Football Articles
Allow me to retort
Posted by Phenomenal Smith on July 13th, 2009 under Football
So, our friend(?) Scipio Tex at Barking Carnival has zero faith in the Missouri Tigers. That plain ol’ hurts. Before I retort, let me tell you why it hurts – oh, and allow me to be a little gay. Scipio is the Rolls Royce of bloggers. He brings a combination of wit, smarts, and spelling the likes of which have not been seen since Mark Twain quilled a passage about Tom Sawyer and that damn fence. Ok, maybe that’s overstating Scip’s work – or is it? If Twain had college football I could see him riffing on Colt McCoy, the spread offense, and which defensive coordinator has the finest hair. Satire, popular culture, in depth analysis, off-the-wall takes… It’s all there. Scipio is good at this blogging thing.
I was a fan. And he hurt me. I was on the road last week checking my emails on the Samsung Jack when a fellow ATer hit me with a link to Scipio’s Big 12 North predictions. Imagine that, I was minding my own business cruising down 70 in the family truckster when I read that post. I nearly went off the road from shock. Then, I nearly went off the road from depression. Then, I really went off the road from this.
My wife and kids were patient and waited in the car. I felt better after that, but Scip’s “non-contender” label stewed all weekend. What lodged in my brain was this:
Scipio, have you lost your mind? ‘Cuz I’ll help you find it.
Then, last night I dreamt of Scipio. (No, I’m not going to be gay again.) It involved a heated conversation between me and the King of Burnt Orange Bloggin’:
Me: What does Blaine Gabbert look like?
Scip: What?
Me: What country you from?
Scip: What?
Me: What ain’t no country I ever heard of! They speak English in What?
Scip: What?
Me: ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO-YOU-SPEAK-IT?
Scip: Yes!
Me: Then you know what I’m saying!
Scip: Yes!
Me: Describe what Blaine Gabbert looks like!
Scip: What, I-?
Me: [pointing a king crab at Scip (I'd watched Deadliest Catch before going to bed)] Say what again. SAY WHAT AGAIN. I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker. Say what one more goddamn time.
Scip: He’s w-w-white…
Me: Go on.
Scip: He’s 6-5, 220, looks like an NFL quarterback…
Me: Does he look like a bitch?
Scip: What?
[I pointed the crab at Scip and it honked Scip's nose]
Me: DOES HE LOOK LIKE A BITCH?
Scip: No!
Me: Then why you try to fuck him like a bitch, Scip?
Scip: I didn’t.
Me: Yes you did. Yes you did, Tex. You tried to fuck him. And Blaine Gabbert don’t like to be fucked by anybody, except Uma Thurman, George Clooney, and an assortment of strap-on devices that can only be found at the Adult Superstore right of Highway 70!
Then I woke up in a cold sweat.
Allow me to retort.
Scipio has taken the class of the Big 12 North and labeled it not only a non-contender but added silly things like:
Of the three pretenders, KSU has the best chance of inflicting a loss on the CU, KU, NU triad.
Seriously? Mizzou beat CU 113-10 in ‘07/08, NU 93-23, and KSU 90-56. For MU now to be worse than all three would be an unprecedented drop from top to bottom. The Tigers have ruled the North going 9-1 the last two years. In ‘07 the Tigers went undefeated against the North and won by an average of 45-21. In 08, 48-20. The gap between the Tigers and the rest was, um, rather large, to the say the least.
Mizzou has lost a lot of talent from those teams. That’s undeniable. But, it’s not like the Tigers are replacing these guys with the Landry from the Dillon Panthers. We’re talking about replacing a QB with a top five QB recruit. We’re talking about replacing Chase Coffman with a top ten TE recruit. We lose Maclin, but have experience (Alexander and Perry), a four star guy (Kemp), and a host of speedy dudes who played well this spring. The offensive line comes back more experienced and with a four star stud, Dan Hoch, taking over for Colin Brown.
The defense returns future first-rounder Sean Weatherspoon and will be as athletic as its ever been. MU’s defensive numbers (scoring, yards per play….) against the North last year would have ranked first in the conference, so even the much-maligned defense was vastly superior to the teams the North trotted out there.
I do expect some regression, but fifth in the Big 12 North after two years of total domination? I am not buying that. Gene Claude, and other AT folks, will chime in with his own predictions, and I plan to do something more in depth, but I expect to win the North again (as much a function of KU’s schedule as MU’s superiority over the Jayhawks) and would be extremely disappointed with anything less than second.
Scipio, what does Blaine Gabbert look like?
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All Big 12 Honors; Congrats to Aldon, et al
By Phenomenal Smith on December 1st, 2009
jazz1258 said:
July 13th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Yup. Should be an interesting season, I feel like we Tiger fans will all be doing a lot more smiling than expertland thinks.
Vasherized said:
July 13th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Scipio is the Rolls Royce of bloggers. He brings a combination of wit, smarts, and spelling the likes of which have not been seen since Mark Twain quilled a passage about Tom Sawyer and that damn fence.
If a Rolls Royce looks like a Miata you would be correct. Don’t make me post pictures of the Meme Machine. In fact that dream is a little disturbing but I’m sure Scip will use it as a testimonial on LinkedIn.
Regarding your football team: Can we agree that the reason Mizzou will fare better than expected despite losing a shitload of talent is because of a relatively easy schedule in a North division of relative pussies? And NOT because of the fact that Mizzou simply reloads?
Nobody predicted Mizzou would finish 5th in the North. It’s a three team race between Mizzou, KU, and NU to see who gets its ass kicked on Arlington by Texas or OU. Pretty simple thesis.
