Notes from Pac 10 Country

I'm here in Estes Park, Colorado, and you're not - more's the pity for you.  While I was driving across I-70 Saturday with my youngest and getting pelted with rain, the FCCJC sign up was interrupted, then canceled due to the same weather.

Only two of our players made it through, so the rest of us will have June 26th, July 10th, and July24th, as the three remaining sign up dates. Plenty of chances yet. Please let us know if none of those remaining dates work for you, and we can see about some alternative arrangement.

If you're not familiar with it, Estes Park is a very pretty little town just at the foot of the Rocky Mountain National Park. It is also just north of Boulder, which officially became Pac 10 country last week.

The locals here seem more interested in the outdoors than what conference their local college team calls home. I think that's one of the criticisms of Colorado college sports, but I also think that makes them fit just nicely with their new Pac 10 brethren.

I'm not sure what to think of the new deal. The Big 10 is taking a breath, and I assume the Pac 10 will too. But will the Big 10 make another play for Notre Dame?  Will they use the threat of asking Missouri, Rutgers, Syracuse and Pittsburgh to force Notre Dame's hand? And then will they go ahead and do it?

Nebraska is in for another year, and Colorado is in for two more, last I heard. Will the Big XII look to replace either or both? Would any school in its right mind join this conference, held together as it is with spitballs and bailing wire?

For our age group, I hear rumors of a top-flight team thinking of leaving the Blue Valley League and joining FCCJC. This is piled on top of rumors I heard throughout the spring of who was leaving FCCJC for Blue Valley.

Really, we're just like the big boys - just less money involved.

Finally, dad and baseball coach Joe Pavlovich made me laugh with this drawing of the Big XII's new logo. Hope all of you are having a great summer, and travel safely!

FCCJC Registration #2 on Saturday

The second FCCJC registration day will be this Saturday, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Heritage Park Football complex at 162nd and Pflumm. Be sure to bring a checkbook and either an FCCJC registration card from a previous season, or a copy of your son's most recent grade card and birth certificate.

Kansas, K-State, Iowa State, and Missouri will be there checking in for their new division, the Leftover Lightweights. Baylor has not been admitted to this point, though sources say the 8th grade National division has made inquiries.

Warning - Another College Football Conference Re-Alignment Post

Rumors are moving VERY rapidly in college football. We've had confirmation of Texas-Big Ten discussions from leaked E-Mails, deadlines imposed on MU and Nebraska, offers rumored on the way from the PAC 10 for six or more Big XII - all this in the last 48 hours!
 
Are we headed toward four 16-team super conferences?
 
One rumor has the Pac 10 inviting half the Big XII (Texas, Texas A&M,  Colorado, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State) into it's conference. Presumably then Missouri and Nebraska would bolt to the Big 10. If Rutgers from the Big East says yes to the Big 10 as well, that would put them momentarily at fourteen teams.
 
There are two major BCS conferences in the east - the Big East, with eight football playing teams, and the ACC with 12. And the big cheese in all this is the Southeastern conference, with 12 teams and the best football in the country.

Question 1 - will the Southeastern conference sit idly by while the Big XII is pillaged, without making a play for Texas, the Oklahoma schools, or at least A&M?  Question 2, and perhaps the answer to question 1 - will the television contract already in place for the SEC bind them from expansion during this round of expansion free-for-all? Or will they bite the bullet and make a play for four of the Texas/Oklahoma schools?

Back to the east - the ACC is the stronger football league compared to the Big East. Rutgers is already rumored to the Big 10, leaving the Big East with just seven. The football plum remaining in the vulnerable Big East is oddly South Florida - put them down as a target for a sooner-or-later forced-to-expand SEC. The ACC could go after the top four of the remaining six - with it's basketball panache, imagine Syracuse, U-Conn, Louisville, and Cincinnati being in the cross-hairs for the ACC.
 
That would leave Pittsburgh as easy pickings for the Big Ten. Confused? To help clarify (or muddy things further, depending on your point of view) here are the members of what seem to be the target conferences. For the Big East, I've listed the football schools. Remeber, we're talking about four 16-team super conferences - you have to play both football and basketball to be a member.

