It all started out according to plan in the first half, the Buckeyes sprinted out to a 17 point lead and held the powerful MSU offense to 72 total yards. Then, within the course of a single minute, mistakes made a game of it when a pass was intercepted for a touchdown and a fumble was returned for a touchdown. Later, the MSU offense showed a little life driving down to OSU territory for a field goal.

Give the Spartan defense credit, they turned up the heat while the OSU offense relaxed in that vital 3rd quarter stretch. Give the OSU defense credit, forcing 5 punts, sacking the QB 4 times, forcing an interception, allowing only a field goal, and limiting MSU to 185 net yards (125 passing and 60 rushing.) The offensive output from MSU was limited to 40% of their average yardage total, 27% of their rushing average, and 8% of their average point total.

The Good

• The defense. Wow, what a performance from top to bottom. I’ve questioned the run stopping ability of our defensive line. Consider that question no longer on the table. MSU averaged 243 yards per game coming in. They put up 60 net yards this afternoon.
• The first half offense. Great execution and focus (aside from a few small penalties.) The announcers reached into their distraction bag by the middle of the second quarter.
• Beanie Wells gutting it out with a bum ankle. 31 carries for 223 net yards and a touchdown. Great stats. But his most important contribution was on the final drive of the game.
• The crowd. I watched on TV, but it looked like a great game day atmosphere and the crowd stayed with the team through 3rd quarter adversity.
• The fourth quarter performance. When MSU through a combination of defensive production and a little life from their offense, the team pulled it together. The defense played lights out and the offense behind the offensive line and on the shoulders of Beanie Wells burned the last 3 minutes of the game extinguishing any hope of a MSU win.
• Win and advance. This is the most important good thing, the team won and now advanced. Many teams haven’t been able to weather the storm when adversity struck and ultimately lost (hello Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina, USC, et al.)

The Bad

• Penalities. The Bucks were flagged 7 times for 36 yards. While the yardage wasn’t outrageous, the timing killed a couple of drives. Ben Person accounted for 3 false start penalties alone. Sloppy play and bad mental focus.
• Officiating. Both teams held all day long, there were blatant tackles of defensive players, but they just weren’t being enforced. There was a missed MSU fumble that should have been caught and overruled (yes, I know the play was blown dead – but the runner was still moving forward.) Why have review if you’re not going to fix blown calls?
• Placekicking. Kickoffs were inconsistent (9 mph wind assisted no doubt) and a blocked field goal.
• Third quarter. Once Robiskie scored on the long TD pass, the team packed it in mentally. The last stretch played like that was in the game against Florida in the first quarter…lucky to turn it around I think.
• Punt returns. They’re not a productive as they should be. The 90 yard return for a TD last week was an anomaly. This unit gets enough opportunities and should be piling up the hidden yardage and not allowing the team to be trapped inside the 5 yard line mulitple times.

The Ugly

• Turnovers leading to 14 points. What more do I need to say? Without those, this is a 24-3 game for sure, and more likely 34-3 game.
• Letting up mentally before the clock reads 00:00. This team came out in the third quarter thinking the game was over. It clearly was not. Need 4 quarters of 100% effort, not 3.

In the preview earlier this week, I predicted a comfortable 34-16 win for the Buckeyes. Obviously, I didn’t factor in the Buckeye offense chipping in 14 points for the opposition and thus the prediction was wrong. Conversely, I thought that MSU would move the ball more effectively than other opponents have – until they started reaching in the bag of tricks for high risk/reward plays like multiple half-back passes, they couldn’t move at all. Even after the trickeration came out, the adjustment only seemed to take a few plays. This defense is much better than I’ve given them credit for this year. Again, prediction wrong. I said it would be tight through the first half and that OSU would pull away in the second half. Wrong, OSU was all over them in the first half and let MSU back in the game in the second half. So there you have it, the prognostication collapse. The only way I could have been more wrong is with a MSU win – thankfully, that didn’t happen.

In the final analysis, it was a win. The team is getting better (aside from those 56 seconds in the third quarter) and the team advances. Go Bucks!

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It has been a crazy season thus far, and it is likely only going to get crazier in the next few weeks leading up to bowl season. So as a thought exercise, how would you redesign college football if you had a blank page? That’s all this is, a thought exercise as the chances are slim to none (focus on none) that such an exercise will come to pass. But it does make you think.

The first thing that I thought about is, what absolutely would you not want to lose from the current situation? Here’s what I thought:

• Integrity of the regular season. Say what you will about the broken BCS and Bowl system, but it does make each regular season game take on more importance than say, in college basketball or professional football.
• Pagentry and tradition of bowls. With the implementation of the BCS and the introduction of so many minor bowl games, this aspect has kind of been lost and it’s a shame.
• Revenue opportunities of the 12 game season. While schools have gone overboard scheduling 67 IAA games this year to help round out the season, it’s still good to have a consistent 12 game schedule.
• Rivalries. The best rivalries in sports, bar none, exist in college football.
• Ending the season on January 1st. This has been lost, but needs to be recovered.

