Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments
You just raised probably the most important point of this thread. Attendance is down concurrent with popularity of the sport on a steady rise. It'd be one thing if it was apathy keeping fans away, but it isn't. Like I mentioned just above this, the challenge isn't making people care about the sport, it's providing fans a reason why they have to be there in person.
The players loved Pelini. Husker fans, however, not so much.
Yeah but even at dirt cheap prices, minor league programs have trouble drawing crowds, so the front office of the Peoria Chiefs invested in establishing a festival atmosphere for games. There's activities and rides for kids, a zip line, family events, just in general making it something you want to make a day of.
Although the situations are different, both college football and minor league baseball have something in common: incentive to not go to a live game. (I can watch it on TV vs I don't give a shit about minor league baseball.) You can look at successful minor league franchises to see how they are creating an atmosphere around the game that draws attendance without making a farce of the game. It would be like if we did the Hokie Village for all home games. I think those are some ideas that Whit needs to be looking at.
Also, you're dead to rights on the offense. Even when we were owning the ACC, we weren't fun to watch. Tyrod put some lipstick on the pig for a while, but eventually the wheels fell off.
Looks like the thoroughbreds are all winding up at the glue factory.
In general, all sports are going to have to present consumers with increased perceived value of the live experience. The at home watching experience has just become too good for the only selling point for attending the game being, you know, the game. You actually have a worse view of things inside the stadium (save, of course, the ability to see everything at once, in context, which usually only matters to football purists). Concessions are way more expensive than stocking up at the grocery store. Traffic's a bitch and hotels price gouge on game weekends. (Seriously, assholes, charging $250 a room is once thing, but requiring a two night stay? Fuck off.)
If course, on-field product matters. A resurgence of the program will put asses in seats. But it won't keep them there, as evidenced by the growing appathy toward the end of the 10-win streak. Program success is necessary, but it isn't sufficient.
I'm sure Whit is smart enough to get it figured out. Personally, I think he needs to look at what minor league baseball is doing. I live within driving distance of the Peoria Chiefs, a class A affiliate of the Cardinals, and their game day experience is incredible. Minor league baseball has made huge strides since the days of gimmicky theme nights being the only draw. They have a proven model of enhancing the perceived value of a ticket.
I thought I read Matt Johns was rumored to take the starting job from Lambert. I hope it's true, because that would mean Lambert's last play would be getting sandwiched by Dadi and Ekanem.
Also, let's be honest. "Not wanted" = "can't win the starting job."
This transfer hurts them. Now Mike London is down to only having, what, like fourteen QBs to choose from?
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11 years 1 month
# | Wyatt Teller's "Shoulders Broad Enough to Handle All the Attention" at Starring Role on OL "It was one of the toughest things I ever went through," Teller said. "I basically had no consistency, I don't know how I stayed or how I did it. Looking back on it, it was just so tough, I was making mistakes all the time. I think I had one victory in one-on-ones, I was literally losing every time."
This makes me hopeful for Nijman, and the frustrations he has shown in practice since the switch.
God I hope not. 28 ppg would have been good for 72nd in scoring offense last year. I'm hoping for an average in the mid-thirties. And as our scoring offense goes up, our scoring defense will go down. A Foster defense thrives on playing with the lead.
Which raises the question, why doesn't Bud just redefine the whip role to be more of a traditional DB rather than trying to keep the whip position but only use it about 30% of the time? It's kind of a dead end position in terms of recruiting because it sees the field so little. Against the run, bud could just shade the safety up toward the line in a whip role. I think Chuck Clark could do well in that capacity given his combo of size and speed.
I would bet my mortgage payment that that Call team would not shred our current defense like that. They'd get points, sure, but we are completely better suited today to face that offense, especially with our new emphasis on the nickel package.
Calculating attendance at LOLUVA games requires the use if imaginary numbers.
Anyone else noticing the decline of attendance coinciding with the rise of HD?
Cliff Notes version, from '03 to '04 we went from a 4-4 base to a 4-3 base. Rover went from being an ILB position to a safety position.
EDIT: And now that I say that, I'm pretty sure rover was actually an OLB position. I think rover and whip kind of mirrored each other.