The 20 Targets

Big 12	Big 12	Big East (fb)	Big East (fb)
Texas	Missouri	South Florida	Rutgers
Texas A&M	Nebraska	Louisville	Pittsburgh
Oklahoma	Colorado	Syracuse	Cincinnati
Oklahoma St	Kansas	U Conn	West Virginia
Texas Tech	Kansas State
Baylor	Iowa State

Let's examine what I call the Pac 10 Grab. In this scenario the Pac 10 successfully swipes the four Big 12 schools they are rumored to desire, and several of the Big East teams move off to greener pastures.

Pac 10 Grab

Pac 10 W	Big 10 W	SEC W	ACC Atlantic
Washington	Missouri	Arkansas	BC
Washington St	Nebraska	Ole Miss	Clemson
Oregon	Iowa	Mississippi St	Florida St
Oregon St	Illinois	LSU	Maryland
Cal	Northwestern	Auburn	NC State
Stanford	Wisconsin	Alabama	Wake Forest
USC	Minnesota	?	Syracuse
UCLA	?	?	UConn
Pac 10 E	Big 10 E	SEC E	ACC Coastal
Arizona	Indiana	Florida	Va Tech
Arizona St	Purdue	Georgia	Ga Tech
Texas	Michigan	Kentucky	Miami
Texas A&M	Michigan St	South Carolina	Virginia
Oklahoma	Ohio St	Tennessee	UNC
Oklahoma St	Penn St	Vanderbuilt	Duke
Texas Tech	Rutgers	South Florida	Louisville
Colorado	?	?	Cincinnati

That scenario leaves two openings in the Big 10 and three openings (someday) in the SEC.
 
Big 10 Commissioner Delaney would give his eye teeth, left gonad, and his mother's wedding ring to get Notre Dame into that open slot in his eastern division. But Notre Dame is already BCS automatic, already has its own TV network, and probably won't budge. They are comfortable as a major independent.
 
Assuming the Irish stand pat, there are six other remaining current automatic BCS teams without a chair as the music winds down. KU and K-State are a nice pair for a basketball conference, but neither the SEC nor the Big 10 think basketball first. KU and Iowa State are members of the American Association of Universities - Baylor and K-State are not. I think those two are both great schools, but somehow the Big Ten seems to think membership in that club is important.  Pittsburgh is an AAU member and OUGHT to be attractive, but they're a private school in a pro-sports, blue-collar type of town. West Virginia has had some football success, and Huggins is an interesting basketball coach - but they're also firmly on the BCS bubble, and not an AAU member.
 
The SEC could invite nearly any of them of course when their television contract expires, and without anywhere else to go, any of them would jump. But perhaps the SEC goes after all four Texas schools to make the Texas legislature happy. That would throw a wrench in the Pac 10's plans, though Colorado and the Oklahoma schools would still be in play for them. But they'd need two more, and KU and K-State would be just sitting there.
 
That scenario I would call the SEC Swallows Texas, and it looks like this:

SEC Swallows Texas

Pac 10 W	Big 10 W	SEC W	ACC Atlantic
Washington	Missouri	Arkansas	BC
Washington St	Nebraska	Ole Miss	Clemson
Oregon	Iowa	Mississippi St	Florida St
Oregon St	Illinois	LSU	Maryland
Cal	Northwestern	Texas	NC State
Stanford	Wisconsin	Texas Tech	Wake Forest
USC	Minnesota	Baylor	Syracuse
UCLA	?	Texas A&M	UConn
Pac 10 E	Big 10 E	SEC E	ACC Coastal
Arizona	Indiana	Florida	Va Tech
Arizona St	Purdue	Georgia	Ga Tech
Colorado	Michigan	Kentucky	Miami
Oklahoma	Michigan St	South Carolina	Virginia
Oklahoma St	Ohio St	Tennessee	UNC
?	Penn St	Vanderbuilt	Duke
?	Rutgers	Alabama	Louisville
?	?	Auburn	Cincinnati

Nothing says the Pac 10 couldn't counter such an SEC play by dumping their bid for Colorado, holding their noses, and offering Baylor - a scenario that should be extremely worrisome to CU.

