Stay away from receivers who are doubled short and long.
c. Do not throw to post if weak safety is free unless you are controlling him with another receiver, and even then it can be dangerous.
d. Flare action is designed to hold backers. If backers are loose, HIT flare man.
e. The secret to attacking Man for Man is to attack the single coverage man who is on his own with no help short or to either side.
f. You must know the individual weaknesses of our opponents and attack them.
g. There are many methods of dropping off by deep secondary men. Each method provides a weakness – know them.

7. Zone Defenses
a. To successfully attack zone defense, concentrate on attacking the slots (X-Z Curl, Y Curl, Cross Routes).
b. Flare action is a must to hold the backers close to the line to help open up the zones behind them.

8. Exact knowledge of defensive coverage and the patterns to take advantage of these is a must.

Summary:

1. Spread the field horizontally and vertically with all 5 receivers;
2. Pass to set up the run (not the other way arouhind);
3. One-Back formations are a must.

Assorted links

1. Blue-Gray Sky breaks down the "devolution" of Charlie Weis's Notre Dame offense.

2. Rocky Top Talk analyzes zone running. Pretty good breakdown, and on the whole very informative. A few minor points though. First, the article seems to confuse the outside-zone and the inside-zone (it professes to talk about the "inside zone" but then talks about the "stretch sweep"); the two are different plays, with the "stretch" being the same as the outside zone and the inside zone going by a lot of names, from "belly" to just "zone."



Second, the article discusses the need to cutback the run but, based on the above diagram, the blocking is drawn up against the 3-4 defense, and the offense has a numbers advantage to the tight-end side. So I would want the runner to keep it to that side; otherwise he'd be possibly cutting back into a pursuing unblocked defender. Finally, the article mentions that zone blocking wants nimble, quick, smaller lineman. This is true sometimes, but other times not so: the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s with Emmitt Smith used zone blocking almost exclusively and had the largest offensive linemen in the NFL. But that is a matter of taste.

Anyway, all these are minor points. Check it out.

3. Speaking of the zone and zone-read, Trojan Football Analysis breaks down a video then-Utah-and-former-Florida-and-now-Miss. St.-head coach explaining the inside zone and zone-read, including game film. This one is a definite to check out for purists (read the Rocky Top Talk post then check out the one from TFA):



I'm working on a post about sort of "advanced zone-read" stuff, considering all the games defenses now play and the offense's responses, but for now this stuff can be your teaser.

4. Get the Picture on the BCS anti-trust morass and grandstanding.

5. WSJ Daily Fix on better basketball stats. And, speaking of basketball (and completely unrelated to football), I stumbled on this clip of Kobe Bryant spinning Vincent Yarbrough around:



Ouch.

when cupid strike....or maybe not

I try not to get too personal with every post....
but in time they get more and more personal...and its hard not to share when i really wanted to...

Maybe this is my way to get this out of my system...hmmm...
or maybe not...
but its not wrong to try right.

I know letting go is not easy...and to love someone is easy yet complicated at the same time...
which makes it equally not easy..
what did i expect..*sigh*

...life is hard...life IS tough...

sometimes u just have to enjoy the ride...so that life will not be such a misery...
im sure u familiar with "life is not a bed of roses"....of course there will be torns in between the petals...
hidden from our eyes to see...waiting to hurt us...


Adam Lambert...u r sooo not straight...but...
i love u anyway, especially when u sing out to the crowd, and somehow i still hope that it was just a rumors...a
nd if only i am a American i would still vote for u...


will be in touch ppl...

Archie Cooley, Jerry Rice, and the "Satellite Express"

I've often detailed the history of the spread, but an unsung innovator was Mississippi Valley State's Archie Cooley. In the '80s, Cooley installed a wide-open, no-huddle, five-wide attack that saw parallel in ingenuity for at least another decade. As an article at the time described:

Cooley, 45, is head coach at Mississippi Valley State University, a little school with an enormous passing attack. In the last two years, his Delta Devils - assembled with a recruiting budget of $3,500 a year - won 17 of 21 games, averaging 51 points a game.

They did it with no huddle.

They did it with 55 passes a game.

