UPON FURTHER REVIEW

On By MikeIn navy football29 Comments

It usually takes me several days to finish a game writeup, but I don’t want to wait until the end of the week to talk about Kriss Proctor’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty at the end of Saturday’s game. Nobody wants to pick at scabs when discussion is better served by moving on. You can’t really talk about the game without mentioning that debacle, though, so here goes.

I think the flag was justified.

First, I want to refer back to a comment I made after the Delaware game:

(By the way, Kriss might want to cool it with the little “let me hear it” thing he did after that first touchdown. The refs are all flag-happy about that stuff this year. Air Force even had a touchdown called back against South Dakota because one of their players was strutting his stuff as he ran into the end zone. Kriss’ run wouldn’t have been called back since his “celebration” came after he had already scored, but we don’t need any penalties on kickoffs either.)

That comment is sort of ironic now. The fact that there’s a little history here (however innocent it was at the time) makes it hard for me to buy into the whole “well everyone was being chippy the whole game” line. I’m sure they were, but I don’t see that as much of an excuse. If this was just a case of a couple of players jabbering after the play, then yeah, the ref should have just stepped in and told them to knock it off. This was more than that, though. Kriss got up, circled the pile, and intentionally (in my opinion) bumped an Air Force player before getting into his face. That guy plays for Air Force so he probably deserved it, but unfortunately, Kriss deserved the flag, too. If you want to be pissed about the refs, make it about the pass interference flag.

If this happened against Army or Notre Dame, Kriss might’ve had a Bucchianeri moment and be persona non grata in the Hall. Fortunately it was just Air Force, so whatever.

STOCK MARKET: WEEK FIVE

On By MikeIn football10 Comments

Mike

STOCK DOWN: Navy. We have all week to talk about the other impacts from Saturday’s loss, but right now let’s just look at what it means for this season. At 2-0 everyone was all sunshine and puppy dogs. Now Navy is 2-2, and the schedule isn’t getting any easier. The next 6 games include matchups with Southern Miss, Rutgers, Troy, Notre Dame, and SMU. And who knows what Army team will show up in December? Getting to bowl eligibility is never a given, something a lot of people have forgotten. Remember all the bitching and whining there was after going friggin’ 9-4 last year? Looks pretty good right now, doesn’t it?

STOCK DOWN: Independence. Chet said that we were waiting for the Big East to show some solidarity before Navy would commit to joining the conference. Is this what he was talking about?

STOCK UP: Andrew Luck. Dude might as well print his own money.

STOCK UP: Georgia Tech. Their defense still stinks, but the spread option is a juggernaut that has pushed them to their best start since the 1990 national championship season. They should get to 7-0 with Maryland and Virginia next on the schedule, setting up a challenging-but-not impossible 3-game stretch against Miami, Clemson and Virginia Tech that could turn the Jackets into national title contenders once again. I should know better than to get ahead of myself, though, especially since Clemson is looking pretty damn great right now. Can’t wait for that game.

STOCK UP: Wisconsin. Nebraska, you’re not in Kansas anymore. On multiple levels.

NOT SURE IF STOCK UP OR STOCK DOWN: Baylor blew a 35-26 lead to Kansas State and lost 36-35 for their first defeat of the year. Meanwhile, Kansas State is 4-0. I’m not sure if that says more about Baylor or Kansas State.

Adam

STOCK UP: My Italian cooking skills. Not gonna lie, when 1 p.m. rolled around – and when Navy’s players were just starting to get out of bed – I had already made several forays over to Food Network. Can you blame me? Watching Giada was a helluva lot prettier than watching the gridiron equivalent of Shock-and-Awe we saw on Saturday.

STOCK DOWN: Texas teams, as in those not located in Austin. Sure, the Longhorns may be a surprise so far this year, but it was a tough weekend for the Lone Star State’s “other” programs. Three Top 25 teams from Texas (SMU TCU, Baylor, and Texas A&M) all lost on Saturday, while two of the state’s undefeated programs – Houston and Texas Tech – had to overcome anemic first halves to hold off what were considered lesser conference opponents.

STOCK UP: WAZOOOO. If you’re one of those college football fans who likes to “adopt” a perennial loser (and seriously, who doesn’t?) than you should start following what’s been going on in Pullman. Beating Colorado might not seem like a big deal for most football teams, but in overcoming a 10-point, 4th-quarter hole, Paul Wulff’s team proved it doesn’t just have big play talent, but also a will to win. Is it too early to jump on the Marshall Lobbesteal for Pac-10 Offensive Player-of-the-Year bandwagon?

