The most interesting man in the world, part XXXVI. Since Harbaugh's tweeting about the organic bananas Miguel grew today this seems like a good time to note that there's a 50-minute-long documentary on Harbaugh conquering South America on vimeo. I can't embed it, but, like
I hope to name something they do this fall "peruball."
Yet more complaints from the NFL. The spread is such a good offensive system that a collection of French six year olds could probably go 6-6 with it, according to Seahawks assistant Tom Cable:
“Unfortunately, I think we’re doing a huge disservice to offensive football players — other than a receiver — that come out of these spread systems,” Cable continued. “The runners aren’t as good. They aren’t taught how to run. The blockers aren’t as good. The quarterbacks aren’t as good. They don’t know how to read coverage and throw progressions. They have no idea.”
Nobody is taught anything. You show up in college and they're just all like "put that hat on, the one with the bars on it, I think the bars go in front, hooray we just had practice."
There is nothing funnier than NFL coaches having little stomp fits that their QBs can't take a three step drop when they are making the same transition college is, just slightly slower. As of 2011, 38% of NFL snaps were from the gun. That shot up to 58%(!) by 2014. The NFL is going to hit the theoretical maximum by the time Tom Cable gets done talking.
Harbaugh angle on the above. It'll be interesting to see what Harbaugh does given the above environment. It's a stretch to call his Stanford offense "pro style" for a lot of reasons. It was both far more spread-friendly and far more caveman than that term implies. Andrew Luck ran his share of zone read and the Cardinal had an affection for shotgun runs on third and not quite short (IE, 3 or 4). Meanwhile they'd happily roll out a goal line formation on first and ten from their own 30.
Harbaugh was similarly extreme in both directions as an NFL coach. His first two years in San Francisco his team used fewer wide receivers per play than any other team in the league. At the same time they were introducing Colin Kaepernick as a college-ish run threat.
So the spread is dominant because people who have never seen a football can run it. At the same time you can't poke an NFL coach without that guy giving the public perception of your weird-ass offense a recruiting boost. Harbs gonna Harbs without thinking about what other people will say, of course, but I wonder if the shape of what he does is going to look significantly different than it did at Stanford.
On baseball. We had a mailbag Q that asked how Big Ten had gotten rathergood at baseball that I couldn't answer particularly well, but our former baseball writer Formerly Anonymous had an excellent comment that tackles that topic:
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RPI has changed drastically to emphasize road wins. It's helped the northern teams quite a bit. As an example, the Missouri Valley conference is one of the strongest conferences in RPI this year by playing tough teams in the non-conference on the road. The top 25 in RPI includes Dallas Baptist (who I've seen and know are good), Missouri State, Radford, and Bradley. What the hell is a Radford or a Bradley?
Add that Nebraska and Maryland were two very solid adds in the last few years. The B1G has had several big wins over big name programs this year.
- Illinois has wins over Coastal Carolina, and series wins over Oklahoma State and South Florida.
- Ohio State has a signature victory over ACC leader Louisville in the midweek.
- Indiana took 2/3 from Stanford, split 2 with College of Charleston, swept Cal State Fullerton, and beat Louisville in the midweek.
- Nebraska split with Fullerton as well and swept Florida Gulf Coast.
All of those are pretty damn impressive wins.
The big kicker though is how down the Big12 is. They are looking at only having 2 tourney teams this year. Texas is way down leaving just TCU and Oklahoma State in the running. Tech has an outside shot, but its borderline. Part of that is losing Texas A&M and Mizzou (granted they added TCU after that loss). Baylor is down, Oklahoma is down. They just aren't up there at the moment.
There's some structural disadvantages yes, but the amount of money put into programs like Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, or anyone else in the B1G the last few years, the B1G is definitely showing some major improvements. We've been a 2-3 bid league for a while, we're taking advantage of a down Big12 to grab another, and our recent success in facilities/adding good teams has lead to some better recruiting.
For more in depth coverage, I suggest d1baseball.com. They've amassed every major college baseball writer I have read over the last 15 years into one site. Aaron Fitt (formerly of Baseball America), Eric Sorenson (ESPN/CBS), Kendall Rogers (Yahoo!), Mark Ethridge (SEBaseball), and Michael Baumann (Grantland) are just a few . "O.M.G., it's amazing" is probably the best way to describe it. They do regular features of different areas of the country along with national storylines.
For B1G fans, I'd suggest starting right here for a take from that site. There's also a season update from about a month ago and an early season/preseason article about how B1G has spent big on baseball.
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Michigan can help out the league and their cause this weekend in an odd home series with #13 Oklahoma State that closes their season. Yesterday's game was a 12-2 hammering by the Cowboys, so Michigan probably has to win both tonight and tomorrow to give themselves even a faint chance of an at-large bid. The very idea a 14-10 Big Ten outfit would be on the fringe of the fringe of the bubble is a ton of progress.
Softballin'. Angelique Chengelis profiles Michigan catcher Lauren Sweet. The Wolverine softballists kick off their NCAA tournament tonight at 6 PM at Alumni Field. It's on ESPNU as well.
Etc.: In news that is, in retrospect, not surprising, Iowa and Tennessee drank every drop of liquor at their bowl game. Brendan Quinn joins the ranks of people who just don't want to hear about the Fab Five anymore. Bielfeldt to Nebrasketball? AFC Ann Arbor in the Daily. Haven't had a bread photoshop in a while. Point guard acquisition matrix. Against a 30-second shot clock.
Of local interest: there's a Barry Sanders charity raffle going on. You could play golf with him and discuss whether abruptly retiring from the Lions was a good idea or the best idea.