They did it with something called the Satellite Express, an imaginative, freaky offense designed by Cooley and named presumably for quarterback Willie "The Satellite" Totten, a senior who has replaced Neil Lomax as the most devastating college football passer ever.

Using Cooley's Satellite Express, Mississippi Valley State has broken virtually every NCAA Division I-AA passing record.

Willie "The Satellite" Totten was the triggerman, but on the receiving end of his passes, roughly 300 of them, was Jerry Rice. Yeah, 49ers-Hall-of-Fame-Dancing-with-the-Stars Jerry Rice. And Rice's incredible talent led Cooley to the most natural evolution of his five-wide attack: put four guys to one side of the field, and put Jerry Rice -- nicknamed "World" because there "wasn't a pass in the world he couldn't catch" -- to the other.



Totten would signal a route to Rice backside (much like the run and shoot "choice" concept) and then the four receivers to the other side would run some dizzying array of combinations, usually with at least one guy in a sort of "trail" position who could catch a dump-off if the defense retreated.

By doing this Cooley was able to put the defense in an impossible bind: no one in D I-AA could cover Rice (in his college career he set then NCAA records in catches, with 301, yards, with 4,693, and touchdowns, with 50), but if the defense double- or triple-teamed him then they gave up numbers and leverage to the four receiver side.

As you can imagine, footage of Mississippi Valley State is, well, scarce. So I was delighted to stumble on this old gamefilm (apparently filmed on some kind of pre-Victorian camera).



In the clip, notice how many guys Louisiana Tech lines up on Rice: always two, sometimes even three. But if you wait until near the end of the clip, around the 4:30 mark, the defense finally singles him up. Totten then calls Rice's number and throws him a fade for an inevitable touchdown. Time for the defense to rethink things.

Detroit Lions' Jim Schwartz: We're bringing back the run and shoot to the NFL

Update: Happy April Fools' Day . . . .

Well, it's official. Apparently in early discussions and camps Schwartz and his staff have begun working with players and they have chosen a bold new (old?) direction to get the Lions' lifeless offense back on track: the run & shoot.

I have to say I'm surprised, but here's the quotes being attributed to Schwartz:

We have to do something bold this year, and I've always thought the run and shoot was one of the hardest offenses to defend. We might mix it up with some five wide receiver stuff, but we're going to base out of four wide receivers and one running back and run the majority of those old concepts.

I've met with Mouse Davis and June Jones and even Mike Leach in the past few months, and we've seen what they've done and sort of fit it together with what me and Coach [Scott] Linehan want to do.

Now, readers of this site know I have no problem with this sort of thinking, but I can say I'm shocked that Schwartz and the coaches would even consider making it public. I mean these are just leaks at this point from early camps, but come fall camp and 24/7 ESPN scrutiny, we'll be back to hearing all the old stuff about the Houston Oilers losing the comeback game to the Bills and how the 'shoot can't get it done in big games, etc.

But does it make sense? Well, first it's not a total surprise. Schwartz is a daring thinker himself, and he likes other guys who push the envelope. When Michael Lewis wrote a piece about Texas Tech's Mike Leach, the article strongly hinted that, if Schwartz ever became a head coach, he'd be looking for someone like Leach to hire, and maybe even Leach himself:

At least one N.F.L. head coach had taken a special interest in the Texas Tech offense and had been ordering its game tapes on Monday mornings. At least one N.F.L. defensive coordinator, Jim Schwartz of the Tennessee Titans, had stumbled upon Texas Tech accidentally and said, Oh, my. The surprise runner-up in the search earlier this year for a new San Francisco 49ers head coach, Schwartz had scrambled to answer a question: if he got the 49ers job, whom should he hire? He was just in his mid-30's, and his football career stopped at Georgetown (where he graduated with honors in economics), so he really hadn't thought about this before.

. . .

