January 16, 2020
LSU, SAINTS AND MUCH MORE
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
By Scott Osborne Assistant Basketball Coach at Central High School
I am still shaking my head over how great of a football season LSU just had. I also can’t believe I experienced LSU’s third National Championship this century. But this one is the best by far. This year, LSU is not “splitting” the title with USC. When people talk about this year, they are not going to mention LSU is the only team with two losses to win the title. LSU went undefeated, playing the best teams with a long list of awards and records set. People can say what they want, but I think Clemson played extremely well. Another sign of how great this team was this year. LSU took their best shot. Here are quick notes I jotted down watching the game:
- Just like #7 for Alabama, #8 had no chance of tackling Edwards-Helaire.
- Clemson did the best job of getting pressure up the middle. At keys times, LSU did a great job a couple times keeping Edwards-Helaire in to block to give Burrow time.
- Michael Divinity’s return made a difference.
- Chaisson must be hated by officials. Even when he gets bear hugged, he can’t get a holding call. That being said, the officiating balanced out and was fine. Better than the NFL in my mind.
- LSU had a big advantage. Not because of the crowd, but because of the length of the game. Just like a normal 2:30 CBS long walk in the park.
- The conditioning of LSU’s skill players is incredible. Moss, Chase, Helaire, Jefferson, and Marshall played about 95% of the snaps and are still running all over the field at the end of the game making plays and finishing runs.
- The benefit of playing in the SEC is that you are fully tested and have had to adjust and figure out how to cover up every little weakness to make it through the gauntlet.
- I can’t believe Clemson didn’t keep running the ball at LSU with Etienne. In the second half, they kept trying the perimeter with Etienne and LSU stuffed it.
- The improvement of LSU’s defense is a credit to the coaches and players like Kary Vincent who clearly worked hard to improve over the course of the year. Which is why when you look at the stats you need to consider the opponent and recent trends.
- I only listened to the broadcast toward the end, but it was in time to hear what had to be the thought LSU fans wanted someone to express. He said LSU had moved from an “archaic offense” to this record setting offense. For that change to happen as quickly as it did is amazing. Before LSU fans start stressing, I want to finish with two thoughts. First, and this isn’t a new thought, please enjoy the moment. The team and coaches will need to move on and start working toward next year. We get to enjoy it. I hope you did that starting with the Alabama game, and didn’t stress over whether LSU was 1 or 2 in the rankings. Don’t worry about the “Too Early Top 25” rankings that will come out this week. Let’s all enjoy the afterglow, and just wait and see. Let the recruiting finish, see who leaves for the draft, and then start looking toward next year. Finally, it will look different next year, but LSU can be very good again. LSU will not replace Joe Burrow, just like Clemson didn’t replace Deshaun Watson. That doesn’t mean LSU can’t be very good, though. The foundation and principles are there and within that system the key is to take advantage of the skills on the team. And there will be skill on the roster, while LSU holds their own on the line of scrimmage. Again, enjoy the afterglow. Let the joy of this year stay with this year’s team and the memory of the journey. We will start a fresh, clean new journey next year. Geaux Tigers!
HEY REF
To become the best in your chosen profession you must dedicate yourself to one thing and that one thing is; a lifetime of Constant Continued Improvement (CCI). For anyone with an “itch” to become a better official they should take those three little words with them every place they go. The only way to becoming a better official is to never miss a chance to learn something new. One of the very first things drilled into my head was that if I didn’t learn at least one new thing each and every time I walked off a field then I should retire from the profession. Simply put the reason is simple; once you cease learning you cease to improve.
I’m bringing up the subject for a very simple reason; we as a group of officials can’t do it all alone. I’ve written in this space on several occasions the need for coaches to get involved with how the officials that’ll work their games in the fall are trained. In Hey Ref’s world it’ll take both officials and coaches working together to improve the product you’ll see when a new season starts. There have been great advancements in the different types of technology available to officials. But to me the greatest thing coaches can do is getting involved with their local official’s association.
There seems to be this invisible line drawn in the sand that separates the two. As an official I hear the raw feelings and opinions many officials will express in our closed weekly meetings but the very people that need to hear these views, the coaches, will never be privy to these concerns. At one of these weekly meetings a few years back as I took to the floor and expressed my feelings I was “shot down” as the membership didn’t even want to debate my idea. I knew I’d be taking some heat for my idea and I’ll never, never forget what a veteran official said of my idea “Jose’ all the coaches want is to find an official that’ll cheat for them”!
I know for the time being I’ll never be successful in changing their minds or opinions. Another official pointed out that one great innovation is our ability to go “on-line” and watch game films some coaches and schools submit. As that year slowly slipped away and I’d spent a couple weekends watching tapes of the games I’d worked I noticed these tapes had very little for officials use. I called the president of our association and asked why the tapes didn’t include a shot of the Referee’s signal of the penalty that was called and also the status of the ball “after” the penalty was enforced. He told me they’ve been trying to get the coaches to include this very important information so we can see how the crew enforced the foul but the coaches don’t feel it’s their job to teach the officials!
I agree it’s not the coach’s job but it is to their benefit to help the very people they depend on to get that call correct for this game and those future games. It also would tell both the coaches and officials if the crew enforced the foul correctly. An added benefit to knowing the foul and the way in which the penalty was enforced would of course help coaches understand certain rules they weren’t sure about. So in explaining this to coaches it should’ve been a slam-dunk in that coaches would understand why that crew did what they did.
My message to all coaches state wide is that since we’re going to be doing the business of working games completely different than we have in the past please get involved in not only helping your officials’ association get better but to also help educate your fellow coaches. There’s nothing worse than working a game in which you’ve made the correct ruling and enforcement of a foul but only one sideline knows you were correct.
So, I’ll close by saying we need the help of our coaches to give us the greatest tool there is and that is of course game films. But we also need them to go one step further and include the call and enforcement by his game crew. I’ll continue thinking that when coaches and officials work together, officials get better. When officials get better the games get better. Rules knowledge will also make games safer. When the games become safer then it’s the players, fans and parents that benefit from a better and safer product on the field.
I can only go by my own personal experiences when I say that studying films beats a mountain of rulebooks, day in, day out, hands down! This past season while studying film from one of our games we noticed that a crew member missed a flagrant helmet to helmet tackle in a local high school game. It sure wasn’t something we celebrated because we found a blown call. But these types of things happen and we’ll learn by our mistakes.
It wasn’t the only foul missed by our crew, no; I missed a couple of fouls right in front of my nose because I wasn’t looking in the proper place. But what we did was find a way to minimize the chances of a repeat in missing those fouls again. Not going to say we’ll never miss them again because that would be a lie. But what I will say is this, by studying game film we now have a procedure we’ll adopt to help eliminate the chances of repeating mistakes in the way we cover certain plays.
Officials are human and yes we do make mistakes. But there are times when officials do question each other because what they see and call makes even those of us that work hard at eliminating mistakes just shake our heads in disbelief. I’ve stored all my uniforms, flags and whistles away for about 3 months when it’ll be time to start once again learning rule changes because officials don’t get half a season to get into playoff form. Nope, we’ve got to be perfect on that first snap in that first scrimmage in April
So, I’ll enjoy my short vacation. Till next week… …
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