Hays at Pitt.

[PSR]

I thought that was at Pitt? In 2000 the game was in Omaha, right?

Yes...it was 2001 in Pittsburg. :(

In 2000 was the game in Omaha where the ref walked the ball from the middle of the field to the sideline to get a measurement, instead of taking the sticks out to the ball!

[Predatory Primates]

Yes...it was 2001 in Pittsburg. :(

In 2000 was the game in Omaha where the ref walked the ball from the middle of the field to the sideline to get a measurement, instead of taking the sticks out to the ball!

D2 refs have a long tradition of awfulness to uphold.

[GorillaBred]

First, on Pitt State... we're a decent team, but there's nothing special about this team and there's too little attention to detail out of everyone to make a difference against teams that are essentially equal (FH) or superior (NW and likely UCM) to us. The OL and Mlekus did seem to make huge strides yesterday in running the veer. The OL seemed to finally grasp that winning the battle with the playside DT was far more important than getting up to the second level and Mlekus did a good job of slowing his initial read down to force the defense to commit. He seemed to be intentionally taking a long, slow drag step for his first step and I thought it was really improving his decision making. The secondary seemed to take a major step back yesterday, which is pretty discouraging as that had been probably our best group to date. Derryberry was in position to make a play and just failed on numerous occasions. Baughman's 3 false starts are weird as he hadn't had a single one all year. I didn't get to my car quick enough after the game to hear all of it, but it sounds like we thought the FH defense was mimicking a snap count and throwing him off. Hard to verify something like that.

On FH... definitely a worse team than their last two, but I think that was to be expected. I'm not going to be sad to see those WR and TE be gone. It'll be interesting to see how Fuller does without them next year as they seemed to me to be the ones making that connection look good. It wouldn't shock me to see FHSU win out in the regular season or to lose two more games.

On sportsmanship... the unsportsmanlike penalty on Selemaea was a terrible call. He got bumped into and tripped over a FHSU player on the ground and it was interpreted to be him taunting. FHSU does seem to me to be the most recent team to have players who love to talk to the opposing crowd. But that tends to run its course once a program gets more used to its place (whether that be a program rising or declining). My guess is that within the next two years, FHSU will get used to winning and be quite a bit better at acting like they've been there before. And it's totally absurd to try to "both sides" the crowd vs. player back and forth. Players have to be held to a higher standard than crowds. Anybody in the world can walk up to the gates and buy a ticket to the game. The University brought the players as their representatives. Now, when it is the marching band (as it has been at Pitt in the past), that is a different matter.

On officiating... interesting to see FHSU posters comment on Neibling being a problem when I'm pretty sure everybody in the stadium, whether they were wearing red or black, thought FHSU was getting the benefit of the calls/no-calls. We love to complain about officiating, but when its a nightmare at the NFL level, it's hard to imagine it being much more than a coin flip on any hard calls at the D2 level. Personally, I think it would behoove the football world if the NFL and NCAA were to jointly invest substantially in improving referee training and compensation/evaluation at lower levels (like D2), because I don't think the pay is worth it to officiate and I also don't think we have a system that does a good job improving performance or evaluating who ought to move upwards.

[GorillaTeacher]

First, on Pitt State... we're a decent team, but there's nothing special about this team and there's too little attention to detail out of everyone to make a difference against teams that are essentially equal (FH) or superior (NW and likely UCM) to us. The OL and Mlekus did seem to make huge strides yesterday in running the veer. The OL seemed to finally grasp that winning the battle with the playside DT was far more important than getting up to the second level and Mlekus did a good job of slowing his initial read down to force the defense to commit. He seemed to be intentionally taking a long, slow drag step for his first step and I thought it was really improving his decision making. The secondary seemed to take a major step back yesterday, which is pretty discouraging as that had been probably our best group to date. Derryberry was in position to make a play and just failed on numerous occasions. Baughman's 3 false starts are weird as he hadn't had a single one all year. I didn't get to my car quick enough after the game to hear all of it, but it sounds like we thought the FH defense was mimicking a snap count and throwing him off. Hard to verify something like that.

On FH... definitely a worse team than their last two, but I think that was to be expected. I'm not going to be sad to see those WR and TE be gone. It'll be interesting to see how Fuller does without them next year as they seemed to me to be the ones making that connection look good. It wouldn't shock me to see FHSU win out in the regular season or to lose two more games.

On sportsmanship... the unsportsmanlike penalty on Selemaea was a terrible call. He got bumped into and tripped over a FHSU player on the ground and it was interpreted to be him taunting. FHSU does seem to me to be the most recent team to have players who love to talk to the opposing crowd. But that tends to run its course once a program gets more used to its place (whether that be a program rising or declining). My guess is that within the next two years, FHSU will get used to winning and be quite a bit better at acting like they've been there before. And it's totally absurd to try to "both sides" the crowd vs. player back and forth. Players have to be held to a higher standard than crowds. Anybody in the world can walk up to the gates and buy a ticket to the game. The University brought the players as their representatives. Now, when it is the marching band (as it has been at Pitt in the past), that is a different matter.

On officiating... interesting to see FHSU posters comment on Neibling being a problem when I'm pretty sure everybody in the stadium, whether they were wearing red or black, thought FHSU was getting the benefit of the calls/no-calls. We love to complain about officiating, but when its a nightmare at the NFL level, it's hard to imagine it being much more than a coin flip on any hard calls at the D2 level. Personally, I think it would behoove the football world if the NFL and NCAA were to jointly invest substantially in improving referee training and compensation/evaluation at lower levels (like D2), because I don't think the pay is worth it to officiate and I also don't think we have a system that does a good job improving performance or evaluating who ought to move upwards.

Mimicking snap counts is an unsportmanlike penalty as well, hard to believe ref wouldn't have caught it, though.

I think Pred hit it on the head with an injury to Hardin. He just didn't look like himself.

I wasn't even trying to make a comment about the calls/no calls, and holding penalty is notoriously under called at this level and on up. But its pretty obvious hold when the jersey is being pulled off the DL when Fuller would escape contain or the that beast of TE go the distance on an end around. But there were missed or no calls both ways (PI, ahem ahem). So I try not to comment on it. I'm certain we have been the benefit of bad calls in the past and will be in the future.

[TigerAlum]

All together unfortunately officiating is getting harder and harder to find people to do it, not even good ones, just people who know and will do it. I heard of this weekend a parent making threats to the officials in youth/grade school football, it just pushes young officials away, why would someone want to put up with that for around $60 probably on the high too and give up their free time for that.
If you pay attention to athletics you hear about the officiating shortage all over the place. As it was posted above their needs to be improvements but that is hard to do when schools are just trying to get people to do it at the lower levels.

[Predatory Primates]

The difference between HS crowds when I was a kid and when my daughter played sports was night and day. I mean they booed the refs at times, etc back then, but I can't remember a game when my daughter was playing or cheering when some crapbag parent wasn't dog cussing a ref.

[Go-Rilla]

Why in gods green earth would Brown want to come back to southeast ks

So he wouldn't have to live in Western Kansas anymore?