Looking for fresh coaching talent, Schwartz analyzed the offensive and defensive statistics of what he called the "midlevel schools" in search of any that had enjoyed success out of proportion to their stature. On offense, Texas Tech's numbers leapt out as positively freakish: a midlevel school, playing against the toughest football schools in the country, with the nation's highest scoring offense. Mike Leach had become the Texas Tech head coach before the 2000 season, and from that moment its quarterbacks were transformed into superstars. In Leach's first three seasons, he played a quarterback, Kliff Kingsbury, who wound up passing for more yards than all but three quarterbacks in the history of major college football. When Kingsbury graduated (he is now with the New York Jets), he was replaced by a fifth-year senior named B.J. Symons, who threw 52 touchdown passes and set a single-season college record for passing yards (5,833). The next year, Symons graduated and was succeeded by another senior - like Symons, a fifth-year senior, meaning he had sat out a season. The new quarterback, who had seldom played at Tech before then, was Sonny Cumbie, and Cumbie's 4,742 passing yards in 2004 was the sixth-best year in N.C.A.A. history.

Now Texas Tech had Cody Hodges, still another fifth-year senior - barely six feet tall, with an average arm and four college seasons on the bench. Before the 2005 football season even began, Hodges was short-listed for the Maxwell Award for the finest college football player in the land. Whoever played quarterback for the Texas Tech Red Raiders was sure to create so much offense that he couldn't be ignored.

Schwartz had an N.F.L. coach's perspective on talent, and from his point of view, the players Leach was using to rack up points and yards were no talent at all. None of them had been identified by N.F.L. scouts or even college recruiters as first-rate material. Coming out of high school, most of them had only one or two offers from midrange schools. Sonny Cumbie hadn't even been offered a scholarship; he was just invited to show up for football practice at Texas Tech. Either the market for quarterbacks was screwy - that is, the schools with the recruiting edge, and N.F.L. scouts, were missing big talent - or (much more likely, in Schwartz's view) Leach was finding new and better ways to extract value from his players. "They weren't scoring all these touchdowns because they had the best players," Schwartz told me recently. "They were doing it because they were smarter. Leach had found a way to make it work."

I guess this is what appealed to Schwartz: doing it smarter; doing more with less; and doing something different. All three are things Schwartz will have to do in Detroit. And if you can't get Mike Leach (or don't know if you could handle the personality quirks involved with having him), then do the next best thing: hire a veteran offensive guy (Scott Linehan) but sit down to do something that is is smarter, a better equalizer, and different. The run and shoot certainly gives you all that.

Now, it's true that the NFL is more spread than it was then, but the run and shoot is still different: it's based on every receiver reading the coverage and reacting on the fly -- it strives to make the defense wrong on every play.

Moreover, from a personnel standpoint, the Lions have some receivers, but they struggle at runningback. The line problems can be ameliorated by creative use of screens and quick passes. The biggest obstacle is quarterback, but that would be an issue with every system in the NFL. There's a good chance the 'shoot can, well, do more with less.

What they do need to find is a guy who can make good decisions but doesn't necessarily have to be Tom Brady or Peyton Manning otherwise. Let Calvin Johnson run the "choice" backside and try to outnumber the defense to the frontside, and for god's sake just get them the ball in space.

Now, it can't be lost on Schwartz that the 'shoot was once the offense of choice in Detroit. But he also has to know that, since it has been gone, Detroit hasn't exactly succeeded. They put up better numbers and won more games with that offense than they ever have with the "traditional" stuff that Matt Millen imposed. So why not?

Finally, no doubt Schwartz is aware of what went on in Miami last year: the Dolphins came out with creativity -- the Wildcat of course -- but Chad Pennington also threw for over 3,000 yards to help that offense get back on track. Schwartz is clearly hoping that it will work. Linehan failed in St. Louis but is a respected mind who has been around spread offenses all his career (particularly at Louisville), and even tight-ends coach Tim Lappano was an old 'shooter before he got with Joe Tiller at Wyoming and then Purdue. So they will know what they are doing.

I'm looking forward to seeing the run and shoot back in the NFL.

More thoughts on pro scouts' anger at "system quarterbacks"

Dr Saturday follows up on the weird storyline of trying to get Tim Tebow "NFL Ready" (by doing more under center, etc) even though he is still the quarterback for the defending National Champion Florida Gators who has excelled in a shotgun offense. In other words: what are they doing?

Maybe it is hype, maybe it is real. But at some level it (either the reality or the hype) is driven by the very real fact that NFL scouts now seem to spend the time from the end of bowl season until the draft railing against "spread" and "system" quarterbacks. When pressed to explain this, they proffer ridiculous reasons like the fatal flaw that spread quarterbacks can't take snaps under center and perform traditional drops. (Mike Leach remained unimpressed.) But no matter what the form, the consensus among NFL scouts seems to be the same: "system" quarterbacks (most notably "spread offense" quarterbacks) are bad.