By the way, no disrespect on my part for Baylor - great school - it's just that Californians aren't clamoring to hang around with Baptists from Waco, TX (and more's the pity - it would be a big cultural improvement for them.)

The flaw in this I think is that the SEC would have trouble breaking OU from Texas - they seem to like playing each other. But since you probably can't break OU and OSU, and you clearly can't break Texas and the Aggies, whether the SEC could get any or all of those, assuming they wanted them, would then probably depend on the Texas legislature.

My latest scenario I call the BigPac.
 
In this alignment, the Big 12 southwest six to the Pac 10 was never really going to happen - it was a rumor designed to flush MU and Nebraska out, as they seemed to be headed that way anyway. The Pac 10 and Big 12 defend themselves against further attrition by jettisoning those two upper Midwestern schools off to colder confines, leaving the remainder free to create a 20 team western super conference. The BigPac would have a Big division and a Pac division. Could this dramatic step have been what Cal-Berkeley Chancellor Rober Birgeneau was alluding to when he predicted a revolution in college athletics?
 
In football each team would play 9 division games games, then a 'tournament' game - 10 plays 10, 9 plays 9, etc. against the other division at the end of the year. The 1 v 1 game is the conference championship, and would move around. Obviously the remaining Big 12 teams all play each other, and the Pac 10 plays all its long-time rivalries, and then there would be the end-of-the-year game. The host for the cross-division game would be determined as each match up was determined, based on whichever team had hosted fewer end-of-the-year games in conference history. In case of tie, the second tie breaker would be evening up the division hosting. You'd do a coin flip after that.


In basketball you'd play your division twice (18) and the other side once (10) creating 28 games. There would be very little non-conference season, absolutely maximizing basketball revenue.

The revolutionary aspect is that it is an entire level beyond what anyone else is thinking. The natural progression of four 16-team super conferences has everybody agog. But does Texas really want to travel further? Do they really want to dump Baylor victories from their schedule? I think this would be an incredibly appealing, have-cake-and-eat-it-too outcome for them. Suddenly they're in a conference that has more competition than the SEC and a full 20 of the 65 auto-bcs teams under it's umbrella. That's quite a sandbox for the Horns to play in.

But for this to happen, the Big 12 and Pac 10 have to know that Nebraska and MU are gone. If those two schools want to stick around and see whether this bigger thing would be a better thing, then fine and we go from there. But Texas really doesn't want to play footsie much more. They have players to buy and championships to win, and all of that is needlessly complicated and delayed while these second-tier programs are fiddling around.

That may be why there is a deadline. Commit - and it's a big financial commitment, you can bet - or go, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

As a Kansas fan I like this BigPac scenario second best. My first preference is status quo. But you may accuse me of whistling past the graveyard, and you could be right.

Registration Begins Saturday

Football registration begins this Saturday!  Our club is tracking 71 named players that have either played with us before or expressed an interest. We expect to have four teams - one will play in the Blue Valley League, and three will play in FCCJC.

Not all of those 71 will play - but others will sign up that we don't know about today, so we could certainly approach 70 players. I believe that we will have the largest fifth grade football club in the Kansas City area.

The first FCCJC sign-up is this Saturday from 10 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. out at the Heritage Park football complex at 162nd and Pflumm.

Coach Darius Lecthenberger sent an E-Mail to the Blue Valley league prospects this morning about their sign up process, which also begins this Saturday.

Below are the details - be sure you sign up for the league in which you intend to play.

