Home Blog Page 208

Complex System for QBs and the Next Few Years

By
angry
-
25

I have brought this up in the past, but why such a complex offense for Oregon State QBs? Oregon State’s job is not to breed backup NFL Qbs. Yet that is exactly what they’re doing. Riley would be better off recruiting a great college QB rather than a mediocre backup NFL QB, and he would also be better off “dumbing down” the system so these QBs can have success their first year. I realize OSU is putting QBs into the NFL and that is something that a select group of fans are proud of, but that doesn’t win games on Saturdays, and those players have ultimately held clipboards on Sundays. So who exactly benefits from this system, and if the answer is no one, then why continue doing it?

If we look at the recent numbers, first year QBs under Riley do not fair well.

2005 Matt Moore: 2711 yards, 11 TD, 19 INT (Beavs Record: 5-6)
2007 Canfield/Moevao: 2537 yards, 11 TD, 21 INT (Beavs Record: 9-4)
2010 Ryan Katz: 2401 yards, 18 TD, 11 INT (Beavs Record 5-7)
2011 Sean Mannion: 3328, 16 TD, 18 INT (Beavs Record 3-9)

Average: 2744 yards, 14 TD, 17 INT

It’s not clear who the successor will be, but we know this: he hasn’t played meaningful time in any games, and likely will not the rest of the way given the competition only gets better.

As average as Mannion has been, he’s still better than next year’s rookie QB. We will see a big drop off next year at that position. Now considering all the other seniors leaving, it’s hard to have optimism. The year after looks pretty bleak, too. How does Riley survive these? And further, does he even want to? He looks shot. I could see him realizing the cupboard is bare and retiring after this season. Last night was a prototypical “cool the hot seat game”, which Riley usually does well in, and that usually brings the Pollys out of hibernation, but he wasn’t able to win it this time. Not the Pollys are even chirping a little.

Riley problem is an issue of desire/competition and genuinely not knowing how to make things better. He is a man out of ideas. OSU should offer him a different position for the same salary, then find a new coach. This would allow Riley to save face, collect his check, and everyone else to move forward. A few years ago I might have said demote Riley to OC, but after the past few years I don’t think he could even do that. Maybe give him Locey’s job and move Locey back on the field. Something like that has to happen, because if OSU wins a game or 2 next year things are going to blowup. This is next year’s schedule. How many wins do you see?

Utah Post Game Reaction

By
angry
-
103

I have two tickets to the Stanford game.

Does anyone want to buy them off me?

——————-

From the last thread:

I didn’t think the O-line played badly other than the false starts (inexcusable at home). The sacks were mostly due to Utah being good pass rushers and the poor/obvious play calling or Mannion taking an eternity to make a decision. Utah did control the line but they didn’t dominate and get huge push, which means there were opportunities with some creativity. If I were coaching the Beavs I’d have developed and called an entirely different offensive game plan. If OSU were open to criticism and suggestions I’d email it to Bob D and Riley, but they likely have blocked me.

There were some obvious reasons the game fell on Mannion:

1. Missed wide open TD on the slot post.
2. Threw INT that lead to 3 points. Without that Beavs likely win. Those two plays are 10 points. Terrible for a senior QB.
3. Poor and slow decisions throughout, including taking bad sacks, missing wide open guys (Chris Brown in the flat), etc.

Riley blew clock management and play calling as he does every week.

D ran out of gas. Poor depth at LB.

Ward should be a 3rd down back and the Beavs use him as a featured back, so it’s hard to analyze run blocking fairly. Woods was rushing to a 5+ ypc. I just thought Mannion had equate time to pass or make a decision. Not great time but not terrible. Given the opponent that’s not poor o-line play imo.

Utah @ Oregon State (game thread)

By
angry
-
500

Early game thread, for those who want to discuss football. ;)

Go Beavs.

Is an OSU Diploma a Dunce Cap?

By
angry
-
39

I have written extensively about the college/education bubble. Tuition has risen more than quality of education (which if anything, has decreased), etc.

When a potential employer looks at your resume and sees Oregon State (or Oregon, Washington State, etc), is this nothing more than a quick selection tool? If so, not going to college might be better than subpar college.

a. No debt upon graduation

b. No negative stigma associated with a tier 3 college

c. Enter workforce earlier and gain real skills

d. Become a self-educated man and spend more time mastering subjects you plan to excel in (very important in a division of labor/specialist economy).

e. All the information is free online.

These are all nice benefits. The one benefit in going to college is that it’s replaced high school diploma as the benchmark. An employer would select you over a high school education. That’s about it. If employers would take the time to actually explore each applicant, it would greatly reduce that problem. So if you’re in a position to hire people, maybe you should do that.

And no I am not bitter and do not need a job, though I am always open to discussions. This is mostly due to anger over the high cost for a bad product. Which we find in healthcare, too. I also make this post because I do feel people associate an OSU diploma with dunces. It’s a quick selection tool. I know someone will bring up the engineering school being ranked. None of that really matters, though. All that matters is what people outside of the Corvallis area think of when they hear OSU, and it is rarely (never) positive/prestigious. At best reactions are neutral or lukewarm.

“Sayre’s Law” and Bob DeCarolis, Mike Riley, and the Media

By
angry
-
12

The origin of Sayre’s Law are up for debate, but the gist of it can be found here.

In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue.

Well let me ask you this: what on earth can be less important than whether a college football team wins or loses a game? Very few things if you think about it. Yet the intensity of such debates fuels this website, causes one man to call another a “retard”, “idiot”, etc, and even triggers murder threats on SEC/ESPN comment sections. Some fans even kill other fans. Google “fan argument death” if you don’t believe it.

Here is some more on the phenomena:

“ACADEMIC politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” This observation is routinely attributed to former Harvard professor Henry Kissinger. Well before Kissinger got credit for that thought in the mid-1970s, however, Harvard political scientist Richard Neustadt told a reporter, “Academic politics is much more vicious than real politics. We think it’s because the stakes are so small.” Others believe this quip originated with political scientist Wallace Sayre, Neustadt’s onetime colleague at Columbia University. A 1973 book gave as “Sayre’s Law,” “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue—that is why academic politics are so bitter.” Sayre’s colleague and coauthor Herbert Kaufman said his usual wording was “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.” In his 1979 book Peter’s People, Laurence Peter wrote, “Competition in academia is so vicious because the stakes are so small.” He called this “Peter’s Theory of Entrepreneurial Aggressiveness in Higher Education.” Variations on that thought have also been attributed to scientist-author C. P. Snow, professor-politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and politician Jesse Unruh (among others). According to the onetime editor of Woodrow Wilson’s papers, however, long before any of them strode the academic-political scene, Wilson observed often that the intensity of academic squabbles he witnessed while president of Princeton University was a function of the “triviality” of the issues being considered.

Walk around any campus and you find a bunch of know-it-all professors who are wildly insecure, having to “publish or die”, hoping to write the next great paper or discover the next breakthrough. Never feeling they get recognition for their “genius”…

Since the athletic department is an extension of the overall mood of a university, I think the mentality leaks over, and we’re left with an AD who makes comments like, “I guess you’re a genius now” [paraphrasing here, I can’t find the quote] after Mike Riley’s on the hot seat and wins a game. There is a lot of contempt in that statement, and it’s aimed directly toward the dissenting fan. This would be like one professor taking jabs at another or sabotaging his experiment, in the academic scenario above. There is a disproportionately large fight over the unimportant argument of (a) winning more football games and (b) who is right and who is wrong.

This spills over into Mike Riley and the media as well. The latter trying to protect the establishment and their own jobs due to the fierce competition over peanuts. These people are not curing cancer or writing “The Republic”…they’re writing about a football game in Corvallis.

To take this one step further, this is part of the reason I don’t donate to OSU. While it’s unspoken, there is a massive contempt between the establishment and the average fan. Unless that fan blindly follows, of course. Dissent is censored rather than encouraged (OSU even went so far to block my Twitter account), small donations are not welcome (I had to write Bob D and explain there was no way to donate $20), receive mail asking for money but never receive mail thanking for a donation, an email detailing steps for improvement rather than just levying criticism completely ignored, etc. Then the comments by the AD, the disdain in the media (i.e. Mamma Machado, et al), etc. All of these people are bottom feeders competing over a small portion of nothingness, and that’s why we see the stubbornness to maintain the status quo and the disdain for anyone who threatens it. Sayre’s Law in action.

 

1...207208209...402Page 208 of 402