But what are they talking about? Don't they have at least a bit of a point, considering that some college QBs put up huge stats and then are never heard of again? Let's take a step back.

NFL scouting is, of course, very difficult. Scouts must evaluate a player in one environment (college, certain workouts) and extrapolate how that will work in the NFL. In other sports -- most notably baseball -- there's been great strides in taking a player's high school or college numbers (most reliably with college) and getting a decent picture of how good a pro they will be. And this is huge: scouts do not have to solely rely on gestalt impressions like "well, he looks like a ballplayer"; they have at least some degree of certainty.

NFL scouts are not so lucky: many positions -- most notably lineman -- produce very few statistics, and what statistics players produce, whether pancake blocks or touchdown catches, are heavily dependent on the other players on the field. So it's really difficult to turn football data into something meaningful.

Yet, for a time at least, quarterback statistics at least seemed to indicate what talent lay within. A guy couldn't have a great TD-INT ratio or throw for a set number of yards without knowing the game. Or could he? In the late '80s and early '90s some West Coast Offense and Run and Shoot QBs came out of college with huge stats, only to fail miserably in the NFL. They weren't the first QBs to fail, but they had come out with such pedigree -- look at their stats!

So the term "system quarterback" became a slur, roughly translating to: "He who throws for lots of yards and touchdowns in college but will be crap in the NFL."

College coaches -- like Leach -- bristle at the very idea. And it's hard to argue with that: is Leach supposed to apologize for the fact that some guy named BJ Symons threw for nearly 6000 yards and the next year someone else named Sonny Cumbie who threw for 4,700 and then yet another fifth-year senior named Cody Hodges with another 4300? I mean, he throws the ball a lot and would like to win games; it's not to have his guys perform at a level exactly commensurate with their talent to ensure that they don't send any fake signals to NFL scouts.

But, to an extent, I sympathize with NFL scouts. Stats used to at least mean something. But when 45 touchdown passes could equally mean Arena League second-stringer as it could NFL starter, scouts are left again with not a lot more than: "well, he looks like a ballplayer." It's not a very scientific way to pick players, and it's hard.

And in the hyperbolic pre-draft world (Mel Kiper on Percy Harvin: "He’s not that big, and he’s taken a lot of hits. But his explosiveness after the run is explosive.") this confusion injected by good coaches who squeeze talent out of their shotgun operating signal callers arises something like resentment and at minimum a lot of skepticism.

It sounds like I'm giving NFL scouts a break here. And I kind of am: there's not a lot for them to go on. But that doesn't change the fact that they are just guessing and most don't know what they are doing. In Malcolm Gladwell's "quarterback problem" article he sat down with an NFL scout who sat around drooling over Chase Daniel, who might not even get drafted. In baseball, when the Moneyball crowd came in, lots of old school scouts that had dominated for years were swept away like discredited mystics of some defunct religion. If football ever figures it out, the same thing will happen. The guys harping on somebody's "hips" as code or their size of their pinky toe will finally look as foolish as they sound. (Even if there is validity in some of these minor details the question remains what on earth someone could do with all of it to aggregate it into some kind of player ranking.)

So if I have to take sides, put me with the college coaches who aren't afraid to put their QBs in the shotgun and let them run with it and sling it; system moniker be damned. (And I would recommend the same to players considering where to go to school.) And my advice for (most) NFL scouts? Quit, or be fired: NFL drafting would probably be fine without any of this ridiculous minutiae and hyperbole.

Speculations on play-calling on first, second, and third and ten

From Advanced NFL Stats:

All the numbers that follow are from all 10-yards-to-go scrimmage plays in the first 3 quarters of regular season games from 2000-2007. The only other limitation was that the game score was within 10 points. I wanted to exclude situations when teams exercised an abundance of either risk or caution.

Note the percentage of play types called on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd downs (with 10 yards to go). There is a fairly even split between run and pass calls on 1st and 2nd downs. On 3rd and 10, the a pass is far more expected.