Phenomenal Smith said:
July 13th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Vash, I don’t disagree that Mizzou has a relatively easy schedule and that plays into why I think the Tigers are solid contenders in the North. I wasted many pixels on the North embarrassment last year.
I disagree with the “nobody predicted….” In the BC post, there were three contenders, not one of them being Mizzou. He then gave KSU a better chance than Mizzou to knock off the three contenders. That’s how I got to fifth – I’m comfortable with that. That Phil Steele guy also picked Mizzou fifth. It’s a growing trend – as crazy as picking Mizzou in the top five last year.
Scipio Tex said:
July 13th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
That was great and you almost had me convinced. Almost.
- Cycles. You can cite all of the statistics over the last two years you like, but that team no longer exists. Truly. Weatherspoon is the holdover from that nucleus of athletes. Before these guys (or when they were youngsters like Gabbert is now), you were doing things like losing to Iowa State in Ames (06) and getting blown out by Colorado in Boulder (05). You’re taking two years and making them sound like an inevitability.
- I think you go 6-6. 3-5 in the Big 12. That should be good for 4th in the North. Though if you go 4-4/7-5 that wouldn’t really test my thesis that Mizzou just isn’t a serious contender. Re: KSU – KSU may have a chance of upsetting Colorado, but they’re also the team most likely to drop one to A&M or ISU so don’t misinterpret that remark.
- You lost 6 NFL draft picks off of a 10-4 team. You led the entire Big 12 in that regard. The last time you lost six NFL draft picks was…
- Cycles. You’re in one.
Phenomenal Smith said:
July 13th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Scipio,
I’m familiar with the success cycle – I believe Jonah Keri at Baseball Prospectus introduced me to the concept. I’m a fan and agree it applies to college football.
I don’t mean to make the two years = inevitability. Instead, I use those two years to show the gap between Mizzou and the rest of the North. The cycle implies what goes up must come down, not that what is on top will collapse into a big pile of goo while what’s down will race past the once undisputed leader. The cycle means the monstrous gap will go away. Mizzou had a big head start, though.
I figured you meant that re KSU, but my level of dismay wouldn’t have been as justifiable admitting that. Still, I don’t see Mizzou losing to NU at Columbia on a Thursday night. I guess it could happen….
The ‘05 Mizzou team was laden with veterans (Brad Smith, eg) and got blown out by the North champs – CU. I was in Boulder for that. That game was worse than being in Austin last year. At least Austin offered up Mexican Margaritas at the Cedar Door.
Vasherized said:
July 13th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I disagree with the “nobody predicted….” In the BC post, there were three contenders, not one of them being Mizzou. He then gave KSU a better chance than Mizzou to knock off the three contenders. That’s how I got to fifth – I’m comfortable with that. That Phil Steele guy also picked Mizzou fifth. It’s a growing trend – as crazy as picking Mizzou in the top five last year.
Fair enough. I guess some folks are predicting a fifth place finish. I think you’ll battle CU for the third spot in the North. That’s still not where you want to be in a division that weak, a year removed from a Big 12 Championship berth.
Scipio is dead on. You’re in a cycle and it’s not the good part.
It will be interesting to see how the season unfolds, nonetheless. There is plenty of talent on the roster along with a glaring lack of experience to go along with new coordinators.
Then there’s the old Pinkel factor.
Gene Claude said:
July 13th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I think Missouri reloads. We just use a .22, compared to the South’s heavy artillery.
I’ve addressed much of this over at BC, but here’s something else I want to add…
There seems to be a general consensus that (1) MU lost a ton of talent from last year and that (2) it can’t be replaced because (3) MU’s recruiting classes consist of mostly second tier talents. Ergo, Mizzou cannot reload and will be return to its more traditional place at the ass end of the ass end of the conference.
Who did Mizzou lose? Two 2 star Texas athletes (Hood, Sulak), a walk on OL (Brown), a 3 star WR turned DB from a tiny Bootheel town (Moore), a 3 star slow wide receiver recruited only by North teams, an undersized QB that many thought didn’t have the talent to be a BCS level QB and one legit top recruit (Maclin).
The conclusion must be that, outside of Maclin and arguably Daniel, Pinkel and staff just got lucky with Sulak, Hood, Coffman and Moore.
Isn’t it an equally plausible scenario that Pinkel and his staff have done a better job evaluating and/or training talent, especially in the nooks and crannies of Texas and out state Missouri? Wouldn’t Sean Weatherspoon be a good data point in support of this alternate hypothesis?
And isn’t it possible that some of a healthy Danario Alexander, Jerrell Jackson, Kip Edwards, Kenzi Jackson, Terrell Resonno, Zaviar Gooden, Domonique Hamilton, Kevin Rutland, Jacquies Smith, and Michael Egnew are the next surprise NFLers on the roster?
The view that it was just happenstance that Mizzou found and created premium talents seems moderately unrealistic to me. As with most things, I imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I’ll say again: The overall talent level of the roster is higher now than it has been since I became a fan in earnest in the late 1980s. Inexperience at QB, DB and WR, and lack of depth at DT are all potential problems…but not any more significant than, say, KU’s lack of talent and experience in the trenches and LB, or Nebraska’s lack of offensive weapons or QB experience are. When all three contenders have serious potential flaws, I’ll fall back on scheduling as the tie breaker. I say October 8 in CoMo decides the North winner between MU and NU.
hiphopopotamus said:
July 13th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Pretty aggressive there calling for the north to be decided a month into the season.
Phenomenal Smith said:
July 13th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Pretty aggressive there calling for the north to be decided a month into the season.
Not only that, it’s even the first conference game for Mizzou and Nebraska. That’s bold stuff.