The Hapless Big 12 Conference
- Thread starter Wordel
- Start date
If Iowa scored 53 points and lost by 17 I would expect we'd have a new defensive coordinator the next week.
I have watched a lot of Big 12 football, it is very difficult to stop the top SPREAD teams. Very athletic players and coaches that relentlessly push to score...it is a real challenge.
This would be a better argument if almost every team in the B12 didn't run the spread offense....
1. They don't.
2. The ones that run it don't all run it the same way, or have the same strengths & weaknesses.
3. But you are right that it isn't as difficult as if, for instance, one of the teams in the league were running the wishbone.
It might be a product of the fact that none of those four teams have played anyone good, and have not faced one another.
If Iowa hadn't played Wisconsin and Northwestern, both would be ranked, and Penn State would be ranked if they hadn't played Ohio State.
I go to University of Houston games. When they played Air Raid offense the scores were like that and some of the games took 4 hours. Now they actually play defense and I like watching it better.
That must depend on specifically which part of the 'country' one refers to here.
According to the Massey Composite Rankings, the Big Ten has the highest rated team (Ohio State) from the two conferences as well as two others among the top ten in all of America. Additionally, there are four more teams (a total of seven for anyone counting) from the Big Ten in the top 32. The big xii only has those four teams that you mentioned - between #5 and #45.
If I had to guess, I would tend to think that the big xii might not end up with more than one or two of those teams in CFP contention. It would not be surprising at all to see the big xii once again end up empty handed just like near this time last year when the four other major conferences had representatives in the playoff.
One other thing no other Power 5 league can claim is the 117th best (?) team in D-1 football. Major congrats to Kansas and the big xii for that!
And, at the end of the day (night) fewer than 54K witnessed isu football on such a 'beautiful night'.
Well, actually, it would be even fewer than that seeing as the self-proclaimed expert on anything attendance related is on record here on HR that the announced attendance is for PAID, but not likely present in 'the Jack' fans.
Carry on, you always do.
That's why I said MOST of the teams run spread. Of course, I understand they don't run it exactly the same way with same personnel and strengths and weaknesses... that goes without saying.
However, everyone in the conference gets the same amount of time to prep and it's not a stretch to say if you are playing teams with similar offensive schemes that will keep prep time in check for the most part. Either way, you can't say that a week to get ready is not enough when everyone else is under the same time constraints to get ready for their opponent. If you really think it's lack of preparation time, I would argue it's on the coaching staff then.
I missed the "almost." And a lot of different offenses are referred to as "spread." Kansas State and Texas can't be called spread teams. Is ISU a spread team? Iowa State lines up with the QB in the shotgun and 4 WRs much of the time, but runs more than it passes,
But (although you wouldn't know it from what I wrote) I was thinking in terms of bowl appearances by the Big XII teams when I wrote that.
That definition covers a whole bunch of offenses. ISU has been using at least 3 WR pretty much every year since Earle Bruce went from the Houston Veer to the Slot-I in 1976, with exceptions for the Troy Davis years under Mac and the two or three years Walden used the wishbone. I don't think anybody accused ISU of running a spread offense in those years.
I am far from an expert on the subject. When this came up, I googled and came up with an article about the issue that includes the following:
The word "spread" has come to describe about 38 different styles of offense in college football. If you line your tight end up detached from the line, you're a spread. If you utilize mostly four wideouts, you're a spread. Hell, if your quarterback lines up mostly in the shotgun, you're a spread. These all have kernels of truth in them, but at this point, the spread has mostly lost its meaning. Saying a team runs a "spread" offense tells you almost nothing about what kind of offense the team actually runs.
But that guy might not know any more about it than I do.
When I think of the spread, I think of Texas Tech, Baylor and to a somewhat lesser extent TCU, running a fast-paced offense and throwing the ball all over the lot. For that matter, I think it could be argued that the most difficult adjustment for defenses is to the pace more than to the alignment. On the other hand, I think Baylor actually is about 50-50 on run-pass this year, which supports your comment about the mix not being relevant to what the offense is called.
I typically think of the spread offense as having four wideouts (no traditional TE lined up next to TE with hand in the dirt), one running back (no fullback), qb in the shot gun, and usually no huddle. This is as I define it. Some may have other definitions, terminology, etc.