Blue Valley League Sign Up Process (Swinford)

1. Register on-line. On this site - http://bvfc.goalline.ca/ there is a menu option on the left that says On-Line registration. You can pay the league fee ($210) by credit card during the registration. Be sure to list Coach Swinford as the coach.
2. Attend the equipment checkout on Saturday, May 22nd, 8-11am, at the offices of Blue Valley Football Club, located at 6730 W. 153rd St., Overland Park, KS 66223
1. If you can't make that equipment check-out, there will be four other equipment check-out sessions at Lakewood Middle School throughout the summer (6/12, 6/26, 7/10, and 7/17).
2. Be sure to bring your receipts from on-line registration to the equipment check-out that you attend
3. If you are a new player to the Blue Valley Football Club, you will need to bring BOTH a copy of your birth certificate AND a current grade report or student ID. You must have both items to register with the league, as they have both age and grade specific registration.
3. If you have any questions at all about the process or what you need, E-Mail Coach Darius Lechtenberger at darius@lm-energy.com.

FCCJC Sign Up Process (Adam)

1. Attend one of the five registration Saturdays at Heritage Football Complex at 162nd and Pflumm. The dates include this Saturday, 5/22, as well as 6/12, 6/26, 7/10, and 7/24. They go from 10 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the lines can be long early.
2. If you are a returning player, bring your FCCJC player card to registration. If you are a new player (or can't find your player card) bring a copy of your birth certificate and a grade card or student ID proving your grade.
3. There are three potential fees that you can pay at registration
1. Raffle tickets - these are yours as part of your registration price, available to sell to family and and friends if you prefer, or to buy outright at registration for your own use. They cost $160, and if you would rather sell them and pay later, the team will collect the money for them in mid August. Whether you buy them yourself or sell them to others, you can use them to enter a drawing for some pretty good prizes passed out in mid September.
2. Equipment rental - if you will  be renting equipment (shoulder pads and helmet) from the league, the rental price is $65.00. If you have your own equipment, you should bring it with you to registration to be checked and verified.
3. Physical - a doctor's physical is required. You may use your own physician as long as the physical has been performed no earlier than February 1, 2010. Or, if it is more convenient, you may use the doctor present at the registration. The fee for the registration physical is $20.
4. At registration you will be weighed and fitted for any equipment you rent. See more specific information right here or contact Coach Adam at any time at CoachJimAdam@gmail.com

MU and Nebraska

Well, nobody said the prediction business was easy.

I could KC Star this and say well, technically, Missouri hasn't been offered a Big 10 spot yet. Nyah, nyah, nyah. So I might still end up being right about the expansion plans of the Big Ten.

But then I would be a weasel, and I'm just not a weasel.  I was wrong about whether the Big Ten would offer Missouri a spot.  They have.  And I now, despite a lackluster record predicting this stuff, boldly predict - Missouri will go. Nebraska may not, Notre Dame will not, but if Rutgers makes the jump too then the Big Ten will go for Pittsburgh or some other Big East school shortly after announcing the offer and acceptance of Missouri and Rutgers to join the Big Ten.

I don't know this - but don't you imagine that Jim Delany told those four schools that the first three to accept were in, and put a deadline on it for the leadership of those schools? I'd deny it had been offered of course, because NOBODY turns me down - but recognizing that the pressure is mine to apply right now, there would be an end of May deadline for Round 1 of expansion.  If I get all four, yippee, then I choose my 16th team during June, and I'd have plenty that would want to be that magical last school in the first and biggest and best of the new mega-conferences. If I get two or three of the schools and one is Notre Dame, then I go for 16 by going after two or three more from my second tier of candidates in Round 2.

If I get everybody but Notre Dame, there is no Round 2 for now, and I stand pat with 14 teams.

From Delany's point of view, he must imagine that Notre Dame probably won't go. Nebraska and Missouri might not go either - these are high stakes games, and if Texas decides they want to keep one or both of those schools in their little playpen, and push the Big 12 toward western dominance, Delany would realize that the Longhorns could probably make it happen with an aggressive television and revenue sharing plan.

So he might be left with only Rutgers, and then he's at a nice even twelve teams and has added the NY/NJ market to his television share. That is a no-lose situation, even though the big prizes turned him down. He would presumably look east for further expansion at some later time.

But I don't think Texas really cares to stop Missouri from leaving. So MU is probably gone, the Big Ten will get two or three of these four they've offered, and the college conference landscape is clearly on the move.

