Gary Danielson and another theory on SEC struggles (excluding Bama, UGA, Auburn)

[hogsanity]

Seven on seven, focusing offseason prep to perform well in combine-like drills in elite camps for recruiting purposes, the attack in general on the game of football itself, which is leading to pillow fight practices, and the proliferation of successful (to a point) spread offenses, have changed the high school and college game for all but a few.  But the game itself at the championship level hasn't changed much. 

So what part of that did I take out of context? The part where you said the attack on football in general leading to pillow fight practices?

I never said anything about taking hitting out of football. You are a master of taking isolated sections of a post out of context.

Not only is there an attack on football, you have been on the front lines of it here for months. Don't be disingenuos.

[bphi11ips]

You referenced hitting in games. I clearly was referring to practices. Maybe you haven't seen a high school practice in years and maybe you don't pay any attention to the press on the move away from tackling to the ground in college. See Dartmouth.

I never suggested hitting doesn't take place during games, but I will suggest that tackling skills, especially among DBs, has eroded substantially over the years because of the factors I mentioned. Why do you think Paul Rhoads put such an emphasis on tackling drills during the offseason?  Santos Ramirez and others have mentioned those drills repeatedly. How many CBs are you seeing in high school and college breaking down in the open field and/or wrapping up?  What you are seeing more and more are dives into ankles and bumps into midriffs and shoulders with arms held close to the body. That's becoming the instinct as players who make it to P5 schools and their handlers value one-on-one freelance routes in shorts at "elite" camps over old fashioned tackling skills.  That's where the stars come from and where the money is because fans clamour for the stars. A coach has to watch game film in order to find out whether a player knows how to block and tackle.

I've seen the system up close over the last three years, and I've spoken to coaches and others who've seen it and share these views.

[BroyledNutts]

Was it lost in an effort to beat Bama, or was it lost because it is harder to find players to play that style because so many HS coaches have gone to "finesse" offenses that they just are not teaching kids to play a physical style.

     I think you're on to something - with all the constant clamor about physical football causing too many injuries to kids too early in life, grade school coaches seem to have adapted to the finesse game ... fewer injuries overall and still a chance to have a coaching job. Most players in junior high and high school seem to want to play finesse over grind-it-out physical football. It's more fun. There's more highlights and glamor moments than the old 14-6 days.
     Sure, there are still those giant man-children who can play physical ball and want to, but there's just fewer and fewer of them to go around - and they usually wind up in one of a handful of college programs that are in essence minor league programs for the NFL...who by default are always at the top of recruiting and winning. The rest of us have to turn mice into men and hope they can hold up, or adapt the scheme to what is still available to seine from the remaining talent pool... Oklahoma State, TCU, Louisville, Oregon - those teams are all examples who seem to have accepted the fact that a beast-child defensive player is not going to come around very often, nor is one of those South Alabama road graders for the Offensive Line - the path of least resistance, then, is to accept going lighter, faster, and more finesse so that more available and talented players who are experienced in finesse style football make it to campus, and it works for them.
     The problem teams like Arkansas, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and everyone else faces in the SEC West [in particular] is that they play in a conference that has the mother of all NFL minor league teams in it, and what luck, they're always on the schedule...you're guaranteed to be "and 1" every year.

Alabama's ridiculous dominance in every category has severely damaged the conference as a whole. It's damaged recruiting, it's damaged post season, it's damaged recruit rankings. Ohio State is the same thing to the Big10, and Clemson is becoming the same to the ACC. They're beginning to suck all the fun out of college football.