The Futon Report

The good news is I don’t have to stop worrying about what obscure offensive/defensive coordinator will coach Bowling Green anymore. The bad news is they’re hiring a guy whose last OC gig resulted in the 9th worst scoring offense in the FBS. Hi, Dave Clawson. Welcome to the area. Literally.

[BG athletic director Greg] Christopher said on the day Brandon was fired that he would seek candidates with ties to Ohio or the Midwest. Clawson does not appear to have either.

That’s what went off in my head as I was reading through his previous destinations. Before Tennessee, he was at: Albany, Buffalo, Lehigh, Villanova, Fordham, and Richmond.

When the guy was hired last year down in Knoxville, his offensive scheme was deemed sort of complicated, as illustrated by this picture Rocky Top Talk found:

So that’ll be fun.

My offering to the Toledo Free Press last weekend:

Two years ago, Northwest Ohio had college coaches named Tom Amstutz, Stan Joplin, Dan Dakich and Gregg Brandon. Also, Miley Cyrus was not a teen sensation and a gallon of gas cost … well, about the same as today. Ah, those were simpler times. Since then, Dakich, Joplin and Amstutz were kicked out of their respective offices, and with each dismissal, I was skeptical of the need to fire them.

…

It was unfair that he lost his job like this. Having said that, it’s time to argue something it looks like I should have argued long ago: Brandon deserved to be fired.

Other nuggets between the cushions:

• With a lack of teams with 6-6 records, Northern Illinois was the “last team in” a bowl game, going to the Independence Bowl and facing Louisiana Tech in Shreveport. I’m sure the crowd will be 50-50, don’t you?

It was probably the right 6-6 team to take, since four of the Huskies losses were by four points or less, three of them to bowl teams and the other to Tennessee.

• This just confirms that, yes, Bowling Green’s season is mercifully over. Considering NIU took down BG earlier this year — and that, oh yeah, there’s no coach — it’s probably for the best. BG will join Louisiana-Lafayette, Arkansas State, and San Jose State as teams with 6-6 records that didn’t get to play a 13th meaningless game. Four-team arbitrary playoff, anyone?

• The head coach opening is supplanted by openings at both coordinator positions too. They were hired away by — ready for this? — Toledo’s new coach Tim Beckman. M’kay, then. It’s a war, officially.

• But don’t worry. Bowling Green will be mentioned quite often this bowl season. Because, see, Urban Meyer. And stuff.

The essence of comedy is … … … [waits 5 minutes] … … timing. So it’s quite hilarious that after the Tom Amstutz Farewell Tour ended with a local holiday in the Glass City and a 38-10 loss, Mayor John Quinn didn’t get a chance to declare Gregg Brandonukkah on the narrow streets of Bowling Green, Ohio, USA, Earth, and the BGSU coach will no longer be the coach after a really hurty 6-6 season.

If you thought the Amstutz stepping-down was weird timing, this one takes the cake. What also obtains some kind of caloric dessert is the fact that it’s not a firing, and it’s not a resignation. I really hate it when coaching changes aren’t cut and dry. Nobody decides mutually on these things, which you’d know if you talked to any of my ex-girlfriends. So it may be difficult to pin a one-word description on the situation — and you HAVE to believe a column will be forthcoming on this — but for now let’s just return to what works when Bowling Green coaches are relieved of their duties:

Postmortem: It just dawned on me, after re-opening that Photoshop, that yesterday was Corey Partridge’s final game. It seems like he’s been there forever, but you’ll have that when you’re a four-year starter at wide receiver. We’ll miss you, Mr. Partridge, as you’ll always have a special place in my heart as the first Facebook blog stalking I ever undertook. Keep reaching for those dead raccoons in the real world, blessed Sir.

As Coach Brandon has noted, I’m not a true BGSU football fan due to the lack of MACSploitation updates this fall. Also I didn’t attend a 6 p.m. Friday football game, which actually makes me a secret Muslim and probably gay detriment to society. Nevertheless, I’m asking for some redemption from the True Falcons by dragging my climate controlled ass into the Glass Bowl and watching the UT-BG game, an event I haven’t attended in, I think, four years.

(Christ, four years? I really am a fraud.)

The game will be at 3:30 on ESPN Classic, the channel who proclaimed Mickey Mantle was a shittier athlete than Secretariat. Although the Rockets are 3-8 and have a tendency to elicit crying from baby Moses, one has to believe they have a better shot at winning the game, since it’s Tom Amstutz Day and all. Plus BGSU hasn’t won in the Glass Bowl since 1994, and the 5-6 Falcons’ only metaphysical reason for winning is so they don’t have a losing record. And also, y’know, rivalry game and everything.

And like every year, I’m just hoping for either a good game or a BGSU blowout. Prediction: it’ll be butt-to-bench-stickingly cold.

