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The Texabama Game

Posted by Charles P. Pierce January 8, 2010 10:27 AM

Give any football coach enough time and he'll screw something up. The worst thing about Bill Belichick's fourth-and-two gamble was not that it didn't work -- OK, that was pretty bad. -- but that, in reaction, some number-crunching yahoos made the argument that "going for it" is not merely fun for the fans, but the percentage play. Now every coach has a empirical reason for losing his mind. A fake punt on fourth-and-23? If Nick Saban were a warm-blooded creature, he'd have been sweating that one for the rest of the game. Meanwhile, Mack Brown decides to have his rookie QB with 11 minutes of BCS-level experience complete a shovel-pass with the first half winding down and Texas miraculously still within 17-6. Gah.
In two years, maybe three, Texas receiver Jordan Shipley is going to be Wes Welker. (If you're keeping track of such things, at about the same time, Dexter McCluster of Ole Miss is going to be Kevin Faulk.)
Congratulations to Kirk Herbstreit on every broadcaster's nightmare. He just gets finished saying that the Texas O-line has not surrendered a sack, when Alabama's Eryk Anders comes flying in off the edge to freight-train poor Garrett Gilbert into the game's pivotal turnover.
All the advocates of a playoff system now have to explain to me why it would make more sense to give, say, Colt McCoy two or three postseason chances to get his shoulder wrecked -- and his draft status dinged -- rather than just one.