STOCK DOWN: Temple. Granted, we knew Toledo was one of the best 1-3 teams in the country coming into the game, but a week after hammering Maryland, Temple proved one-dimensional in a 36-13 loss to the Rockets. Probably not the best note to pitch coming back to the Big East on.

STOCK UP: Dan Persa. I know Northwestern ultimately lost, but it was apparent from watching the Wildcats take on the Illini that the preseason hype generated for Northwestern might have been justified had the starting quarterback come into the year healthy. Kain Colter isn’t a bad quarterback, but he just doesn’t have the same field presence as Persa, nor does he have the senior’s on-field chemistry with Jeremy Ebert, who uncloaked himself this weekend by catching three touchdown passes – all from Persa.

STOCK DOWN: The city of Logan. Unless you’ve ever spent a considerable amount of time there and unless you experienced the transfer of Riley Nelson – Logan High’s onetime hero – than you just can’t understand. I’ll leave it at that.

An Education in Focus

On By AdamIn navy football8 Comments

That sucked.

Chances are you’ve said that or something along those lines over the course of the last 48 hours.

Along those lines.

Meh, too soon? Perhaps, especially considering we may never know the exact phraseology of Kriss Proctor’s apparent “taunt” following his overtime touchdown run in Saturday’s 35-34 loss to Air Force. And while something tells me Proctor didn’t exactly drop an “excuse me, future brother-in-arms, would you politely make way so I can celebrate this accomplishment with my teammates?” it goes without saying that an official making a call of commission at that point in the game seems a bit absurd.

It’s also a bit absurd to think that the call alone beat Navy on Saturday. It didn’t. But then again, it certainly didn’t help either. True, John Teague’s extra point attempt would have been blocked regardless of whether or not the attempt had been moved back 15-yards, but who’s to say the pressure of the backed-up extra point didn’t in some small way – some immeasurable, Phil Steele stat-defying way – contribute to the low trajectory of the kick? I’m suddenly reminded of a recent ESPN documentary about the Steve Bartman saga in Chicago, and how the reaction of Moises Alou to Bartman’s fan-interference seemed to throw an interrupting stream into the Cubs’ momentum. No, that kind of error or mental lapse on the part of a player shouldn’t affect what happens next, but maybe it’s the hopeless sports fan in all of us to wonder whether – and perhaps, once more, to assume – it could have.

And after the weekend I just had, I’m inclined to view just that.

Can you blame me?

Unlike the vast majority of Naval Academy graduates who suffered through Saturday’s heartbreaker, I wasn’t intimately familiar with the bitter taste of losing to your intensely and sincerely disliked rival on a regular basis.  Sure, I grew up going to Navy games in the 1990s, but seeing as though my interest in the program only really took off in 2003 (at the tender age of 13, mind you), you would have been perfectly within your rights as a grad to scoff at any claims I might have made to sticking with my team through thick and thin.

Key phrase, of course, is would have.

On Friday night I watched my college lose in the closing seconds to its rival. Scratch that. I saw the dudes I used to have lunch with everyday get beat by a series of freak, act-of-God-type plays by its rival. Its highly disliked rival, which, to add a final act of insult to the fine people of Logan, was being led by my town’s once favorite son. It stung. It sucked. It’s life as a sports fan though, and it’s part of what we gamble for when we turn on our TVs or settle into our seats. Expecting anything different would be to get complacent, and Coach Niumatalolo will always be the first to tell you that he never wants his team to get that way. He’ll also be the first to tell you he never wants his team to lose focus, or to drop the ball of intensity against any opponent, much less a rival.

But they did. At the end of the day, Navy lost not because of a blocked kick, and not because Tim Jefferson played the game of his life during the first quarter. Contributing factors? Maybe, but the simplest way to understand what happened Saturday is to understand that one team came prepared to play, and one team did not. One team was flying off the ball, while the other had linebackers misfiring gaps, and slotbacks zoning out on blocking assignments. That the latter of those teams managed to right the ship on the scoreboard by the end of 60 minutes is amazing, but it doesn’t take away the initial lack of focus, and ultimately, it couldn’t fill the hole that had been dug. A few inches short, and a tackle or two late– those are things that led to the result on the scoreboard. But they’re not the things which lost the game. That result, based on what we saw in the first quarter, was etched in stone thanks to the contrast in  attitudes as the teams ran out of the locker room.

I just wish it didn’t have to happen two days in a row.