Just goes to show that it makes a difference if the Governor feels he needs to make an appearance at your games. Cal Poly has a lot going for it as far as location goes, but its only has a very small regional draw, like Davis. At least their local paper is not behind a pay-wall. I'm sure they have to explain to a lot of recruits, particularly out of state recruits, what and where Cal Poly is.
On the issue of triple option, I think the criticism is correct. It's not going to carry you to a national championship; its main advantage at this point is that its not what everyone else runs. I'm not sure it's for teams that can't recruit athletes though. You can recruit run focused offensive linemen who can be smaller. The big slow guys are more for pass blocking. I think athletes are just as essential to option teams as to any other teams, maybe more so.

Shippy has a good combination of size and speed, if his size is listed correctly. While 40 times may be more relevant, I think there is a strong correlation between being fast for 100 and fast for 40, maybe the exception being guys who can’t sprint for 100, due to size, like linemen or little guys who can accelerate quickly but lack commensurate speed. I’m a fan of 100 times because they are more reliably measured. We should be happy any time we can recruit a player who is 6ft tall and runs a sub 11 100.

Stanford excepted what game would we be a prohibitive underdog in? San Jose we should be favored. One of these days we’ll beat Montana E. Washington, but these are winnable games. Idaho is dropping down to the level they should be playing at and shedding scholarships. I wish we weren’t playing Stanford but that’s it.

it's a relative thing. Like stated in the article you have to compromise something because you can't always recruit big and fast. They don't compromise athleticism for size. We can make that choice at our level as well. But when you choose to be small and faster you have to play a style that maximizes the effect of being quicker and masks the cost of being small; hence movement and deception.
It will be interesting to see if we can improve defensively next year as much as we improved offensively this year. Our defensive coordinator has an impressive resume, but improvement is obviously required.

I don’t think Idaho is much different than a middle of the pack BigSky team.

we can beat San Jose State, and probably would have this year. I’d like to see us play them every year. Natural rivalry against a team which is sometimes no better than us.

Looking at computer rankings is a way to quantify objectively whether we’ve improved.
In Sagarin’s rankings we went from ranked 197 to 152. There is a numerical rating number that can be used to predict games. Probably not intended to project between years, but it would indicate if this years team played last years team, this years team would be a 10 point favorite.

Fly offense guru bites dust.

it’s better than regression to the mean. We have a good QB for a couple of years, a promising freshman runnin back, depth at wide receiver, good TE. I think we’ve reestablished our rep as a good place for QBs and receivers to spend college career. Now we need to shore up the defense and offensive line. Rome was not built in a day.
Some people thought the previous coaching staff has been unfairly maligned, and there is some truth to that. The new staff has got a lot of credit, maybe too much. But the new staff definitely restored our passing game, and I think that is the only way we can have success at this time.

Embrace the healing power of AND.
We had a reasonably rough schedule AND we lost to all the good team and only beat the bottom teams. You are both right.
In my opinion we are in the middle of the conference instead of near the bottom so that’s improvement.

speechless... What an embarrassing deduction to have in the tax code.

The Aggies this year were a superior offensive team but on some occasions a little slow to get started. Sac SSU NA Are examples.
Defense was very weak. It seemed like an anomaly when they forced a punt.
I’m not sure the stats where we won the second half are very meaningful. When you are down multiple touchdowns the other teams defense isn’t focused on run defense. Could we rush for 300 yards that if the score was even? I have doubts.

notice that everyone had a good game rushing. I think it’s like scoring a lot during basketball garbage time.
But in any case Tehran is our most dangerous runner. He will likely get more carries than anyone next year. I don’t know why he was so turned around and falling sideways on his last carry that came up short (or had a bad spot).

I think any explanation for our loss other than our defense in the first half is missing the forest for the trees. Offense can’t be perfect.
I wonder how much of our unprecedented success running the ball in this game was due to their huge lead.

movie lover, the problem in the first half is every one of their drives ended with a score. Our first possession had a pass to Doss and a pass to Preece both incomplete.Around that sac scored two touchdowns.

I don’t know movie, perhaps it was a draw play, Didn’t work, but we don’t have the level of pass protection that allows downfield passing in obvious passing situations like 2nd and 26, against a team with a pass rush.
When we don’t block well for either running plays or passing plays we end up throwing the ball, but are very limited because we don’t have time for some routes. Then we find ourself getting pressure on every play so we end up running a bunch of draws and throwing screens. Very hard to try to fool the defense every play. You have to have some base plays that work, like downfield passing or simple run plays, preferably both. If you don’t have your base plays working you can’t rely on the deceptive plays either because those work because they look like the base plays which have got the defenses attention.

The first quarters of Cal Poly, ISU and some other games were beautiful to watch. Unfortunately when we went up against better defensive teams we couldn’t seem to get things done.
Our offense had a lot more success when we could run the ball some. If you abandon the run entirely things gum up. We didn’t run enough against SU. We had a 3rd and a yard at our 21 and threw an uncatchable floater to Doss on the sideline instead of gettin a first down by running. Then we punt and they get the ball at midfield and when it’s third and long for them they throw what effectively was a punt that stuck us inside the five. Third and a yard get the first down.

Close only counts in horseshoes. We had some close wins as well.

We beat all the teams at the bottom of the conference. And lost to the better teams. Against the weaker defenses our offense looked like a well oiled machine. But against the better defenses that wasn't the case and we became one dimensional and hence predictable; e.g. end zone interception against SU.. And defensively the last quarter of the EWU team showed they could score at will. Makes it hard to pull of an upset when you can't hold a lead.

no insight on injuries or redshirts. My impression is that we haven’t been unusually injured. We lost a starting safety for a good stretch and lost a running back from the rotation and I’m sure there are a others. But pretty lucky overall. With all the freshmen brought in this year I hope we redshirted most of them.

Here we are five point underdogs versus Sac. Not following Sac much I find that surprising, I expected us to show more improvement as the season progressed as the team and coaches got the new system in place. Sac seemed to be stuck in the mud until this year. Most of the disadvantages we face they also face, like lack if facilities publicity etc. Yet there they are, competing better than us at the end of the season. I sure hope we win this week.