Mack Brown signs $5 million a year contract extension, taking his commitment to UT out to 2016

A few thoughts:

1) UT just priced us out of Mike Leach's new contract, if and when he finally has a Big XII Championship/BCS game kind of year. Thanks, dicks.

2) Didn't UT just name Will Muschamp coach-in-waiting last year and make him the highest-paid coordinator in the NCAA? Good luck getting him to hang around for another 7 seasons.

3) Shouldn't they have waited for the Alabama Killdozer to lower Mack's price, instead of extending him right after he nearly lost to a Nebraska team that UT was supposed to beat by three scores?

4) If UT Athletics has so much money, why can't they afford a better offensive coordinator than Greg Davis?

Kansas' football program is, to put it mildly, not doing great. Despite coming into the season with relatively high expectations, and a roster stacked with talented guys like Reesing, Meier, and Briscoe, Kansas is staring into the abyss. 5-5, with a 1-5 record in conference play, and facing Texas and Mizzou to round out their schedule, the Jayhawks must face the very real possibility of not only missing out on a bowl, but ending the season below .500. With this lack of success, murmurs of discontent and controversry in the KU have quickly sparked into a full-scale firestorm centered on Mark Mangino's alleged anger management issues in general, and specifically instances of inappropriate contact with, and inappropriate comments toward Jayhawk football players. Now, Mangino has never had a great reputation as a particularly easy-going or happy guy, but it seems like KU's Athletic Director, Lew Perkins, has taken the team's current skid as an opportunity to sharpen the long knives. He has initiated an investigation into Mangino's running of the team, convened the team with the coach present to allow players to air their grievances, and now former players are coming forward to tell their own stories about Mangino, and they are pretty o_0.

One story involved former Kansas wide receiver Raymond Brown during preseason practices. Brown's brother had recently been shot and was recovering in St. Louis. When players were asked during a meeting to describe their commitment to the team, Brown stood up and told his teammates and coaches about the incident. Brown said he was trying to get the message across that life was too short to waste. Shortly after in practice, Mangino and Brown got into a confrontation on the practice field. 

"Don't yes sir me, or I will send you back to St. Louis so you can get shot with your homies," Brown remembers Mangino saying. 

Brown said he looked around at other players and coaches, all shocked at what Mangino had just said. 

"We tell him all that as personal stuff, but he uses that to break down his players," Brown said. "It's not a motivational tool, it makes you not even want to play for him." 

So, what do you guys think? I fully understand there's a place for so-called 'tough love' in competitive football coaching, but Mangino seems to have forgotten the love component, and is using his position of authority to heap abuse on the people beneath him. I'm not going to try and psychoanalyze the guy, but a person displaying behavior like this to anyone, let alone a group of highly-motivated kids who chose to play for your team, is probably not very well-adjusted, and could do with some counseling, and maybe a switch into a less intense, less stressful career.

Chris Brown of Smart Football has a bit of a fixation with the Air Raid Offense, but that's okay because it means we get sweet-ass conceptual previews of the different flavors of Air Raid in store for football fans when Texas Tech travels to Houston this Saturday. Block-Quotin' This:

Schematically, there aren’t many differences, but there are some. Both teams use the major “Airraid” pass concepts like shallow cross, Y-stick, Y-cross, all-curl, and the like. But Leach’s offense is predicated on the horizontal passing game — not only those quick, short lateral throws, but his receivers frequently begin their routes not upfield, but laterally to the flat or across the formation. For example, Leach’s favorite play is probably “mesh.”

The “Mesh” concept; click to embiggen.

In this play, Leach gets a few things. He gets a zone-stretch on the frontside with the corner route, the crosser coming from the backside, and the runningback in the flat — a triangle read. The corner route can also flatten out if the cornerback plays soft coverage. And against man-to-man the crossers will rub (pick?) the defenders. Note too that these crossing receivers have a lot of freedom to settle against zone. (The coaching point is they watch the man covering the opposing crossing receiver: if a defender follows the other guy they know it is man to man, if the defender sinks back it is zone. Crafty.) It is a very good utility play, and Leach runs the hell out of it. Against Texas, Texas Tech scored one of their touchdowns by calling this same play every single play of the series. I’m dead serious.