Maybe here’s how I’ll run my blog from now on:

• 10 I write a post about something
• 20 You write a comment leading me somewhere awesome
• 30 I write another post about that comment
• 40 GOTO 20

This iteration of the post takes us to fan response of Gregg Brandon’s comments. Click through to also see Coach Brandon’s startling comments in return. Read more

As discovered by commenter Ben in the last post, Gregg Brandon put the BG-Buffalo game in perspective by noting how “pitiful” the crowd was.

Well, I’ll just say this. Our kids played heir guts out. And I don’t want to take anything away from the game but that crowd was pitiful. And I’m so disappointed in, you know the fans that showed up, that’s awesome. ‘Cause they’re the true fans. But our kids deserved so much better than that. To be in a championship with so much on the line, and that kind of crowd, disgusts me.

Now, I wasn’t at the game — hell, I wasn’t even aware it was being played Friday night — but then again you guys played a game at 6 o’clock on a Friday night. Of course 13,000 people are going to show up and not be entirely loud when it’s 26 degrees out. The fans may not have been in it. In fact maybe they were deathly silent in double overtime for all I know. On that same note, I don’t remember a time in college football history in which a crowd led a team to victory. The fans spirit soars with the success of its team, and this team is 5-6 and lost to Eastern Michigan at home, and is now the reason Buffalo will probably be playing in their first bowl game.

But I really, truly, am sorry for my part in this 40-34 double-overtime loss.

As has been said before, the false sense of hope is worst in mid-November, when the Falcons have a very reasonable hope of making a championship or bowl game. The easiest way to avoid it is to forget the game was Friday night and not Saturday night. That way all the angst can be doled out in one run-on sentence once one sees the 40-34 loss box score:

HOW ON EARTH DOES A TEAM BLOW A 20 POINT FOURTH QUARTER LEAD AT HOME AND A 14 POINT LEAD WITH THREE MINUTES TO PLAY AND THEN LOSE THE GAME IN DOUBLE OVERTIME AND I HATE LIFE?

Phew. Now we can just worry about Friday’s UT-BG game and be done with it, then move onto basketball season like honorable little soldiers.

(Photo credit: Jetta Fraser/Toledo Blade)

Why, hi, everyone. The live blogginess and speed readability, coupled with a couple of hours of actual, honest, Real Job endeavors, it’s finally time to check back in with this here site. What’s in the news? Well, it’s … other sites.

If’n you didn’t notice, the Toledo Free Press up and chucked their old site and overhauled it. A couple thoughts:

• Wordpress? Ha. You can tell it’s a new-age newspaper when they use the same software that powers my blog.
• Look at what you can do on the front page! You can, like, scroll over “sports,” and there’s my name. Pow. Right there with the other experts. I have to say, I’ve never been a rollover item before.
• So, on my new author index, I, um, didn’t write most of that.
• God, I need a new headshot.

Most delightfully, though, is the addition of comments to articles, as evidenced by this weekend’s apology to Eastern Michigan and Ypsilanti, which sure enough irritated some EMU fans. (Ever see EMU smack talk before? It’s FREAKY.) This probes what I’ve thought all along about my TFP columns: there have been countless spiteful and vindictive thoughts from dissatisfied readers that went completely unheard, and I for one now feel deprived of them. Fortunately the right has been wronged, somewhat, and we can all move on in our lives having been enriched with nuggets such as:

I heard that EMU may have burned a jersey in the locker room after the game and at first I thought that was insulting to Bowling Green but after hearing about how negative and unprofessional the press has been towards Eastern Michigan University I wish they had burned the jersey right on the 50 yard line.

Also, look! Stock quotes!

Eastern Michigan 24
Bowling Green 21

The worst part? I can’t make any goddamn EMU jokes for at least, like, a year.

After that oh-so-sweet win over the Pittsburgh Wannstedts on Saturday, I figured a couple of Associated Press voters to throw a couple of farthings the Falcons’ way. And sure, ’nuff, it happened. They have 17 votes, putting them 33rd, ahead of Virginia Tech. The people who voted for ‘em?

Bret Bloomquist, El Paso Times: 25th
Mike DeArmond, Kansas City Star: 25th
Joe Rexrode, Lansing State Journal: 25th

Michigan. Texas. And Missouri. (And Kansas, kind of!) Anyone else?

Scott Wolf, LA Daily News: 21st

Awright, 21st! That’s five whole poll points! And from a man in California no less! Surely nobody would go above th…

Adam Van Brimmer, Savannah Morning News: 17th

Um. Really? Seventeenth? I mean, hey, big Falcon support here, but 17th? Higher than when they were 8-0 in 2002, when they were 20th? Was Pittsburgh Van Brimmer’s sleeper pick to make a BCS game?

It should also be noted that he put BG ahead of West Virginia (actually 8th), Wisconsin (11th), Arizona State and BYU (15th). I guess the old Daytonian proverb is true. Nothing is more refreshing than to have a team from Ohio do something in Pittsburgh and have it felt in Georgia, and nowhere else.

Breakdown of AP voters ◼ Associated Press