% of Play Types by Down, 10 Yds To Go

Type - 1st - 2nd - 3rd - Total
Pass - 47.2 - 52.7 - 91.1 - 49.6
Run - 52.8 - 47.3 - 8.9 - 50.4

Although 91.1% isn't 100%, it's close to where the anchor point on the lower right side of the game theory graph--almost the pure pass vs. pass defense strategy combination. Now let's look at the average outcomes for these situations.

Yds Per Attempt by Down, 10 Yds To Go

Type - 1st - 2nd - 3rd - Total
Pass - 7.0 - 6.3 - 6.5 - 6.9
Run - 4.2 - 4.4 - 6.9 - 4.3
Total - 5.5 - 5.4 - 6.5 - 5.6


When passing is most predictable, it yields half a yard less than on first down, when it is less expected. Conversely, running is most successful when it is least expected.

At this point, I should point out that passing on 3rd and 10 yields slightly more yards than on 2nd and 10, which isn't completely what we'd expect. This is almost certainly because defenses will allow short complete passes on 3rd down in exchange for being relatively assured to be able to stop the gain short of 10 yards. This is part of the problem posed by the fact that yards does not equal utility. We'll have to dig a little deeper. The next table lists interception rate by down.

Interception % by Down, 10 Yds To Go

Int Rate
1st - 2nd - 3rd - Total
2.6 - 2.9 - 3.5 - 2.7

Now we see more what we'd expect--a slight increase from 1st to 2nd down, then a large jump on 3rd down, in accordance with the associated increases in passing predictability. The next table lists adjusted yards per attempt, which is YPA with a -45 yd adjustment for every interception thrown. Adj YPA, however, still exhibits the same problem as plain YPA. It underestimates the drop off from 1st to 3rd down in passing effectiveness because defenses will allow gains, as long as they're not more than 9 yards.

Adj Yds Per Attempt by Down, 10 Yds To Go

Type - 1st - 2nd - 3rd - Total
Pass - 5.9 - 5.0 - 4.9 - 5.6
Run - 4.2 - 4.4 - 6.9 - 4.3


So what we can say is, the reduction in passing effectiveness due to predictability is likely at least 1 full adjusted yard per attempt. The drop from 1st down to 2nd was 0.9 yards, so the true reduction in effectiveness from 1st to 3rd down may be far larger.

Except that there's a problem with this analysis. There's a bias in the data. Which teams are more likely to face a lot of 2nd and 10s and 3rd and 10s? The ones that stink at passing. So the 2nd and 3rd down numbers are lower than would be representative of the league as a whole. In other words, poor passing teams 'get more votes' in the analysis.

All this is intended to tee up a game-theory analysis for finding some kind of ballpark run/pass equilibrium. Do read the whole thing.

But a few brief thoughts:

• The adjusted final numbers intrigue me, particularly second down as compared to first. (As Brian notes, third down is tougher to break down since it's really a binary question of conversion versus failure.) But I'm struck that on second down the yards per pass attempt drops by nearly a full yard while the yards per run goes up only .2: why does the defense get so much better on second down? Is the data skewed to losers? Is play-calling worse on second down?
  
  
• In that vein, I wonder if the old conventional wisdom about "getting back half on second and ten" works against the offense. On first down the passing plays are likely to involve play-action as well as quick or intermediate passes -- coaches can use their full asrsenal; maybe on second coaches are too concerned with screens and quicks -- trying to just get half -- that they give up too much in the way of expected points?
  
  
• But on the other hand, what if they get this 5.0 yards per pass attempt on second and ten with more certainty and less variance than the 5.9 on first down. If so, then possibly the offense is in better position to convert third down than they would be even with a greater expected play value that carried more variance. Could cut either way; football is complicated.

Hopefully Brian can shed some light as his series develops. I look forward to it.

More on the Run & Shoot "Choice" Concept

Mike Drake of Longmont High School (CO) sent me the below video of the "choice route." Note that I have updated my original article on the choice with these clips. But here are the clips below with brief descriptions. See the full article for more of an explanation.

First, here is how Drake has his kids run the "choice." It is the same concept I described, though he has added a "safety divide" or climb type route by the tight-end to help stretch the safety; it turns it into something like four-verticals from trips, though with the choice.



