December 17, 2020
GOD BLESS AMERICA.
HO HO HO
Season’s Greetings
GOD BLESS
Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone adversely effected by Hurricane Delta… and My heart goes out to my friends in the Lake Area who endured major destruction at the hands of Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Delta. My thoughts and prayers are with you. We strongly urge readers of this newsletter to donate to a worthwhile Hurricane oriented charity in the Lake Area.
TODAY’S COLUMNS:
Scott discusses LSU and the Saints
Dennis recounts a painful officiating memory…
Please scroll down below.
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
Never mind. Forget everything I said about this Saints defense and the Saints last week.
It is the same team and organization that gets embarrassed by rookie quarterbacks. It is the same team that for the last three seasons has started the season playing poorly, peaked in the middle of the season around November, and then loses its edge in December.
At least that is what I am going to tell myself. Sean Payton tells the players not to eat the cheese which means to not fall into the trap of thinking you are good because if you do you will look how the Saints looked on Sunday. As a pathetic fan who sets myself up for disappointment, I not only ate the cheese, I wrote a review of how good the cheese tastes last week. What was I thinking? I should know better than that!
On the other hand, all those lamenting the probably loss of the #1 seed in the playoffs need to consider how worthless that has been for the Saints as well. The last two years the Saints have lost at home with 70,000 fans going crazy. What makes anyone think the Saints need to have 3,000 fans in the dome in order to win the playoffs this year?
What the Saints need is to play their best football in January. But, I am going back to not expecting it.
As excited as I was to see LSU upset Florida (at least the last quarter that I was able to watch), it once again goes to show the difference great players make in the success of a team. Florida is clearly a different offense without Kyle Pitts, and it goes to show that a team can only sustain a certain number of losses. This lesson shows why Ohio State and teams that play half a season have not taken the tests that tell the committee they deserve a shot in the playoff. It stinks for Ohio State, but their conference is the one to blame. Nobody else.
How does LSU overcome losing so many players and still win? There are a few factors. One is motivation. Florida’s players knew what LSU was missing, while LSU’s players had something to prove.
Second is reps. LSU has now been without some of their best players for so long that the younger players have gotten the reps in practice to get better. Kyle Pitts’ backup only got repas with the starters once Pitts was injured. For LSU, players like Boutte, Jenkins, and others have now received the reps and playing experience they needed to be prepared for the role they now have.
Third, it is just one game. LSU cannot sustain what they did against Florida. Too many things were required to go LSU’s way for winning to be sustained this way each week in the SEC. But, the Tigers were absolutely due. This has been a year where tipped balls have gone against LSU. Not this Saturday. Certain calls have gone against the Tigers, but not this weekend for LSSHOE.
Ole Miss will present a completely different challenge this week. The Rebels will test LSU’s defensive depth with their pace of play. If the defensive backfield is not healthy, it will be tough to stop Ole Miss at all. Heck, it will be tough to stop them anyway.
This is a game, like the Arkansas game, that LSU will have to control the ball with the run and converting third downs to win.
It would be nice for LSU to win and reach.500. LSU will probably have to play a better game this week to make it happen.
HEY REF
For more years that I want to admit I have felt that the National Federation of High Schools has sometime talked out of both sides of its collective mouth when it came to rules written specifically for the safety of the players. Don’t get me wrong because that has always been the mission of everyone involved in high school sports, when writing new rules, changes to existing rules and how we, those individuals charged with enforcement of those said rules. Here’s my own short personal reason why some rules need changing or eliminating.
I can’t even count the many times I’ve been booed by the crowds, the coaches and some principals for tossing my yellow flag and penalizing “cheap” shots. As a player I’ve had my bell rung many times. Back in those days we just waited until our vision cleared and went back on the field. Many of us played both ways and staying on the sidelines because you saw two of everything wasn’t looked upon very kindly in my day.
I remember the night I had my first knee injury and it wasn’t because of “fair” play. We were on defense and as the offense broke the huddle and lining up in a power left formation which meant they were stacked to our right. When this happened I was to move between the guard and tackle, shoot the gap then try and find the ball. Just so happened my guard “pulled” to my right (his left) and I did as instructed in that I stayed in the gap waiting for the runner to come my way.