I'm saying he tried to have a multiple offense, and then game planned with a "we're going to impose our will" attitude. Basically, I'm saying he was in over his head as OC and couldn't put together a cohesive offensive vision. An honestly, it wasn't his fault. He lacked the skill set for that position and was kept there way too long. I'm just glad we were able to retain him on staff in his current capacity, because now that he's being used effectively he's an asset to the program.
I think "scripts" are actually fairly common in higher levels of the game. The first certain number of plays in normal down and distance situations are usually predetermined, and goof OCs set these plays up to test the waters of what the defense is throwing at them. Usually OCs go "off-script" if you get 3rd and long or 2nd and short type situations.
The problem with the way Stiney scripted was, he didn't take the results of those scripted plays and adjust. There was no feel for the game, no fluidity to the play calling. The absolute best he ever did as a play caller was against Florida State when both Tyrod Taylor and Sean Glennon got knocked out and he had to go with Cory Holt at QB. He was flying blind, had absolutely nothing prepared for that situation, and did probably as good a job as he ever had. That tells you a lot about his game planning.
This post gets my
Also, Newsome's lines weren't even that good at run blocking until three or four games in, when he abandoned his idiotic zone scheme and simplified everything to more of a straight power blocking. He never built any cohesion on his lines, and it takes a lot if solidarity to zone block.
I have no clue what you're talking about, so here's a picture of a monkey riding a dog chasing a goat.
Good day.
If you're waiting until the game starts to find your opponent's weakness to exploit, you aren't a very good OC. But I get what you're saying and I agree with it.
I disagree that it was a downturn in WR recruiting that begat our slump. You're right that a downturn in WR recruiting happened, and it did hurt us as a program, but I think our past three seasons of essentially .500 football has more to do with recruiting and developing the OL than the WR position. I think the replacement of Sherman with AMo basically fixed the WR spot overnight.
Yeah, I know. But it would be so much easier if there was just a little notification that showed up an the header.
To answer the title of this thread, yes I think the offensive philosophy of the program is changing, but I don't think that has anything to do with becoming a pass-first team.
I think Scot Loeffler, much more than his predecessor (or his predecessor's predecessor) plans his offense around exploiting situational mismatches against the opposing defense. Bryan Stinespring brought an attitude of "we're going to do what we want to do, and you can try to stop us" to the offense. He inherited that mentality from Rickey Bustle, who was admittedly much better at it than Stiney was.
This is the double edged sword of having an "offensive identity." You know what you are as an offense, but so do your opponents. A team that rigidly adheres to a particular offensive strategy is easier to beat with equivalent talent. A multiple offense that can switch things up situationally has more flexibility. But it also requires greater discipline, and is in general a more complex offense to learn.
I like the way Scot approaches scheming an offense, but there are caveats. Leaning too heavily on exploiting mismatches gives way easily to taking what the defense gives you. It's a passive philosophy. At some point, especially when protecting a least, football must come down to a "try to stop us" attitude. A successful team will at some point take the game by the throat and throttle it.
Scheming around mismatches also gives way to overthinking. The OC can hamstring himself, and I do l think that happened to Scot to an extent the last two seasons. What makes me hopeful about positive change in that regard is the focus on attention to detail and discipline rather than trying to install a playbook longer than War and Peace. A multiple offense doesn't have to be able to do everything (although that was certainly Stiney's approach to being multiple, and it cost him his job.) Ultimately, a successful multiple offense just has to have the flexibility to do different things in different situations. That's accomplished much better through being very focused and disciplined and not hurting yourself through procedural penalties than by trying to run ALL THE PLAYS.
Or even a notification that someone has replied to a post of yours would be awesome.
I'll politely dissent. That's the mindset that allowed our offense to not carry its weight within the program for the majority of the previous decade. The idea that we're winning so everything must be okay glossed over glaring deficiencies within the offense that directly led to the collapse of the offense subsequent to the 2011 season. We should expect equal contribution from all three phases of the game, and 28 ppg over the course of a season doesn't cut it for the offense. What it does is set us up to get our ass handed to us in games like the Stanford Orange Bowl when the defense faces an opponent they can't handle. The offense can't answer the bell because they've been allowed to get by with mediocre performance.