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Articles
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Running with the Pac, Week 5
-- Is the West Coast Offense destroying the Pac-10? After dispatching its OOC opponents, one of them highly touted Auburn, third-ranked USC was bear-clawed in Berkeley by Jeff Tedford’s rejuvenated California team. After pulverizing highly ranked Michigan, Oregon was dispatched by WSU at home, in college football’s din of inequity, at Autzen stadium. Almost all of the teams in the parity-stricken conference play a version of the West Coast Offense, which when properly executed can destroy an opponent that doesn’t come to play. There isn’t a team in the country that could survive a Pac-10 schedule without losing at least one game, and that includes Oklahoma and all of the east coast mafia’s favorites. By properly implementing a WCO, teams from the Pac-10 exclude themselves from high ranking in the polls because they’re all capable of beating each other on a given Saturday. With its multiple passing formations, the WCO is just too hard to defend against at the college level. And just when you think you have it defended, there goes a Rich Alexis bursting up the gut for a 53-yard touchdown as he did against Stanford. According to Bill Walsh (one of
the WCO’s pioneers), in the ideal setup, the wide receivers would catch 15
passes a game, the running backs 10 and the tight ends five. A team is looking
for 25 first downs a game. The team that comes closest to meeting Walsh’s numbers, in each and every conference game, will win the conference championship providing it fields a solid defense and a respectable running game. The Pac-10 was the first conference in the nation to reach total parity from top to bottom. Okay, throw out Arizona this year. -- What revelations are in the offing at Arizona? Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood met with Arizona's players for about an hour, and then fired John Mackovic, naming defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz the interim coach for the remainder of the season. The buyout will cost $909,000. Mackovic was making $800 thousand per anum. Four months ago, Mackovic was quoted as saying he thought the player mutiny was fueled by outside influences; he said that alumni wanted him replaced with a "favorite son and to save the day." Almost fifty years ago, a player mutiny toppled the coaching career of John Cherberg at Washington. His subsequent revelations about Torchy Torrance’s slush fund eventually turned the Pacific Coast Conference into a five-team conference called the Athletic Association of Western Universities. Oregon had much to do with its dismantling, still angry over Washington’s role in the 1948 Rose Bowl, a bowl that excluded the Ducks and prima donna QB Norm Van Brocklin--whose uniform always stayed white when playing in muddy Husky Stadium, sans synthetic turf. Orlando Hollis, dean of the University of Oregon law school, was the chief prosecutor in cases involving Cal, USC, Washington and UCLA. Conference members were outraged at the legislative style of Hollis, especially the folks at UCLA and Washington. The conference placed UCLA on three years probation with accompanying sanctions and, with two years of sanctions, prohibited all of Washington’s athletic teams, not just its football team, from participating in NCAA championships. That meant crew, which was a big-time sport at the UW back then--and still is, for that matter. UCLA was one of three schools that bid for the services of RB Luther Carr, out of Tacoma. The others were Washington and Illinois. Save that factoid for a trivia question. So, what does John Mackovic know and when will he tell it? -- Will Moore be less for Olson? Will UCLA head coach Carl Dorrell replace QB Drew Olson with Matt Moore, who is coming of an injury for the game against Washington on Saturday—just when Olson is getting the hang of Dorrell’s WCO implementation? Behind the defensive front four of USC, the Powder Blue has the second best front four in the conference. One of its members, Rodney Leisle, won’t be able to play the first half of the Washington game because of his retaliation against a San Diego State player on the final drive of the game. Leslie was ejected from the game, so it’s an automatic penalty. -- What is the play of the season, thus far, in the Pac-10? USC’s Gregg Guenther (TE, 6-feet-8, 243) jumped 4 feet off the ground to block a field goal try in ‘SC’s overtime game against Cal. I’ve never seen any football player get up that high. -- Is Gilby’s media image improving? A priori, Keith Gilbertson doesn’t look too good on widescreen TV, and that image suffered a daunting blow in his first outing as head coach when he was caught chewing out hard-working, bad-luck Joe Toledo at Ohio State. And then it took another hammering, when he got caught jawboning at a radio interviewer as they walked off the field during halftime at the Idaho game, just after Gilby had stiffed him with a “who made you the head coach?” in response to a question on radio regarding the UW’s lack of discipline in the first half. His image on the wide tube was a marked improvement during the game against Stanford. With play book in hand, he looked studious; by scowling and shouting at the Zebes, he looked determined; in schooling his tight ends, he appeared tutorial; and by shaking hands with losing coach Buddy Teevens--that doesn't always happen in the Pac-10--he stood gracious. At times last season, Rick Neuheisel had a vapid expression on his face, as if he knew the end was near. We all did. During his four years at Washington, it was always just a matter of time with him. -- What about Gilby and his participation in basketball pools? Coach Gilbertson remembers participating in a 1999 basketball pool at Washington. Now it is disclosed that a Pac-10 investigation has uncovered more instances of betting in NCAA basketball pools at the UW. "I told them straight-up exactly what the deal was," Gilbertson said. "If I was in another (pool), I don't remember. If they (Pac-10 investigators) have documents that say differently, then I apologize. "If they want to hang me for being in a damn basketball pool, then hang me." Interesting enough, the controversial memo written by UW compliance director Dana Richardson forbids betting in basketball pools within the athletic department because, in my estimation, athletic department personnel would be soliciting and accepting bets in that case, which is forbidden by NCAA bylaw 10.3. Dana had it right all along. Because of the media's focus on Washington, no one at Washington dares say Dana interpreted the Bylaw correctly. Richard Linde (a.k.a., Malamute) can be reached at malamute@4malamute.com |
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Taking
over this week for columnist Lotti Bull, who is covering the battle for the
Recall Trophy, as in the movie Total Recall, Malamute answers some
penetrating questions regarding the Pac-10 conference. Is the WCO destroying the
Pac-10? Is Gilby's media image improving? What revelations are in the offing at
Arizona (John Mackovic, photo at the left).