Spencer Hall eats with Charlie Weis and discusses whether it was a good hire for Florida. I think no one really knows. The minus is that he’s Charlie Weis and all that entails in terms of personality, baggage and the fit of his pro-style attack with Florida’s players. The big plus is that Charlie will get to focus on exactly what he wants to focus on: developing his decided schematic advantage and calling those plays. His job isn’t to be the head guy, an administrator, a schmoozer with the booster, but instead he’ll have his face buried in that Denny’s menu of the playcall sheet and just call plays. We’ll see how it works.
– Virginia Tech got beat, but Tyrod Taylor had the play of the game:
– Oregon working on trick plays. Chip Kelly? Shocker.
– Andrew Gelman on statistics, over at FiveBooks. Interesting choices.
– Brian speculates on Michigan, Harbaugh, etc. I have no idea what Harbaugh or Michigan will do, but if Rich Rodriguez goes I think the epitaph is that it’s no longer enough to be simply have a very good offense (of course it took Rodriguez awhile to get to that point, too). Rodriguez’s offense underperformed in the last few weeks of the year, but it was still an elite unit, especially if you discount turnovers (leaving aside whether you should). But Rodriguez is undone by organization, special teams, the general mood around the program and, most of all, defense. My takeaway is that if you want to be an offensive minded head coach and still call the plays, you need to make up your mind about your defense. You either hire someone who runs exactly what you want (a 3-3-5, in Rich Rod’s case) or you hire a guy and let him run his defense. Rodriguez’s approach was far too schizophrenic: switching to his preferred defense midseason or in the offseason, switching coaches, meddling here and there while not fully committing to that side of the ball. In 2004, 2005, when the spread was still ascendant, it may have been enough to call some really good plays and rely on talent on defense to carry you through. But in 2010, at Michigan, with a depleted roster, that’s not enough. Head coaches have to be head coaches, and coordinators must be coordinators. There will be counterexamples, but see my point above about Weis.
– Is the iPad destroying the future of magazines?