Middle Tennesee State Blue Raiders V North Texas Mean Green (Eagles)

Tony Franklin sure knows how to make a buck.

Learning his offense from Hal Mumme with Mike Leach at Kentucky (HM learned it from LaVell Edwards) in the late 90s, he has successfully sold its principles and practice methods and made some decent cashola off of it.

As far as I know, old Hal and Mike just make most of their money coaching the offense.

The thing is, the dude is good. Whatever criticisms people have about the spread- and especially passing spreads- they have to admit that it is pretty successful. Even though Hal Mumme has had losing records, it isn’t because his offense is impotent. Mike Leach’s teams pretty much reserve a spot at the top of the passing stats lists every year. And Tony Franklin’s teams put up yards and points.

Unfortunately I am not intimately familiar with it. I don’t know if it is similar to PapaDodge’s (supposed) balanced attack or like Air Raid Mike Leach.

*Looking at the stats, it seems like its a nice little balance historically. The MUTS are a little skewed towards passing yardage this year though.

He turned around Troy’s horrible offense in ’07 and now he has his new squad putting up some decent yardage. To me this is the real story. Our newly stout defense against The System.

If I were PapaDodge I would be kind of jealous of the success had by his rivals. I mean Tulsa came in here and dominated (Guz Malzahn OC). Troy has come in here with Mr. System and put up huge numbers with that squad against TD.

Although I am happy he came in here and turned a horrible offense to a semi-decent-at-times one, I am starting to think that maybe there were other spread coaches out there that could have done more with our less.

* Another thing I was thinking as I watched football this weekend was this: If I were an offensive minded head coach (or vice versa) I would find me a hell of a coach to head up the other side of the ball. I mean that is just common sense good business right? Why did Dodge-y wait a couple of years to do that?

Again, I am not hatin on our head guy here. I am just starting to wonder how much of Southlake Carroll’s success was the overall advantage of playing in a community that fully supports the team with first class facilities and lots of money for private coaching and not the just offense.

So, that is what I’ll be watching this weekend. Sure, Mid Tenn is pretty talented, and did beat up on a CUSA opponent and squeaked by an ACC one last week. UNT is home in good ol’ Denton with its lukewarm support (burn!) and getting its starting son–er–QB back. The two teams are not so far apart in talent that we get pushed around like we did v da’ Crimson Tide.

I really expect the offense to pull out all the stops. There really is no reason to hold anything back. They shouldn’t be trying to protect anyone’s shoulder ( cuz if it was vulnerable they should be on the sideline) and this is a conference game, ya’ll ergo it matters now.

Now that the defense has figure out the controllers (vg reference!) its time to see the offense put up 30 points per game. The solid run game makes up for the slight inexperience at wideout. The system quarterback makes up for the fact that KiDodge is a RS Frosh. Gimme 30.