In a day with a lot of mixed football news, stuff like this is what it’s all about. Some great blocks, too.

This article is by Patrick McCarthy. You can follow him on twitter at @patdmccarthy. Any and all questions are encouraged. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, he played and coached in France and Sweden while also coaching at St. Thomas Aquinas HS (KS) and Neenah HS (WI). Since then he has coached at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Southwest Minnesota State University, Culver-Stockton College and most recently as the Head Coach of the Kuwait Gridiron Football National Team.

In the elaborate math problem that is a football game, each side continually seeks to create a two on one or other favorable numerical matchup; one on ones are not enough. A major reason for this is that, given disparities in size and speed, all “ones” are not necessarily made of the same stuff. And nowhere is this more evident than with special teams, and nowhere on special teams is this more important than punt protection. Frank Beamer calls his punt team “Pride”. The worst punt team in the nation averaged net punting 26.3 yards (Alabama, actually, which is a different discussion for a different time – I’d assume their opponent average starting field position was impressive). There aren’t a whole lot of offenses that can average over 25 yards a play with a certain call, nor will teams gladly cede more than a quarter of the field during a snap on defense – and that is the very worst end of the punt spectrum.

Goal is to avoid this

The protection aspect is closely tied into the coverage responsibility of the punt team; if there is no opponent to protect against, then every effort is given to get that member of the punt team into coverage. While watching on TV it is difficult to get an understanding of punt protection schemes that teams are employing. The only time a reply is shown is if there is a block or botched snap, and often times the camera cuts from an offensive or defensive player on the sideline to the ball in mid-air which does not lend itself to appreciating the nuance of the punt game.

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“The talent’s fine,” Holgorsen said. “The biggest thing was the culture shock, trying to train these guys how to practice, from a throwing-the-ball standpoint.” Holgorsen said East Coast-bred players don’t grow up with 7-on-7 summer leagues and passing drills. Many don’t get an extra hour of athletics in school. “The skills were underdeveloped. They didn’t understand how to practice what I was I talking about.”

Holgorsen and Leach faced the same kind of transition 12 years ago when they went to Tech and installed a new-age offense. Holgorsen didn’t face that at Houston (Art Briles, a Leach disciple, had just left UH) or OSU (Gundy and offensive coordinator Larry Fedora at least were running no-huddle, fast-paced).

“But when we went to Texas Tech, it was about like going into this situation,” Holgorsen said. “Very slow. Huddle. Try to call plays and try to do things to make the defense good. We just had to teach ’em. We weren’t going to stray from our philosophy.

“We just had to coach it. We kept pressing forward, we kept improving, finally the light came on in the last game.”

Read the whole article here.

Per various developments in bountygate, I enjoyed this excerpt from an article by law professor Gary Lawson, describing the FTC.

The Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct. The Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission’s rules have been violated. If the Commission authorizes an investigation, the investigation is conducted by the Commission, which reports its findings to the Commission. If the Commission thinks that the Commission’s findings warrant an enforcement action, the Commission issues a complaint. The Commission’s complaint that a Commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission. This Commission adjudication can either take place before the full Commission or before a semi-autonomous Commission administrative law judge. If the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than before the Commission and the decision is adverse to the Commission, the Commission can appeal to the Commission. If the Commission ultimately finds a violation, then, and only then, the affected private party can appeal to a [federal] Article III court. But the agency decision, even before the bona fide Article III tribunal, possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on matters both of fact and of law.

Of course, if that is what was actually negotiated for and agreed upon in the CBA, that’s a rather important detail. But it’s of interest, nonetheless.

– “It’s just all made up and flagellant.” – Fred Davis, Redskins tight-end, attorney. (Transcripts here.)

- Gene Stallings, Alabama Football, and passing/rushing efficiency.

- Blutarsky on the four-team playoff.

- Mike Leach’s celebrity status.

- Lauren Hill’s (potential) novel federal sentencing arguments.

- Louis Menand on James Joyce.

- Poetry and the Olympics.

- Behold: The McKinley Mac.

- Like Smart Football on Facebook.

It looks like Amazon is running a deal on The Essential Smart Football for Kindle, as it is available for less than $5. The paperback is also available for under $10.

After the jump is a further update on the book (thanks to all!):

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Peter King of Sports Illustrated and Greg Bedard of the Boston Globe on The Essential Smart Football.

- Go vote for your Verbies.

- Bruce Feldman on West Virginia: “The biggest change is that everyone’s getting along with each other.”