Logical Progressions of the Option

When we went to the "true" triple option in 2009, logical necessity quickly established the Midline option as another version of the option we would run.

Our regular option dives at the B gap (the hole between our guard and tackle) and reads what we call the #4 man.  I've written many paragraphs in our playbook and even made videos about the numbering system on our password protected site about this option. In the interest of brevity for this article, lets just say that the #4 man is very often the defensive tackle.

Here's a drawing of our standard (inside) option play:

Notice that the fullback runs to the gap between the guard and center. Against this five-man front, we get to 'option block' the defensive tackle that is circled T4 above. If our offensive tackle gets past him to the inside, then we can hand the ball to the fullback.

But what happens if the defense lines up in a 4-4? Here's a picture of our offense lined up against that sort of defense:

We could run the same play - E becomes the #4 man. But with a defensive tackle over our guard AND the  defensive end over our tackle, it becomes more difficult to read the B gap effectively. If, for example, the defense slants to the outside, chances are that the defensive tackle will jam up the hole between our guard and tackle. Our quarterback could make a perfect read of the defensive end, hand the ball to the fullback, and we'd still not run a successful play, because the defense overloaded the gap to which we were trying to run.

Necessity being the mother of invention, the Midline option is a better call against this defense. For the midline, the dive path and dive read key change. Instead of running between the guard and tackle, the fullback runs just outside of the center. Instead of reading the #4 man for the dive, we read the first down lineman to the option side of the center. Here's a drawing:

By shifting the dive key read to the first man to the option side of the center, the option block shifts to the play-side guard. If he can get inside and out to the linebacker, he does, and that becomes a 'give' read.

If you look at both option plays, you'll notice that we prefer to call the option that allows our fullback a two-hole window. In the first drawing, there is no player lined up over the guard, potentially opening both the A gap and the B gap. In the second drawing there is no player lined up over the center, leaving both A gaps potentially open.  We call these two consecutive open gaps 'the bubble.' We prefer to run our dive to the bubble, wherever it may be.

Let's really complicate things: Imagine that our our opponent decides to put a defender directly in BOTH of the gaps to which we'd like to run. Here's an eight-man front that seems to take away both the inside and midline dive options:

By playing linemen in both the A and B gaps, this defense attempts to take away both dive options. So while the center is technically uncovered, it is unlikely that our guard will ever get inside his opponent, and the fullback would appear to be taken away for the Midline. Likewise the B gap is occupied as well, complicating our regular option. But there is a bubble in this defense. Between our tackle and our A back there is an open  gap. That is the C gap, and the Veer option attempts to exploit that gap.

The Veer option play we created was the direct result of playing against an eight-man-line during a pre-season scrimmage last summer. By shifting the option dive path to the C gap, we could once again run to the bubble and force player B4 to make a decision - fullback or quarterback.

By the end of last season we had three different versions of the option play available, and managed to use all of them to one degree or another in our games.

But in our Black squad's seventh game we ran into a different sort of problem. The defense wisely changed its scheme from down to down. They played a 5-3 defense as shown in the first diagram above, but also would periodically shift to an 'eagle under' look, where their defensive tackles would line up on our guards, rather than our tackles. The veer option would have been a great alternative against that eagle-under defense. But we didn't know which defense we would be seeing when we broke the huddle. THAT was a very frustrating day, and our boys at nine-years-old, in our first year running the true triple option, just couldn't understand quickly enough who to block.

I knew that we could run some option successfully, but I couldn't know until we lined up which one. So it seemed to me that an "Option On Me" scheme would be most effective. In "Option On Me" systems, the quarterback calls whichever option he wants to run at the line of scrimmage.

If he sees an eagle under look, or an even front shaded to the inside, or a gap 8 defense, he can call for the veer option. If he sees a wide tackle six or a four-four, he can call for the midline. Against nearly all odd fronts he can call for our standard inside option.

We will work on this system both with and without a huddle this summer. I'm excited to see if we can do it.

Meeting Venue Changed

We've been kicked out of Prairie Trail Junior High at the last minute. Our meeting location tonight is now the Meadow Lane multi purpose room.