All this being said, there are some things that are definitely broken badly and do need to be fixed to ensure that competition is even and that championships are decided on the field, not via the opinion of fickle pollsters and crippled computer rankings. Here’s what needs to be fixed:

• Polls, they’re no longer meaningful or relevant. If they were at all accurate, the Top 10 teams wouldn’t have a loss two-thirds of the way through the season.
• Inconsistency of leagues, different numbers of teams, some have championship games, some don’t, etc.
• If you don’t win your league championship, you shouldn’t ever be considered for participation in meaningful post-season activities
• Individual awards should be determined after the season is completed. They’re distracting and often wrong after post-season play is completed.
• Television coverage needs to be about the game. Not some off-the-field distraction or the broadcast crew’s opinions. ESPN and ABC are the worst. But CBS, NBC, and Fox are close on their tails. For all the bad press, the best game coverage I’ve seen this year is on the Big Ten Network. Seriously.

There are some other attributes of other sports that should be implemented as well: scheduling should happen only the year before, the bottom x teams each year should be demoted to the next league down, and the top x teams from the lower league should be promoted. Currently, there are over 900 teams participating in college football in Divisions I-A (I know the new name, it’s stupid and I refuse to use it,) DI-AA, DII, DIII, and NAIA. The teams I’m most interested in are the 120 DI-A participants. Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be challenging to sub-divide those teams into a 64 team “upper tier” and a 64 team “lower tier.” In fact, such an attempt might look something like this for the “Upper Tier”:

As you might expect, there would be some rules associated with the new alignment:

• Each team will play 3 non-group games. At least one of those games must be intersectional with another team from the 64 team upper tier. Every other year, the intersectional game will be a home game. The other two games must be played against the DI lower tier teams and may both be home games. No more DI-AA patsies.
• Each team will play a rotating home/away schedule with teams in its group to determine a group champion by the end of the season. No exceptions, no whining.
• Each team will play one protected rivalry game per season rotating home/away. If the team’s primary rival is not in its group, this may be the intersectional game on the team’s schedule for the year and may be played later in the season if the schedule allows for it.
• Each directional division (North, South, East, and West) will have a championship game where the two top teams from its groups play for the right to advance to post-season play. These could be “bowl” games played the first week in December.
• The second week in December there are two Directional Championship games rotating division match-ups every year i.e. North/South and East/West one year, North/East and South/West the next year, and so on. These could also be “bowl” games.
• On New Year’s Day the winners of the Directional Division games meet to determine the DI-A upper division champion in a bowl. This could rotate among the big four bowls as it does today.
• Runner’s up in group play, who have amassed an overall winning record are eligible to play in bowls with no bearing on post-season standing. Play in these bowls are limited to one game i.e., no mini-touranments and play must be completed by January 1 and may not conflict with Directional Division, Championship play-in, or Championship games.
• The bottom performer in each group is relegated to the DI-A lower tier for the next season. The top 8 performers in the lower tier are promoted for the following season into the most appropriate group in the DI-A upper tier.

I’ve heard alot of these ideas before, but I thought it was interesting to bring them together into a cohesive approach. All this being said, it’ll never happen. But wouldn’t that be cool if it did? The regular season would still matter. Rivalries would still rock. Schools and networks would still make money. And a champion would be decided on the field without all the whining and campaigning to determine that this team deserves it more than that team. It’s a meritocracy. And, it’s a dream. But it’s good to dream, no? How would you redesign major college football? Feel free to leave a comment.

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What a wacky college football season we’re having. The pre-season Top 10 have all lost at least one game. The team the computers deemed as top of the heap, University of South Florida (an aside, it’s located in west, central Florida – how can it be called South Florida?) was beaten by Rutgers last night marking the third time in 3 weeks the #2 ranked team has been beaten…

I’m an Ohio State fan and I can honestly say, I expected the Buckeyes to be at 7-0 at this time of the year. Don’t believe me, read the season preview…But I can also honestly say, I had zero expectation that they would be ranked #1 coming into this week. Heck, this is a rebuilding year. The one thing that they’ve managed to do is beat the teams they are supposed to beat pretty soundly. The problem with this is in the national media is that the schedule is back-end loaded. The first 7 opponents sport a 19-25 win-loss record. The last 5 opponents (as of this date) sport a 25-10 win-loss record.

But enough about Ohio State, back to the question at hand: Who Wants to be Number 1?

Yes, I’m sure every team in the country want’s to be #1, but who’s playing like it? Unless and until Ohio State, Arizona State, Kansas, Boston College, and Hawaii lose, I’ll argue regardless of who they’ve played, they’ve taken care of the business; they deserve consideration. Does this mean that they would beat every one loss team in the land? No. In fact, this year, the parity we’re seeing makes me believe there’s not as much difference between the teams in Division IA as people want to believe.