But Holgorsen isn’t a huge fan of that play because of these “horizontal” routes. The reason is that they give away much of the game ot the defense right away; within a second of the ball being snapped, the defense knows who is going to the flat and who is running a shallow cross. Indeed, the very well coached teams can actually pattern read — not only do they know guys are running short, they know it is the “mesh” play. Now Leach can still cross them up by using “tags” or individual route adjustments on the play (like sending the guy on the corner route to the post and having the runningback run a “wheel” or flat-and-up to the sideline) or simply because the receivers have freedom, but Holgorsen prefers not to go there. Instead, though he uses the horizontal passes, the focus is on “vertical stems,” meaning plays where the receivers burst straight up the field to begin with. This has the advantage of destroying pattern reading: if receivers run up the field on every play, the defense doesn’t know if they are breaking in, our, or going deep — they all look the same.

The “flood” raineth down completions and yardage. Embiggen, clicking, do

If nothing else, you can read this on Saturday morning while Andre Ware narrates another boring Big Ten showcase of neanderball.

http://tinyurl.com/dejdgc

Storms often make loud noises inside the so-called bubble, but this time overhead lights swayed violently. One of the team's video staff was the first out the door, followed by Nick Eatman of DallasCowboys.com. Eatman was hit by something and went down a few feet away, then heard someone screaming for help. He recognized it was Todd Archer of The Dallas Morning News.

Eatman and colleague Josh Ellis tried freeing Archer but the structure wouldn't budge. "It was like a car," Eatman said. Then safety DeAngelo Smith and linebacker Brandon Williams were able to get it up just enough for Archer to squirm out.

"All I saw was blue jerseys," said Archer, whose right elbow and legs were scraped. "I was trapped, I couldn't move. Then those guys lifted it up - not very far, but I was able to move from my side to my back. ... Once I got out of there, I looked back and the whole thing was down."

Archer said that as he fled for shelter, other players appeared to be stepping through the debris looking for others in need of help.

Eatman said one of the swaying lights wound up more than two football fields away. The giant blue star atop the building lay crumpled on the ground. The storm knocked out power at team headquarters and splintered trees across the property.

[Note by Seth C, 05/03/09 6:24 AM CDT ] Fixed link and added blockquote.

As we tick down to the last game of the season, there exists a three-way tie atop the heap with TT Owned Aaron Rodgers, plano jeff, and Bellate Impavide all sharing a record of 18-15. Congrats and I hate you. Depending on how tonight's game goes, a champ will be crowned outright, or the tiebreaker will go into effect. Consider yourselves fortunate that I was charitable enough to miss every pick since Texas Tech/Ole Miss. I can now spend the rest of the offseason wondering how Seth ended up with a better record than me.

It's that time of year again, and I don't know about you, but for me nothing screams Christmas cheer louder than picking the winners of a series of money-driven exhibition games between college football teams of a certain quality. With that in mind, I have duly copied a great idea from our internet buddy hooper over at Rocky Top Talk, and created a little unofficial bowl pool for Double T Nation fans to provide a little distraction during this holiday season of peace and joy. Joining is easy and takes less than five minutes:

1) Head on over to http://www.funofficepools.com and set up an account. It would help if you were to use the same nickname you use here.

2) Join my pool, entitled "Unofficial Double T Nation Bowl Pick'em".

3) Make your picks at your leisure. Picks for bowl games before midnight, December 26 are due prior to each game's kickoff. The rest of your bowl picks will be due by the midnight, Boxing Day deadline.

4) This isn't a straight up-or-down pool, members will be picking against the spread- this may end up making some of the garbage bowls a bit of a wash, but ought to provide some interesting results on big match-ups. In the event of a tie-breaker, the member who comes closest to successfully picking the MNC game score wins.

4) As commish, I vow to keep all pool members abreast of relevant information, including pick deadlines, standings, epic fails, etc. Spending the holidays behaving myself at the residence of my lovely fiancee's very Baptist grandparents more or less guarantees that time I would normally spend having fun can be redirected toward administrative efforts.

5) Your first assignment: The EagleBank Bowl, featuring Navy and Wake Forest, which kicks off at 11 AM Eastern on Saturday, December 20th. Good luck with that.

Feedback and questions are, of course, welcome.