Rather than pile on the smoking conflagration that is Miami football, we’d like to let the delicious irony of two things speak for themselves:

Exhibit A: Sign featured before 2004 game with Tech (HT:Nathan):

Exhibit B: The photo seen below, which while not pertinent to the 30-23 Georgia Tech victory, certainly sums up what has happened to Miami this year.

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Various other notes from around a weekend of football watching.

Nature over nurture, example one: [NAME REDACTED.] The most dangerous game for exactly two quarters this coming week will be Illinois versus Ohio State, because the Illini will take the field, go up by at least ten points, and convince every gullible soul in eye’s reach that they are about to pull the upset of the century against Ohio State. (Century only 6 years old-really all that great a statement?-ed. )

Then they will attempt to run out the clock, play a soft zone, and surrender no less than thirty points to Ohio State in a soul-crushing defeat involving two or three strategy decisions of such dubious judgment that Ray Goff will fall from his sofa at home. Which is precisely what we would have told Wisconsin fans when they fell behind 24-10 to the Illini: you’ve got them right where you want them, boys.

Well-developed triceps. The brain, not so much.

It’s astonishing how little a coach can learn about game management and strategy despite having years of ineffective performances by his units as evidence. Then again, perhaps he’s just three or four plays away from winning, or sees improvement. Or maybe he just needs his players. Or this is just ‘noise in the system.’

Ohio State fans, just remember: a ten point deficit at the half is ideal, as it all but guarantees a win against the Illini. Nature triumphs nurture again, at least when the waterskiing wonder of Champaign-Urbana’s flexing his guns in a vain attempt to stop the opposition from gouging his defense in the fourth.

-Terry Hoeppner’s Hoosiers don’t even make it funny against Michigan State, beating them 46-21 with most of MSU’s points racked up in lackadaisical garbage time scoring. Cue inevitable leap to plaudits and bowl predictions: Indiana’s last three games are: at Minnesota, Michigan, and Purdue. Minnie and Purdue were both bowl-circling also-rans a month ago, which means Indiana could probably defeat both. They will have to face Michigan, a game where pain will visit them in previously unimagined ways. So they break 2-1, end up 7-5, and go to a bowl game. If that astonishing feat and kicking a tumor’s ass does not win Terry Hoeppner some variety of coaching award, we will be forced to drive to Bloomington and give him a pie we baked ourselves.

Mark our words: we’re sending Terry a pie if doesn’t get coach of the year.

-Missouri’s ballyhoo and fooferaw evaporates against an Oklahoma team that wasn’t going to take any nonsense. But the grass on the hill in Columbia looked to be an especially deep shade of verdant green, y’all: game ball to the groundskeepers.

-The Chris Rix Award for Colorblind Interception Throwing for 2006 may have to go to Brent Schaeffer, who can toss ballcrushing interceptions of disastrous timing with the best of them this year. He did so against Auburn on Saturday, turning confidently off a play fake and zinging a beautiful ball directly to a waiting Auburn linebacker at a time in the game when Auburn really felt the evil spectre of the Orgeron threatening to stuff them in his sack o’ dead varmints ‘n whatnot. We like qbs who throw picks with gusto: not just piddly floaters that flop into opponents’ hands, but bullets tossed right into the chest of stunned defenders. The kind of throw even quarterbacks think about like, “yeah, it was a pick. But I threw the shit out of it, didn’t I?”

Brent Schaeffer, you throw them with pride, son. Almost Brock Berlin-esque, actually.

Throws ‘em with gusto: Brent SchaeFFAH!!

-Trevor Matich should frighten you. Last week, the in-booth shots of Matich, Gilmore, and, um, Whathisname the announcer moved Matich, who must be 8′7″ in his massive slippers, moved Matich away from the foreground and into the background, where for a single night he appeared to be merely huge. This week Matich was back in the foreground for the Rutgers/UConn game, and poor Rodney Gilmore looked like a seven-year old next to Matich, who loomed so large in the frame he appeared to be angrily eyeing our beer through the television. (Really, dude. Please. Take it and stop staring.)

-Colt McCoy, despite having a fake name, may be the best qb in the Big 12, if you like shiny numbers. (Oh, and we do.) While BON might say that Graham Harrell’s numbers are a product of the system, they’re still huge numbers; Tech turned the first half of the Texas/Texas Tech game into an ABA game, and then found themselves bound at every turn by some knot the Texas coaching staff had tied them in at halftime. Texas simply settled down, ran the hell out of the ball, and did what good teams do against Mike Leach: stay disciplined and focus on the guys who hadn’t touched the ball in the first half.

McCoy was beyond…well, just plain beyond: 256 yards, 4 tds, and 68 yards rushing just because he could. He may set the record for Texas passing tds this year as a freshman. All of that and he doesn’t even dance like Vince Young did, and has made no additions to his coach’s iPod. Mack Brown just recruited this awesome preschooler out of Lubbock, too. You’ve got to see his mechanics to believe them.