I saw the handoff and as the runner tried to go around me I felt like a truck had hit me. I remember reaching for the runner but I was going backwards and didn’t understand why I was going away from the ball carrier. Then I felt a sting in my left knee that I’d never felt before and as I tried to get up to pursue the runner I went face down in the mud. Things do slow way, way down as you wait for the trainers to come out and tend to you. And it did for me since I felt as though everybody had gone home and forgot I was not able to stand up.
My knee felt as though it was set on fire and I couldn’t feel anything but that burning pain. I also felt my skin becoming very tight and wondered when it would split open. Then massive pain decided to pay me a visit which started at my toes and ran all the way up to my hip. What had just happened is the pulling guard saw me in my ready to pounce stance so he peeled back then launched himself, helmet first, striking my knee, from the side. You don’t need very much medical knowledge to understand what happens when a planted leg is hit from the side about knee high. We all know knees don’t bend sideways!
Once on the sidelines the trainer tried to straighten out my leg but it wouldn’t budge. He told me when I got hit it sounded like an M-80 went off. In the early 70’s some of our most loved fireworks were big bang things like M-80’s and Cherry Bombs. I was lucky looking back since I’d only dislocated the knee cap. Or at least that’s what I’d hoped for. But upon further review when the knee cap decided to take a walk it cut across a ligament and sliced into it. The rest is history as they say.
It was a very cheap shot and from that day I just couldn’t understand how another player would intentionally do something like that. But the rules we’ve been playing under since the dawn of time has allowed “clipping” in what’s known as the “FREE BLOCKING ZONE”. It’s that part of the field (2 yards either side of the line of scrimmage and 6 yards either side of the ball). The rule stipulated that only those on the line at the time of the snap can be blocked below the waist/clipped.
Well, a few years ago finally the Federation has outlawed all clipping no matter where you line up before or after the snap. I’ve felt from the get-go this type of blocking should never have been part of the game. I’ve got the scars to justify my point of view. Football is rough enough on all the players but to give linemen the green light on possibly ending another player’s season or career has never set too well with me and thousands of others that had to endure surgery and re-hab because of a cheap shot!
I believe this rule change was adopted in 2016 or 17. The reason I’m writing about this change is that each and every year the Federation has just one goal in mind when considering a rule change and I applaud their continued efforts to make the game safer for the players. So, if you feel there’s need for a rule to be changed, redefined, eliminated or even a completely new rule to be included for next season then contact the LHSAA and explain why you think a change should be made. They’ll then give you all the info needed to send your change to the National Federation for consideration. If you do that who knows it could lead to be the one rule change that saves a number of young kids a lifetime of pain. I once sent in my idea for a rule change but I’d sent it in too late for consideration.
The “change” that I submitted was a small change in the amount of time a team has before it must begin the next play aka “The 25 second play clock”. My reason was two-fold because I feel that with so many athletes getting bigger and faster along with more and more duties high school crews have in getting ready for the next snap that the play clock should be changed to a 30 seconds. Instead the Federation installed a 40 second play clock which closely resembles the clock used under NCAA rules.
Many coaches in dealing with the “hurry-up” offenses of today’s game have been under pressure to send in the right subs for a specific time, down, yard line and so on. As officials on any given Friday night we’re mostly working varsity games with just five men on the field. We must count both teams, make sure players are on or off the line of scrimmage, all players have legal equipment, the coaches aren’t on the field and on and on.
But here’s a problem that nobody seems to want to fix and/or enforce; it’s the one that says the player’s pants must have a pad and the bottom of the pants is to cover the entire knee. Each year we go out and 75% of the players are dressing like the NFL players and many college teams with what appears to be shorts and not pants by any stretch of the imagination. Coaches there are reasons why the pants need to cover the knees and we are unable to enforce the requirement from week to week. It, wearing pants that cover the knees, really gets a lot of attention when we go work playoff games. If we enforce the pants rule in week 11 or 12 the coaches get very upset with our crew since, as you can guess, we’ll hear the coach inform us that “We’ve been wearing these pants all year and nobody’s told us they’re illegal”. And we’re not going to start telling teams at the start of the playoffs to get some new pants on. Simply said if the LHSAA wants us to enforce the rule of players wearing long pants with pads then it has to be enforced on game number one not 11 or 12. I just wish the Federation would eliminate the rule.
Till next week…
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