takethepoints
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 6,146
I'm not going to comment (though there's lots to argue about) on most of this, But I will make two observations.
I don't and never have seen the fascination with "Brand". The viability of a brand is the result of the product identified with it. Take Apple, for instance. Steve was widely touted for his "reality distortion field" and rightly so. But to get an idea why that worked you have to look at this:
Translate that to football and the baseline is easy: we win and we do it in a program we would be proud to send our sons into. That has pretty much nothing to do with "PR, Colors, Uniforms, … Style, Flare" or any of the rest of what you mentioned except venue upgrades. As an example, look at Wisconsin. Could you have a program with more boring uniforms, simpler colors, and less style and flare? Yet they win. They do it by decent recruiting and good coaching. That's what counts. The hype is just that. It can't substitute for the fundamentals in sports or anything else.
Second, I again find myself pointing out how complex the spread option is as an offense. It is true that there were only about 20 - 25 basic plays that the O was built around. The kicker - and the reason why the thing worked like a Swiss watch - was that you could run those play in about 10 or so variations depending on what the D was going. That's why we did so well on O for 11 years (the team last year averaged 33 points and 408 yards total offense and that was without Benson after 1.5 games). The O we ran this year was simpler; it had to be because we had so little experience running it. But it will only be as complex as the spread option, not more so, in future.
I don't and never have seen the fascination with "Brand". The viability of a brand is the result of the product identified with it. Take Apple, for instance. Steve was widely touted for his "reality distortion field" and rightly so. But to get an idea why that worked you have to look at this:
Translate that to football and the baseline is easy: we win and we do it in a program we would be proud to send our sons into. That has pretty much nothing to do with "PR, Colors, Uniforms, … Style, Flare" or any of the rest of what you mentioned except venue upgrades. As an example, look at Wisconsin. Could you have a program with more boring uniforms, simpler colors, and less style and flare? Yet they win. They do it by decent recruiting and good coaching. That's what counts. The hype is just that. It can't substitute for the fundamentals in sports or anything else.
Second, I again find myself pointing out how complex the spread option is as an offense. It is true that there were only about 20 - 25 basic plays that the O was built around. The kicker - and the reason why the thing worked like a Swiss watch - was that you could run those play in about 10 or so variations depending on what the D was going. That's why we did so well on O for 11 years (the team last year averaged 33 points and 408 yards total offense and that was without Benson after 1.5 games). The O we ran this year was simpler; it had to be because we had so little experience running it. But it will only be as complex as the spread option, not more so, in future.