You haven’t heard of Tyrus Stedler yet…but Mack Brown has.

[taking off orangeandblueglasses codex begin]

Ten minutes into the game the thrashing alert sounded-Georgia was down fourteen points, we were down six Warsteiner Oktoberfests, and the rout, for all intents and purposes, had begun. Then the rest of the game happened. Both teams went into swoons, coughing up easy points and making what should have been a Florida sprint for four quarters into the football equivalent of an Ironman finish: ugly, wobbling, limbs moving in directions dictated not by a confident body moving with all parts in harmony, but by desperate, discombobulated neurons moving randomly in search of a lucky strike.

Like Chris Legh, Florida’s offense collapsed late. Hopefully the offense we’ll have a Gatorade sponsored recovery, too.

Leak-who was evidently shaken up-appeared in his underwhelming Office Depot game manager duds again, missing open receivers, refusing to take shots down the field (which were there) against a team that had bled against the pass all season long. The o-line windmilled in vain on both pass and run plays, and not just against the obvious monsters like Quentin Moses on the UGA d-line. After the first three series, Florida’s offense tanked and sent the bill to the defense, who classily picked up the tab as it has all season long, frustrating Matthew Stafford into rushing throws and making sure UGA couldn’t break plays and tie up what became a close game.

Florida wasn’t the only team to lay steaming heaps of offensive offal all over the field Saturday. This may be Mark Richt’s reekingest team in his tenure at UGA: bad passing, feeble blocking on the offensive line, and a severe aggravation persistent rash of dropped passes by Bulldog receivers across the board doomed them. We’d toss some blame Martrez Milner’s way, but he’d just drop it, so we’ll just leave it over here with his name on it, since he dropped fine passes from Matthew Stafford all day. Stafford, by the way, will be very, very good. Richt should just let him play the rest of the season, get his ass kicked in an educational sort of way, and then reload for next year. Joe T. can enjoy the privilege of being on the roster and earning his way into the banking/real estate/other lucrative good-ol’-boy network job he’ll undoubtedly get as a result of being on the Georgia football team. He’ll always have that…and the Cherrishinksi, of course.

The stankfinger award of the week goes to Florida’s offense though, and mainly for this reason: we want to see them kick some quality ass. Serious, bloody, merciless asskicking of a nature so definite, thunderous, and crushing that the opposing team leaves with a permanent twitch in their right eye and a case of scabies. An ass-kicking like something out of the Bible. An ass-kicking that moves the Caribbean plate three inches to the right. (Lives of the innocent be damned-we need points, Gator fans! Who cares if cities burn-Percy’s gotta run!) Florida’s beginning to be stuffed to the gills with talent, and yet the numbers-as any five cent pundit will tell you-haven’t even begun to equal the numbers put up by Larry Fedora, the offensive coordinator under…[NAME REDACTED.]

We do, we do.

Plenty’s wrong…here’s just a few guesses from someone who, at this point, would shoot off their own pinkie toe to see a game against quality competition where the offense scores more than 30 points. (Really-we might.)

How ’bout a slant? Dan Mullen’s playbook contains seemingly every route constructed by man…except the blitz-beating slant, which defenses live in fear of on downs containing four and five man pressure. Instead, we throw curls.

Please for the love of God exploit the seams. Perhaps it’s Chris Leak’s T-Bill mentality (the safest of all football investments: the check down!), but the vaunted spread lives and dies off exploiting the seams in the defense created by spreading them out. Florida doesn’t seem to do that at all, save for one td pass against Georgia to Caldwell. If we’re going to cash in all those runs for two yards up the middle, how about a few play action breaks between the hashes?

Trust receivers in single coverage. Mike Leach may get somethings completely and totally wrong, but this is not one of them: wideouts have a distinct advantage over dbs because they know where they’re going before dbs do. Leak only trusts one of his receivers in single coverage, and even Dallas Baker doesn’t get the ball when he’s singled up as often as he should. We think we’d trade a few picks for the rare sight of a ball going further than ten yards down the field. Don’t blame us, blame Spurrier, since the vast majority of Florida fans were weaned on bomb-and-run offense, but the nine-man fronts Florida has seen as of late have been daring Leak to throw deep. Thus far, that’s been an effective defense.

Wynn. Deshawn Wynn is healthy and has four or five games left in him as a Gator. Wear. Him. Out. He iced the Tennessee and Georgia games. He’s worked his way out of Meyer’s purgatory and back into the starter’s position. Let him earn some bucks in an NFL signing bonus and possibly even give some bite to the Florida run game Meyer is so enamoured of creating. He’s going to be a ghost in old programs in two months-let him win a few single-handedly and let him throw some sugar on what has been an often sour tenure as a Gator.

