Today's appearance on the Star 99.5 with Shane Matthews and John Cornell during my old time slot should be an interesting one. Yesterday Gainesville Sun beat writer Robbie Andreu teed off on Shane in a blog post. Robbie is generally a laid back guy who has good relations with everyone, even folks he's not all that crazy about. For him to light Shane up like that tells me the grumbling must have gotten really bad. I don't hear it typically, because I don't listen to the show other than the 11:40 Wednesday segment when I'm on it. That's not an insult to Shane and John, but it's strange hearing something you're accustomed to doing yourself being done by someone else. Last week Shane got a bit testy with me on the subject of whether anyone is having success running the spread option attack right now, and it sounds like this has been a recurring problem. I don't think UF's problems are that the scheme has been figured out, although I do disagree with some of the specific personnel usage this year. As has been noted in many places, Tim Tebow has not played anywhere close to as well as he is capable either. The system has nothing to do with repeated overthrows to open receivers downfield the past couple of weeks from a guy who was great at it last year. The system is not making low and inaccurate passes to guys on shorter routes. We all know Tebow is better than this, but he has to work through whatever hitches he's developed in his game. I suspect it will happen soon. When it does, UF's system will look good again - Shane still won't like it, though.
Every year the Sporting News rates America's "Best Sports Cities". Every year the list is stupid. This year Gainesville is 63, right behind Clemson. I was in Clemson Monday. There's absolutely nothing about that place which makes it better as a sports city than Gainesville. There are no championships there to fall back on as a defense for the rating either. (Columbia's 89, by the way.) Also, in what parallel universe are Orlando and Jacksonville better sports cities than St. Louis?
Athletes are known for taking a "love em and leave em" attitude toward women. Maybe that's what South Carolina linebacker Eric Norwood did to prompt one to pour chocolate syrup and flour all over his vehicle in a parking garage. Norwood says he can't identify the female culprit on video. Sure he can't - some random person decided to go Betty Crocker on his Impala in a public parking garage for no reason. You betcha.
Do you speak pterodactyl? If so, Tennessee could use you right now, since running back Arian Foster has apparently lost his mind. I'd like to ask Foster what pterodactyl for rout is, because that's what's coming against Georgia Saturday.
About the only thing that could make this reported plan for a Bull Durham sequel worse is if it was going to be made in pterodactyl with subtitles. Annie and Nuke as owners of a Major League team? We've already seen that brilliant idea with Roger Dorn in the Major League sequel. If Kevin Costner won't do it, the part of Crash Davis will be played by Jackie Mason. What could go wrong?
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If Shane could somehow back up some of his complaints with intelligent discussion I think he'd be a lot more successful at making his points. Instead, he's grossly uninformed on the current state of college football and can't even name most of the key players on whatever team the Gators are playing on a given week.
Robbie's right, Shane's tone and demeanor makes him come off as little more than a jealous whiner. Just because you were a QB doesn't mean you can speak intelligently about the current state of college football. I do think, however, that Robbie incorrectly titled his blog. What he meant to say was "Come Back, Heath!!"
Bianchi mentioned Robbie's blog in his "Open Mike" blog yesterday, as well. I don't know Shane Matthews personally and have never met the guy, so I can't say that his opinions are based on jealousy or if he has some kind of personal vendetta against Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow, or UF in general.
However, he seems to come across as very close-minded when giving his opinion of the UF offense. The fact that he keeps referring back to the 1990s and the Fun and Gun when making his points just doesn't make sense to me. You can win college football games many different ways with many different schemes.Nebraska couldn't throw a forward pass in 1995, but that didn't stop them from running over Florida in the Fiesta Bowl. Six years later, a pro-style offense in Miami made that Nebraska style look pathetic. Four years later, a special talent at QB (Vince Young) almost single-handily beats the ultimate pro-style team in the Rose Bowl.
I guess my point is that it's not so much the scheme as it is the personnel executing the plays called without screwing up and the coaches recognizing who to best execute those plays that'll work against whatever the opposing team does.
For Florida, the scheme isn't the problem. The personnel groupings and decisions on who gets the ball in certain situations (Chris Rainey up the middle on a draw on third-and-one? Ugh) is. A struggling QB trying to be perfect on every play and pressing on his throw and reads is. A banged-up o-line trying to block six rushers/blitzers on a 5-wide set is.
The beauty of football is that it can all come together one week and everybody looks brilliant (like the Dolphins against the Patriots earlier this year), then nothing works, everybody panics and presses on the field, and nothing is executed correctly the next week. Then, you have weeks where you get a balance between the two and then you have the claw your way to a victory.
That's the fun of football. It changes every week, and more fans should enjoy the ebb and flow each week. This is suppossed to be fun, right? Right??
You get it, Heath. So does Matt. Hopefully, Shane and the vocal minority learn to enjoy the victories and open up to the idea that there are many, many different ways to win football games.
Maybe we just need one of them "oriental quarterbacks." Seriously...
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