Every week Chris Brown from Smart Football takes your questions here about football and football-related game theory. This week, he explains precisely how Virginia Tech turned Miami 2009 into Miami 2008 for four quarters last weekend. Submit your questions for Chris at twitter.com/edsbs, your source for football chicanery and zombie law links since 2008. Enjoy.

I didn’t get to watch the Miami-Virginia Tech game until after I already knew the outcome — I had been at another game at the same time, and was as surprised as anyone that Virginia Tech could score thirty-one, and even more than Miami managed a meager seven. But I can honestly say that I had more fun watching this game on replay, already knowing the outcome, than anything I’ve watched this year.

That might come as a surprise considering I just did an extensive breakdown of Miami’s (previously) vaunted pass offense, have family members who are diehard Canes fans, and still think Jacory Harris is one of the most entertaining players in the country. But you have to love what Bud Foster and Frank Beamer were able to do with Virginia Tech. (more…)

Music blasts at ProPlayer Stadium. The score 33-17 glows on the board. Bats circle the floodlights.

Stefano sings along with the PA music.

We at the Ro-tel, Motel, Holiday Bin!
We at a no tell, coat tail, all the way fin!

I fuckin’ love that song. Brah, you tried to deny the U! You tried! (more…)

Welcome to our Factor Five Five Factor Preview Georgia Tech at Miami. The Factor Five Five Factor Preview examines the necessaries and completely arbitraries of the official beginning of your weekend, the Thursday Night special featuring the Boys’ Club (Jesse Palmer imitations! Chris Fowler roaring with unrestrained glee! Everyone looking at Erin Andrews, and then looking away ashamedly! Craig James doing the broadcast with his finger stuck in a Diet Pepsi can, “Cause it got stuck that way, ma!”)

Georgia Tech hopes to avoid the curse of being Factor’d for the second week in a row as the Factor Five favorite, since they actually won in this spot last week and thus broke the curse of being the favored team.

Enjoy.

Category one: Nebulous Statistical Comparisons of Dubious Validity. For Georgia Tech, that number will be 472, or the number of yards allowed in this matchup last year by the Miami defense to Tech’s offense. Miami’s defense spent most of last year lunging at bright lights, tackling giant invisible rabbits, and laying down on the turf weeping when faced with an option play, and by the fourth quarter had given up hope altogether by allowing Lucas Cox, Tech’s geology-back, to take a leisurely continental drift up the middle for a long touchdown. Miami must not allow anything close this yardage to stay in the game, or else the Angel of Death arrives for them in the fourth quarter running a 5.2 and sending the Tech bench into gusts of laughter at a white fullback outrunning Miami LBs into the endzone. A possession back running loose in a blowout will and should do that to an audience.

For Miami, that number is ROOM 222 BAILAMOS CHICAS!!!

Apologies. A dance break was clearly in order. (more…)

In the next installment in the Miami rap tradition:

Best lyric: “You can’t block the kick, because it was a pass.” The men are clearly looking forward to Miami’s innovative new “fake punt pass on first down” offense, which would be an improvement on Patrick Nix’s collection of terribly shitty plays, now available as a free pamphlet available on request from Braindeath Publishing House (”Preserving terrible ideas for future generations: Braindeath Publishing.”) HT: The 7th Floor Crew, who also bring us this fine animated gif of COMPLETE FUCKING OWNAGE.

Miami should be investigated immediately for this, but not because it’s against any bylines or NCAA regulations, but because it’s gonna get someone shot. Through the phone. You’re thinking this is impossible, but this is the city with giant pythons lurking in the drainage canals and people practicing unlicensed plastic surgery with the same breezy informality one would normally associate with a mowing people’s yards. If anywhere in the United States could figure out a way to get shot over the phone, it’s Miami.

For the Miami football season-ticket holders still wondering about Tuesday-night phone calls: Yes, that was really Jacory Harris.

The reactions they got from fans ranged from disbelief to dismissal.

To death threats, to santeria curses, to the sound of squealing tires and then rapid gunshots. It’s all part of Randy Shannon’s plan to turn his team into the toughest football team imaginable by having them interact with its citizens, seeing who survives, and them moving on to the less demanding game of football. We’re not saying anything about the program; it’s been squeaky clean for years now, even a bit milquetoasty by comparison to prior Miami teams. It’s the city and their phone-gun-toting residents we fear (and therefore admire a bit.)

HOW MANY STARS? Get out the white Escalade and sign that kid, because Rivals says he’s awesome. No, I haven’t seen tape on him. But STARS STARS STARS!!! Sign ‘em, boys!

