Football Friday

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

Here at last: the weekend when all 4 of my teams play for real. And only one of them seems to be a sure winner, dang, oh well.

Colorado Buffaloes:

Here's the thing, the bottom line as it were. In the last 30 years or so there is a tried and true point for Colorado football: they cannot win without the thugs. None of the coaches (with the possible exception of Rick 'quitter' Neuheisel) have really shown themselves to be exceptional coaching geniuses. The most successful were actually just good recruiters who were capable of demonstrating some control over the thugs they recruited. Colorado does not have the resources to compete for the Tim Tebow's, Matt Barkley's etc. the choirboys who also happened to be the great athletes. So we have been forced to accept players of lesser moral character in order to get great talent. And so long as we had a coach who control them things worked out well. But our last coach could not control the talented thugs, resulting in a major P.R. disaster. So we were forced to turn to a coach who will not recruit the questionable characters. Which would be OK if he was a genius a la Rick Leach. But Coach Hawkins is not a coaching genius. So we have a bunch of nice respectable players and an average coach, which makes the administration, faculty and some students happy, but not the alumni. And I fear that we the alumni will continue to not be happy after we possibly lose again this weekend.

Ole Miss Rebels

When I talked above about the genius coaches another example would be Houston Nutt. He always scared people at Arkansas, with above average recruits. So when Ole Miss jumped on hiring him I was pleased because he can do the same thing there. Get average recruits and coach them up. Which is why I and so many other have great hopes for Ole Miss this year. Hopes that will continue to be raised by their thumping of SE Louisiana this weekend.

Denver Broncos

A lot of people look at last weeks miraculous win and dismiss it as a fluke. But I prefer to look at it as a great win, and a win we wouldn't have had if we had not played well enough to be in position for that miracle play. Luck is important in football. But the bottom line is that we had a 6-0 lead with 59 minutes played, which is a lot better than a lot of people expected. And I think that execution will continue this weekend, and we won't need a miracle to go 2-0.

St. Louis Rams

Alas, it will take more than a miracle and great coaching to overcome the astounding lack of talent that gets you 5 wins in 2 years. And that is the dilemma facing the Rams. You could assemble a coaching staff of Bill Walsh, Vince Lombardi and Chuck Noll, and they still probably wouldn't win with this Rams team. They should get more competitive as the year goes on, but I am not expecting too much. Particularly this week, I expect an 0-2 week after playing host to a Redskin team desperate for a win.