First, here is the play against Cover 3 with a zone-blitz. The blocking isn't quite there but the QB moves in the pocket and finds the seam-reader (slot receiver). The free-safety here jumps the tight-end on the climb/divide route, which makes the slot wide open. It is actually the backside cornerback who makes the tackle in the end zone, though he is too late.



And the video:



Against Cover 2, where the safeties drop very deep, you can see in the video below where the seam-reader works off the underneath defender and under the safety into the void for a nice completion.



And finally, against Cover 1 man they get a matchup they like and throw the go to the singled up choice receiver (though they don't complete it). The quarterback does a good job getting the ball there before the single-deep safety can get over. On this play they also keep two extra guys in to protect, so it kind of becomes a three-man route.

Should college athletes be paid?

The New York Times had a recent roundtable on the topic. A few interesting points worth highlighting and responding to. Mostly professors chime in, and the specific topic is March Madness, but the debate highlights the tension between old University ideals and the realities of college athletics.


First, Murray Sperber, Indiana University professor:

One of the great myths about March Madness is that it earns huge sums of money for participating schools. Yes, CBS pays billions of dollars — over many years — to televise the games but only a very small amount of that money trickles down to the Division I schools eligible to play in the tournament.

The money is less a bonanza for colleges and universities than a lottery. To get a ticket, the N.C.A.A. requires every Division I school to have many teams in many sports and many athletes on scholarship — and almost all of these teams are in money-losing sports. Indeed, last year in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the N.C.A.A. conceded that almost every athletic department in the United States, including those at schools participating in March Madness, generates red ink.

While the N.C.A.A. tournament generates billions of dollars, even the schools and conferences that do well in the games lose a lot of money.

But according to standard university accounting methods, an athletic department cannot end the year in deficit. Thus universities frequently mop up the red ink by taking money from other sources, especially their general operating funds. This is money that could go to student loans, faculty grants and other worthy academic enterprises.

In the last decade, the N.C.A.A. has raised the cost of its lottery tickets. As a result, a number of schools like Georgetown University, with outstanding basketball teams but no Division I football squads, were coming close to breaking even in their athletic department finances until the N.C.A.A. stepped in and required the school to field an expensive, money-losing football program.

So while March Madness generates billions of dollars, athletic departments lose a lot of money. Even the schools and conferences that do well in the tournament and receive seven-figure payouts are forced to put every dime of that money toward their athletic department expenses and deficits — and that’s why the academic departments see very little, if any, of that money.

The whole system stinks and cries out for a much-needed reform of the N.C.A.A. and its requirements for participating in Division I. Such reform should be No. 1 on the agenda, far ahead of the allocation of money from March Madness.

This is accurate: the argument of "when have 60,000 people shown up to see a chemistry exam?" is entirely beside the point. Athletic departments are self-contained businesses, really. That said, there are academic benefits to good athletics: almost all schools report a surge in admissions after successful seasons, and more admissions means that selection committees can be more selective and thus bring in better students. In any event, this deserves more in depth treatment, but I personally would be fine with paying players, as there are problems with the current model.

That said, I don't agree with agree with this rather naive view by professor William Dowling of Rutgers:

The various proposals for “reforming” college sports — by paying a stipend to the athletes who provide television profits, say, or diverting some of the money to academic purposes — show just how oblivious we’ve become to the damage commercialized Division IA athletics has done to American universities.

It’s not the money, it’s the silent triumph of consumerist ideology over academic and intellectual values in higher education.

The real issues have nothing to do with the millions generated by the N.C.A.A. tournament or holiday bowl games. They have to do with the silent triumph of consumerist ideology — in particular, a T.V.-revenue-driven behemoth with tremendous power to shape social consciousness — over academic and intellectual values in higher education.

You couldn’t ask for a better example than “March Madness,” the media spectacle that turns American universities into marketing vehicles for advertisers like Coca Cola and General Motors. For four weeks every spring, lower-level professional athletes wearing college jerseys are seen running back and forth on the television screen between the commercials.

Meanwhile, sportswriters and T.V. commentators maintain the solemn pretense that these are college students, young people who came to university to study Wittgenstein and learn medieval history and master the intricacies of R.N.A. replication. The N.C.A.A. grinds out public relations hype about “Academic All Americans” and “academic progress ratings.” And the public, as though mesmerized, never raises an eyebrow.

