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College football 2019 offseason thread

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by micropolitan guy, Jan 10, 2019.

  1. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    Bryant did start, for a whole season. 2017.

    But you are right about ruthlessness as it relates to QB. It is that one position. Even point guards sub in and out. Quarterbacks are that spot where, if you’re No. 2, you can very well be No. Nobody. Great gig in the NFL. Not as much anywhere else.
     
  2. dirtybird

    dirtybird Well-Known Member

    Nowhere did I say he didn't start. He started 1 1/4 seasons really. And when healthy he lost only once, to an eventual national champion. And he was benched because he's in a ruthless meritocracy. And if he played out the season, he'd be done with college football because it is a structurally transitory spot.

    I think it's a question of role and expectations. If you point guard subs in and out as a sophomore behind a senior, that role is palatable because of possibility ahead. But if you're a senior and you project have a smaller role behind a sophomore, this feels less palatable. And that's life. My alma mater just lost a point guard who would've likely had a smaller role as a sophomore, modest one as a junior and only as a senior have a pair of longtime starters clear out. He decided he didn't want to wait.

    That is to say, if Bryant was on a team that hadn't just won a title with him as the primary backup, maybe things are different.

    For some reason that got me jumping off the the weird coaching spot where stability also feels like stagnation. A few years back, I covered a first-time head coach who came into a job basically thinking "I'll be here a few years, fix it up, get something bigger." He ate shit his first two years, then jumped 14 wins in one season. But even though he fielded good teams for a stretch, none were great and the last one backslid a bit. The job was a mess when he got there, so he'd have to have a big downturn to get fired, but he's kind of trapped in being good enough but not great. (Unsure if he himself sees it that way)
     
  3. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    This is more of a college football discussion than anything, but I’m not sure most QBs couldn’t win all but one game at Clemson. (Bryant lost 2 in 2017). That’s how that works. Surrounding cast helps. There were limits to Bryant’s ability at the position, those were the kind of limits that would have caught up to Clemson in the playoff, and that’s kind of, you know, where Clemson is at. I think Bryant’s about as good as the kid at BC, honestly.

    And Bryant knew all that - the goals and whatnot - after his junior year. He knew that. He was betting on the chance that Lawrence wasn’t as good as he turned out to be. (And Lawrence needs work, too.)

    I’m not deadened to the nature of the NCAA, nor am I necessarily arguing for or against what Bryant did. I’m saying the support for what he did as a moral choice is rooted in a kind of nihilism as it relates to NCAA. For some, there is literally no scenario in which a player can burn his coach or his team by transferring. That stance denies the notion of interdependence, and underlines that, in most ways, newsrooms are only a team in name.

    Of course, markets led us to that water. We walk through our days absorbed by the constant markets that make up our lives. Social media, rotten as it can be, clued us in to even our personal lives being a market. And so now that’s a market. Most things are tenuous, and measured largely by cost/benefit analysis - marriages, friendships, charitable endeavors, work. We parent to the market, shape our activities to the market, we market our life brands...it is a stunning thing. The NCAA is indeed outdated for all that.
     
    maumann likes this.
  4. dirtybird

    dirtybird Well-Known Member

    You're correct a great many QBs could have the success he did. I might not say most because there's just a lot of QBs out there. I didn't count one of those two losses because Bryant didn't play the second half. Maybe he wouldn't have made the difference, but I'm not tagging a kid with the loss where he missed that much and it was that close (I wouldn't say Lawrence lost to Syracuse this year had they not won that). I long felt the kid was simply not that good and that their offensive scheme made his numbers look a good bit better than they were because of those shovel passes.

    But knowing that or not, it would be extremely naive to imagine someone would leave a starting job they held last year in that situation because a freshman might take their job. These athletes are good because they're confident. If that happened, it would be amazing. A massive, paradigm-changing story, far more than a person getting demoted and leaving. It would burn Clemson just the same, maybe more, and it would be an extreme outlier. (Tim Tebow and JT Barrett both had far more talented backups and they didn't balk)

    Now you might say, a player should have the foresight to take this sort of crazy step, even though foresight is what is fueling the transfer situation to start with. But here's the thing, a season ago, Bryant somehow held off a very talented QB. There was a writer in that state who said he expected the QB who finished the Louisville game would say a lot, with the unspoken idea it would be the most talented passer on the roster (Basically that Hunter Johnson would do what Lawrence did). It was indeed Hunter to end that game, as a third-stringer in the depths of garbage time after Bryant played very wel.

    But addressing that last part, I separate who should be upset/perturbed by all this. As in, I'm not going to be judge-y about whatever choice the kid made. If he wants to be a program guy, that's great. If he wants to lead a team, considering what he's already experienced, good on him. I think fans shouldn't be shitty about it, for obvious reasons. And if his teammates are pissed as hell, I don't begrudge them that a bit. They're the ones he's leaving. If they want to call him a quitter, traitor, turncoat, that's their right and I wouldn't criticize. As for the coach, this is an unintended side effect of his own grand designs. He lost his QB because he wanted to free up a scholarship a year earlier. He made a telling choice, and choices have consequences.
     
  5. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    Sigh. Bammers.

     
  6. nafselon

    nafselon Well-Known Member

  7. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    The C-USA office actually did something innovative and got their football onto the NFL Network.. I'm shocked. Half of the conference's football was broadcast on Facebook last season.

     
  8. DanOregon

    DanOregon Well-Known Member

    I wish Larry Scott was taking notes. That could have solved the Direct TV thing right there giving the Pac-12 network game rights to NFL network.
     
  9. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    I guess it had to happen sooner or later. How the mighty have fallen.

     
  10. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

  11. Della9250

    Della9250 Well-Known Member

  12. Neutral Corner

    Neutral Corner Well-Known Member

    Comments on Wolken's tweet were fun.
     
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