[taking off orangeandblueglasses codex end]

[putting on orangeandblueglasses codex begin]

Zombie head, check: we weren’t going to believe that USC wasn’t that good until we saw them lose, a.k.a. the “zombie rule” (Believe the zombie is dead when you see the head bashed in and rolling.) Oregon State brought the shaolin spade, ending their 27 game Pac-10 streak and allowing pollsters to cut the vestiges of 2003-2005 that had kept USC in the 2 spot.

Zombie hunters: If you’re going to fight with a beaver, stay hard to win. USC didn’t.

Immediate, short-term, bum-on-the-streeet-looking-for-food question: How far will the drop? Oh, they’ll drop-oh, lordy will they. The question is how far (Nine spots? Behind Cal? Behind Notre Dame? And behind the Big East twins Louisville and West Virginia?)

Long-term, stodgy investment banker-pondering-investing-in-lunar-colonies question: is this a hiccup or a real change in periodicity for the otherwise boundless potential winning curve of the USC Trojans football program?

Think long and hard here, because programs all ebb and flow differently, but on a hedging historical note did you not think of other dynasties exiting the chrysalis of back to back championships and emerging as…merely good? Or worse still, declining? We wondered at the time if we were watching that instant where coach-poaching, new starters, and the ravages of change had finally caught up with the Trojans. And we think, sitting on the caffeine rocket of a Monday morning, that we finally did see that on Saturday. It’s less similar to Miami/Ohio State ‘02, where OSU beat a team that never dominated like that again; the best comparison would likely be to Nebraska/Arizona State ‘96, where ASU bit the ass of a team clearly in transition between various forms of badassedness. Nebraska would share the national title the next year, which USC very well could do next year. But those waiting for a clear statement of intereggnum in CFB finally got it after a season of close calls, and as we shape our mountain of mashed potatoes at the dinner table, we tell you that…this means something.

Jake the Snake, pre-mustache days, saw a dynasty cruising on past credit take a dip, too.

Call HR, revise incentives package immediately. Another thing that has added up in grand fashion for the Trojans: coaching brain drain. Ed Orgeron may not have been the valedictorian of his class at Huey Long’s School for Bayou Badasses, but he did create lineman who played as if their families’ lives depended on it. (Probably because Ed had them followed by backwoods assassins ready to strike at any time. Black cat, white cat, still catches mice, right?) More pressing still, the duo of Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin, wunderkind coaches that they are, clearly coach at a level just a few notches below the standard established by Norm Chow. Key coaching turnover has likely robbed the Trojans of a few of the margins that used to sustain them through close shaves and blow open potential cruise games over crap opposition.

Talent is king, whether it pulls the strings on the sidelines or throws those beguilingly simple pass routes the Trojans specialize in, and attracting it and keeping it is as much a function of the organization as the actual execution of plays on the field. The Trojans have, at least by the Economist’s standards, done the right things: hired and trained internally, mentored talent from within (see Kiffin and Sarkisian,) and tried to hire the best people they can to coach the team. (If you don’t think coaching is all that important, exit discussion four sentences ago. Sorry for the late notice.) They’ve done the same for recruiting, a sale made easier by the twin aphrodesiacs of glamour and plush SoCal living.

And yet in all systems, there’s a trough, and SC’s hit one. The rest of the season’s plotlines will rush through the hole put in USC’s season on Saturday, making the Oregon State Beavers the most important player in the semi-mythical national college football scene this year. If you’d care to argue that, ruminate on the fact that with a victory in the APOCALYPTICALLY IMPORTANT MONDOMATCH OF THE MILLENIUM on Thursday, West Virginia could put a Big East team in line for a shot at the national title without a surfeit of backflipping by the BCS. Thanks to Oregon State, you’re sipping blue coffee in bizarro world this morning. For that breath of fresh and strange air, our hats off to the Beavers.

This season brought to you by Bizarro Superman and the Oregon State Beavers. You’re welcome.

When sitting at home, thinking about the most juvenile possible EDSBS headlines we could possibly write, it came down to one day dream. We knew we couldn’t force South Carolina to play Southern Cal…, so our best bet was the USC/OSU match up. But could Oregon State possibly be the team to end USC’s regular season and Pac 10 streaks??????

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 Well, it happened and we couldn’t narrow down the headline choices to one. I mean, “Trojans Busted, Beavers Responsible” is good and all, but is it a clear winner over “Beavers Turn Back Trojans In The End”… or “Trojans Denied By Beavers”… or “Beavers Defense To Tight For Trojans”. … or ”Impotent Trojans Can’t Penatrate Beavers”. How could we possibly choose? Oh yea, and it was like totally the biggest upset of the season and could lead the BCS into controversy…. but its really all about the juvenile wise cracks for us.