“I used to go in the coaches’ offices, and sometimes they would literally have Rivals.com up on their screen,” said Matt Shodell, who covers UM and its recruiting for CaneSport.com. “I won’t name the coaches, but they would be writing names down on pieces of paper. I don’t know how much film they were looking at.”

Larry Coker seen here with the number of Miami players taken in the 2009 NFL draft behind him.

Holy jumping hellsocks. The malaise of the Coker era may be somewhat more clearly outlined now with this, since though we used to joke about [NAME REDACTED] doing this at Florida, we had no idea someone would be ballsy-stupid enough to do what you do in video games: hunt for stars and start pressing the ‘A’ button until something happened. This clearly unearths the problem with Larry Coker: he was playing the game on Heisman level, and needed to adjust the difficulty. His kingodom for a thorough understanding of the options menu.

Also worth questioning is the general inaccuracy of recruiting rankings as a whole: if Miami really did just point and click based on star ratings, their track record of success swallowing Rivals.com’s ratings whole is not a great one. Coker’s teams went 19-19 following their loss to Ohio State in the 2002 National Title game, and ended up with declining draft numbers, an inability to compete consistently in the ACC, and the eventual firing of Coker in 2006.

It needs to be said that a lot more goes into a team than recruiting. Contrary to what an NFL scout will tell you, putting a college team on the field takes more than an ability to hypnotize athletically gifted teenagers into coming to your campus. (Thus proving again that NFL scouts are wrong about everything forever.) Coker’s staff could have struggled to develop that talent, particularly on offense, where Miami seemed unwilling to protect a quarterback at all for the better part of four years (see: Kyle Wright, who was hit 22 times in the 2004 Miami/Florida State game alone.)

The iffy results from just taking Rivals’ advice alone, though, shows how important team fit actually is to putting a player in the right spot. Maybe Tennessee wasn’t insane to tell Tajh Boyd to go elsewhere, though we doubt it, because we’re pretty sure Lane Kiffin’s just making this shit up as he goes got it all going according to plan, we mean. Yes. All according to plan.

Maybe we’re just dodging you because we’re so scared of your big selves! That has to be it! Or because we’re gay! You know, like gay-tors, because gay people are such timid little people! Pass the cock sandwiches, please! WE’LL TAKE THREE!!!

With the entire rhetorical magazine of the Miami Hurricanes’ fan exhausted for them in one easy intro paragraph, we’ll move to the particulars. Florida does indeed have no plans to face the ‘Canes past the 2013 date, most likely because scheduling another home and away puts a dent in home ticket sales, and that’s not something Jeremy Foley wants to do in a recession economy he’s already said has forced spending constraints on the Florida program. (We’re now down to triple-ply woven silk toilet paper in Meyer’s lavatory. Savage, really, what this is doing to us.)

A better question: why you duckin’ FIU, bitches? We all know the answer. Three letters that contain more asskick than your entire team put together. N-E-D.

10/14/06: Never Forget.

If only we could breed him with SpaceBat and take the next step in human evolution…oh, then we’d be talking progress on a hot skillet, now.

Presenting a matchup so retro one should be forced to watch it with a pair of hot-orange Oakleys on and while wearing a well-gelled mullet: Notre Dame and Miami are considering re-upping for their rivalry game, a series that has been on hiatus since a three-game stretch in 1987-1990 and was dubbed “Catholics versus Convicts,” an unfair accusation towards Miami in so many ways. (Probation is a totally different thing, and if you’d ever done anything fun enough in your life to get arrested for it, you’d know that.)

We’d watch it even if Miami in the 2000s has been less Miami, and more “Clemson With Skin Cancer” since joining the ACC. (Similarly put, Notre Dame would just have be “Notre Dame, but with a lingering bone cancer.)

Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick shows off his flair for bland but simultaneously inaccurate rhetoric in describing the matchup on more than just a football level:

Playing Miami is appealing, Swarbrick said, because “they are two great academic institutions. We’re eager to play schools that share our values. There’s a lot of great history around the games.”

We weren’t aware of Notre Dame’s declared love for chunky asses and teetering donks, and was equally ignorant of Miami’s fondness for cold weather and overpaying coaches. There’s no set date on it yet, but talks will resume in April to figure out which slots in Notre Dame’s remaining contract with NBC–good through 2015!–can accommodate the game. If it features anything like converting 3rd and 43 from your own goalline, it will be worth any trouble you care to go through to make it happen.

Randy Shannon isn’t short: he just spends a lot of time around really tall people. (HT: The 7th Floor.