We shouldn’t be worrying about exploited athletes — few really are. Nor should we be worried about steering T.V. money to academics. Real colleges and universities — New York University, say, or Harvard, or the University of Chicago — have ways of paying academic costs without prostituting themselves to commercialized athletics. The solution is to end the prostitution itself.

Okay fine, I agree that it stretches credulity to contend that Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley (one and done freshman phenoms who went to the NBA after just a year in college) went to their schools to learn academics, especially during frantic March Madness time, where games take place in some far off city on Thursdays and Fridays (class?).

Yet notice Dowling's argument: to him, the athletes aren't exploited (despite being, at age 18, promised the potential of millions in professional sports but inevitably, with few exceptions, failing to get there while in many cases squandering the chance for a degree); nor the fans; but instead the University itself -- that holy place of learning -- that is corrupted by this "consumerist ideology" brought in by what he might describe as "the athletic element."

But this presupposes that Universities are powerless about this, yet most University presidents are academics, not former athletes. And while the "60,000 people don't come to see a chemistry exam" argument is bogus, boosters and sponsors do go to see football games and often donate to the University writ large.

Yet the whole argument just seems weird to me: it's not like anyone -- including announcers - really sits and gushes about Rose (or Michael Crabtree, Brian Orakpo, or even Tim Tebow) how amazing it is that they handle all these football duties on top of studying Wittgenstein. Instead, we all know it is a strange and precarious relationship that athletics has to academics. But strange does not equal corrupt.

Nor are plaintive invocations of the evils of "consumerist ideology" going to tell us anything: assuming this "ideology" is evil and it "triumphs," is it athletics that is the cause or a symptom? Finally, when did this utopia of the perfect and serene academic setting exist before athletics helped undermine it? I'm sure in Dowling's mind that, if not for athletics, Universities would look like Raphael's school of Athens, some kind of modern Lyceum. (And, no doubt, in this utopian academic setting it would be the professors and the brightest students exalte, rather than athletes and highly paid coaches.)

But this sharp dichotomy is false, and this utopia never existed. Is that reality optimal? I don't know. But even Plato, in his training regimen for his philosopher kings, recommended years of intense physical training beginning at the age of 18, and it was only out of those that excelled at athletics who ought to be then chosen to embark on ten years of math training, another five doing dialectics, and fifteen more managing the polis. (This emphasis on physical tools has long rankled the modern academic who sees sports and thinks only of barbarism.)

Yes, Universities are often put in an odd position serving the dual purposes as places of higher learning and something like minor league sports teams. And athletic departments often turn into little fiefdoms to few people's gain. But railing against the entire sports industry and our "consumerist ideology" strikes me as unproductive. I'm satisfied for now to just commend schools like Vanderbilt, who have consolidated their athletic departments into the rest of the school, and to hope other schools follow suit. Otherwise, it strikes me that people like Dowling would only be happy with eliminating college sports (save for a club cricket team or something) and replace it all with true professional minor leagues. I do not think it would have any positive effect on "society" in beating back the supposedly evil "consumerist ideology" that Dowling sees engulfing us. And I especially don't think it would return The University to some gilded age that exists only in Dowling's mind.

Reason #4080 to love Mike Leach

Bye bye Easy Ed?

Edward Britton, Texas Tech’s most experienced split end, was demoted before spring practice and further raised the ire of Tech coach Mike Leach this week. After Friday’s practice in 30-degree weather and a few snow flurries, Britton was sent to study classwork [at midfield on Texas Tech's practice field]. . . .

“Ed didn’t like showing up and studying at places I felt like he needed to and like the academic people asked him to, so he can go study out there on the 50-yard line,” Leach said. “We’ll take baby steps, and if he does good studying out there, we’ll decide if we’re going to actually let him practice.”

Asked if Britton was on thin ice, Leach said, “I’d say that’s accurate. All guys that don’t study are on thin ice, as far as I’m concerned.”

Leach said Britton was to remain out in the cold, studying for at least an hour and a half after his teammates had gone in for the day.

“If somehow he fails to do that, then that’ll be the last we ever hear of Easy Ed,” Leach said.

Full article (h/t Double-T Nation)