Want an example? Kentucky beat LSU at home in 3 OTs, while there is no shame in losing on the road to a ranked opponent in overtime, but it’s still a loss. Here’s something very interesting to note: Earlier in the season, Kentucky beat Kent State and their defense allowed 453 yards in this affair, 324 of them rushing. During the 3 OT game (OT included in the stats) Kentucky gave up 403 yards to LSU, 261 on the ground. Does this mean that Kent State has a more explosive offense than LSU?

Riddle me this, in that same game Kentucky vs Kent State, Kentucky’s offense put up 484 yards on the Golden Flashes. Kentucky put up 375 yards on LSU, is there really only a 100 yard differential between Kentucky’s offense with a Heisman Trophy candidate and a 3-4 Mid-American Conference team? Is the Kent State offense really 50 yards better than LSU? Both games were played at Kentucky. Undoubtably the Kentucky team was more intensely focused for the LSU game. Now, here’s the real head scratcher, when Kent State played Ohio State (also on the road for KSU – they couldn’t get space in Kentucky’s stadium for the game – ha,ha) Ohio State amassed 401 yards on offense and held Kent State to 223 yards on defense. If there’s such a big difference between a “good” team like LSU and a “soft” team like Ohio State, using common opponents in similar situations, shouldn’t there be a large differential observed in actual on-field production against common opponents? That’s what I mean about parity, you just don’t know this year.

In the quest to find out who wants to be number 1, we should start with the teams lined up in the pole position at the start of the season. How has that preseason Top 10 performed? Oklahoma lost to unranked Colorado? What about USC? Lost to cellar dweller Stanford, at home. Cal lost to unranked Oregon State. Florida has lost twice! So has Texas for that matter. Wisconsin jumped the shark dropping two in a row after living on the edge all season. Michigan didn’t just lose two, the lost to a IAA team and were blown out by Oregon at home. South Florida lost to unranked Rutgers. Louisville, the one team that’s perhaps even more disappointing than Michigan dropping 3 and one to Syracuse…It’s hard to see any of these teams, at this point in the season, making a legitimate claim for #1.

There is a cadre of one loss teams where the loss is a “good loss.” Virginia Tech was blown out at LSU, but this was a loss against highly ranked team on the road at night. Since then, they’ve taken care of business and have shown improvement, though their offense is still troubling. South Carolina, a loss on the road to LSU. Again, strong defense, the offense is troubling. Oregon, a loss at home to Cal. The Bear defense is troubling. Missouri lost to Oklahoma, the defense is cause for concern. LSU lost to Kentucky, the defense looks softer than previously thought. West Virginia lost to South Florida, the offense and defense are now troubling. I can see a #1 emerging from this group as their losses are “understandable” in as much as losses can be understood. But, to make this happen, the unbeatens need to fall.

What about these teams? Texas Tech lost a shoot out to a bad Oklahoma State team, defense as always is the question with them, but they’re still 6-1. Virginia lost its season opener to Wyoming and has bounced back with 6 straight wins including beating previous unbeaten Connecticut. And what about Connecticut who’s only loss is to Virginia? Finally there’s Cincinnati, who blew out Oregon State who beat Cal, but lost to Rutgers. It’s unlikely a #1 will emerge from this group, but it’s also about time they enter the rankings.

So, who wants to be #1? Teams that take care of business. In the running for #1 are the unbeatens and the “good loss” one loss teams, and then everyone else. The way the season has been going, the only thing you can count on is surprise. So, it’s tough to imagine that there will be more than one unbeaten team at the end of the season…Let’s watch the final few weeks play out and see who really wants to be #1. After all, it doesn’t really matter who’s in that spot now. It only matters in the final regular season BCS ratings and then in mid-January. There’s still alot of football to be played.

As we pursue our project, we’ve found that we needed high resolution aerial imaging to kick off the process. There are many companies out there that provide these services, but we chose GlobeXplorer due to instant delivery, product selection, price, and image quality. If you’re looking for aerial photographs, give them a try.

Sample of our Sou Hills Prospect (Click to enlarge)

It seems that not a day goes by without another “extreme sport” – that’s the case with free running. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t until watching a Modern Marvels episode on rubber. Take a look at the videos below to see free running (and you can marvel at how many of these young people will survive into adulthood…)

Note: You might want to turn the volume down…


Aside from a complete disregard for one’s well being and superb physical condition, the people who practice free running also have special shoes with a rubber sole that has extra gripping properties – the way it works is that the rubber is “soft” such that it molds into the nooks and crannies of the surface it is touching. This technology is also being used in rock climbing shoes unsurprisingly. This “stealth rubber” was invented by a company called FiveTen and they’re now selling many shoes to people in need of extra traction.