- Is Buffett Right About Newspapers?

- Matt Bowen on fire zones from a Cover 2 look.

- Quickish and Dan Shanoff are now a part of Gannett. Congrats to Dan.

- The culture that is Reddit.

- Simon Schama on Shakespeare’s histories.

- The most important thing you’ll see today.

- Finance bloggers on what has changed or shaped how they think.

- Like Smart Football on Facebook.

This list, from Dan Shanoff’s inimitable and essential Quickish (other than my little bits of course) is full of awesome stuff. All of them are great pieces, but I particularly recommend all the ones on here from Brian Phillips and Tom Bissell. I’m just honored to be a small piece of such a great group:

Grantland 1-Year Anniversary Greatest Hits Top 25

Today is the one-year anniversary of Grantland’s launch. After looking through the handy Quickish archive of Grantland tips, here is an assuredly incomplete list of the 25 best sports things the site has published, with designations appropriate for the occasion:

“Rushmore” — Four Things People Think About When They Think of Grantland:

“Growing Up Penn State” (Michael Weinreb)
“B.S. Report: Barack Obama” (Bill Simmons)
“The Importance of Ichiro” (Jay Caspian Kang)
“The Malice at the Palace: An Oral History” (Jonathan Abrams)

“Pantheon” — 10 More Things People SHOULD Think About When They Think of Grantland:

“The Garden of Good and Evil” (Katie Baker)
“The Future is Now” (Chris Brown)
“The Fiberglass Backboard” (Bryan Curtis)
“The Greatest Paper That Ever Died” (Alex French And Howie Kahn)
“Wilt vs. Elgin” (Dave McKenna)
“The Rise of the NBA Nerd” (Wesley Morris)
“The Long Autumn of Roger Federer” (Brian Phillips)
“Tim Tebow: Converter of the Passes” (Brian Phillips)
“James Brown’s Augusta” (Wright Thompson)
“Occasional Dispatches From the Republic of Anhedonia” (Colson Whitehead)

“Also Receiving Votes” — 11 Other Things That Represented the Grantland Ideal:

“The Murder of Tayshana Murphy” (Jonathan Abrams)
“A Requiem for the Dream Team in Philly” (Bill Barnwell)
“Madden and the Future of Video Game Sports” (Tom Bissell)
“Ode to the War Daddies” (Chris Brown)
“What Would the End of Football Look Like?” (Tyler Cowen)
“An Evening With Jose Canseco” (Bryan Curtis)
“Three Man Weave” (Chuck Klosterman)
“A Fighter Abroad” (Brian Phillips)
“Soccer’s Heavy Boredom” (Brian Phillips)
“Novak Djokovic: The Shot and the Confrontation” (Brian Phillips)
“Oden on Oden” (Mark Titus)

Sad news. I was never a big science fiction fan but I always loved Bradbury’s work, and even more than that I love his raw gusto for the act of writing. He described this in his short book, Zen in the Art of Writing, which is a must read for any person who has ever tried to put words on a page, and has both struggled with it and loved it at the same time. Bradbury was a firm believer in just a few things, but among them were doing what you loved and writing every single day. He wrote Fahrenheit 451 at the UCLA library on typewriters he rented for ten cents every half hour.

My favorite Bradbury story involved his writing of the screenplay for a film adaptation of Moby Dick, to be directed by John Huston and star Gregory Peck. Bradbury struggled with the writing; indeed, he struggled with just getting through Moby Dick. Until finally the dam broke:

It was seven o’clock in the morning.’

“I awoke and stared at the ceiling as if it were about to plunge down on me, an immense whiteness of flesh, a madness of unblinking eye, a flounder of tail. I was in a terrible state of excitement. I imagine it was like those moments we hear about before an earthquake, when the dogs and cats fight to leave the house, or the unseen and unheard tremors shake the floor and beams, and you find yourself held ready for something to arrive but you’re damned if you know what.’

“I am Herman Melville.”

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My radio hit with Doug Farrar and Rob Rang.

- Iceberg lettuce remains in its rightful place while something else is surely mislabeled.

- The greatest 7-on-7 team ever.

- A great — and depressing — article.

- Phil Steele ranks the SEC’s coaches.

- What an article on bankruptcy looks like when the author has clearly never read through an actual bankruptcy docket.

- The globalization of food trucks. A good thing, in my view.

- George Soros’s buzzworthy speech on the euro and the Cliff’s Notes version.

- MLB and boy shorts.