Topic #1: Glen Mason

Ahhh, Glen Mason

My first actual post has to be on my favorite topic, well least favorite actually, but you know what I'm getting at. Where do I begin...do I talk about the losses, the inept play calling, the poor coaching of players...there's just so much to talk about.

All right, I'll just start off with the most recent example. Penn State. A couple of things with this game. First off, the attempt at taking a knee with two minutes left. As a football fan, I love when my team crawls into this shell at the end of the half. It tells me, "Well, I'm out of ideas, why don't we go back into locker room and try and think of something." In this case, it's not like Penn State still had two timeouts left...oh wait...they did? Oops. Now while Mason may have thought this was a good idea at the time, why didn't he tell his players he was going to sit on it? That is the only excuse I can possibly think of for Pinnix running out of bounds on second down. Either Pinnix thought they were still trying to move the ball (poor coaching for not letting the players know his overall plan) or he knew they were running out the clock and just ran out of bounds (poor coaching for not telling his guy, "DON'T RUN OUT OF BOUNDS").

The other problem I have is with the kicking, or more to the point the lack thereof. It's not Giannini's fault, he's just not that good. The problem is that we keep going to this poor guy when we know he's not good. I have a hard time believing that there is nobody out there at the entire school who can execute on an extra point. I don't care who it is, male or female just make the 20 yarder. We can bring in Giannini to kick anything longer than that and on kickoffs (which I realize he does not do), but just have somebody that can make a simple extra point. It's not like this is the first time this has happened, we've missed nine extra points in a year and a half. I'm not lying, almost DOUBLE FREAKING DIGIT field goals in a year an a half. Why can’t we find somebody like this guy:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=262850103

Are you telling me there is nobody at the second largest school in the country that can do this? Time to hold another open tryout.

Quick Fun Fact: John Gutekunst would never go down as a great coach, nor even a good coach. I don't remember anybody looking back fondly on the Guty years, but keep this in mind. Guty went to one bowl, and if there were as many bowls when he coached, he would have gone to four. How many years did he coach? Six years. Four bowls in six years. 66% of the years he coached we would be in bowls.

A number of people think that Mason is great because he has lead us to six in nine years. If you count this year, his percent is 60.

Second quick fun fact. As of now, Gutekunst's winning percentage in the Big Ten was .391. As of today, Mason's is .387.

People can bring up that Guty got some of Holtz's players while Mason inherited Wacker's players, but it does not change the fact Guty was only given six years and has gone down as a bad coach while some people think that Mason is a genius. I'm not here to defend Gutekunst, but for the people out there that say that Mason is the best we'll get, they are wrong. We had somebody just as good two coaches ago, why don't we try to upgrade.