From: yang@math.duke.edu (Joe Yang)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.football.college
Subject: Don James
Date: 23 Nov 92 23:00:49 GMT
Distribution: usa


  After seeing the Huskies losing 2 of their last 3 games and hence
their MNC hopes, I begin to ponder what is wrong with the Husky team.
One obvious answer would be that they simply don't have enough talents,
hence they are not supposed to win all their games. But judging from
their two losses, this conclusion does not seem to hold. People like
to compare this year's Husky team with last year's, and by now,
everyone seems to agree that last year's team was far superior.
But this certainly does not say a priori that they can't win another
MNC, after all they are not playing against last year's Husky team.

  Let us take at a look at their two losses. First to Arizona. Any
reasonable mind will not argue that they have suffiecient talents to
win against Arizona, but they lost a close game. Next to Washington
State, so we have all these blames on the weather. Did the weather
play a role? Sure it did. In normal weather, the Huskies defense would
not have given up 40+ points, they had held all their opponents to
under 20 points the whole season. While the Wazzu offense is good,
they are certainly no better than the offense UW has faced earlier in
the season. BUT, could they have lost had it been normal weather? They
COULD. Because unlike last year, they don't have dominant talents on
their teams. It is possible for them to lose to any top teams in
Pac-10. But on the other hand, I think most people will agree that
Huskies could beat Cougars even in snow bowl (though I was told that
they had lost to Cougars last 3 times when it snowed). In fact, I
still they have better than 50% chance to beat any top teams in
Pac-10, but nevertherless, they lost 2 games.

 Now let us take a look at Miami. They won all the games against
ranked teams closely (FSU, PSU, Arizona, Syracruse), all by less than
a touchdown, that shows that they don't have dominant talents agaisnt
good teams in the country.  But they non-the-less won all their games.
You can call it lucky if you want, but to get that much luck
(especially if they win their final bowl game again closely) you have
to think that God is on their side.

  So what is the moral? Well, the point is you can win an MNC with
superp talents like UW and Miami did last year with a GOOD coach. Don
James and Erickson are without a doubt both good coaches. Now it is
easy for a good coach to win all their games when you have Emtman,
Mario Bailey, Dana Hall etc who can simply dominate their opponents.
But you need a great coach like Erickson to win all their games when
your team no longer dominate their opponets. A lot people argue that
Miami does not really have that much better a team than the rest this
year, but they simply know how to win and that says a lot about
coaching. FSU can claim they have the best team in the country, but
they will likely lose to Miami again if they play once more. While UW
could have won all their games 2 years ago and this year again, they
only ended up with one co-MNC last year when nobody could really
compete with in Pac-10. I am now convinced that it would have been a
different story had they met Miami last year, and this is from a Husky
fan. So unless they could end up with best recruiting in the country
every year, they are not going to win many MNC's if they stick with
Don James who again I believe is a very good coach that many schools
may love to have as long as they are not thinking of MNC's. :-) He
certainly has the ability to carry a dominant team to win all their
games like most good coaches will, but he will never be able to carry
a very good but not dominant team to win the MNC's. 

  So any news about Don James's future from Seattle? :-)

-- Joe



  
Organization: Sophomore, Civil Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA