Some old guy from Greece who liked to tell sanctimonious stories.

Wait, that didn't help.

Explosiveness metric designed by Bill Connelly. I can't define it. Google it and you'll find it.

There's a fairly thorough breakdown from Football Study Hall here.

Can I hear the debate in favor of "running into a basically stacked box" while having a major talent advantage all over the field?

play ball control when you're down and struggling to even run the ball.  Seems like a solid plan to me!

Agree they need to come out less sloppy.  I respectfully disagree about the injury assertion.  I  *hope* we are substantially healthier & that excuse will be off the table, but that assumes the 2 weeks will be enough time to get the key injured players significantly more healthy & that no key player gets injured or aggravates an existing injury between now & the Wisconsin game.

I don't think we know enough about the nature of the injuries to Shea, Dwumfor, Runyan, and DPJ to know that for sure.

They don't actually run an option play very often. That's where (and a coach could put it better) you read the interior, if its open you give to the fullback. If it's not, you pull it and run to the perimeter, and if they're taking you, you pitch to the back. Three options, dive, QB, or pitch man. Triple option. It's a play. Army doesn't actually run that play much. They mostly decide pre-snap who's getting the ball and then run dive or outside depending.

Something like that. It has the same flexbone look. It's the "triple option" offense, but they don't run the option play much.

Maybe Shea refuses to pull out? We'll have to ask his old lady.

Al Borges put Denard under center.  Does anyone honestly think Al Borges has a fucking clue when a QB should pull on a read option?

That would have been the most NCAA way to win a thing about winning the most NCAA. 

I mostly agree, though I'd like to point out that amateurism died around the time Tostitos and soda companies started sponsoring various parts of college athletics while networks paid billions of dollars to show these games coached by millionaire state employees.  

B1G reaches out to Pac12 and creates a new league. Leaders and best? Let’s do this then and say buhbye to NCAA. Good way for NCAA to go the way of Polaroid

1. I can't see the NCAA granting exceptions to schools wholesale, but I could see them *maybe* allowing a bizarre hybrid system where possibly entire schools or (more likely) certain TEAMS can stay in the NCAA, so long as no player on a current roster is getting compensated for NIL.  
   
   To illustrate, it's possible that in many of the DIII or DII schools--or in non-revenue sports in the DI schools--an entire team might not have any player with a NIL contract.  Not because the schools prohibit it (so they're still complying with the new CA law), but rather, there just isn't any interest from would-be NIL sponsors in sponsoring certain athletes such that an entire roster could be "clean" for that entire season. E.G., no athletes on the Stanford women's soccer team has a NIL deal, so--for that season--they are compliant with NCAA rules.
   
   Of course, what complicates things is what happens if a new NIL deal crops mid-season or during the off-season, or secretly a contract is made when the athlete is on the team, but the payouts don't happen until after they leave the squad.  Plus, the NCAA could argue that even having the ability to dangle *possible* NIL deals is an unfair advantage in recruiting, even if such NIL deals never come to fruition.
    
2. Interestingly, the NCAA does not own or directly control the College Football Playoffs (unlike the playoff/championship systems for all the other football divisions FCS & lower).  All the NCAA does is recognize the champion that is crowed by the CFP as the de facto champion of the NCAA FBS Division.  In reality, the CFP is owned & directly controlled by "BCS Properties, LLC" & the member owners are the 10 FBS conferences and the University of Notre Dame.  If push ever came to shove, I'm sure the NCAA could split with various FBS schools or entire FBS conferences, and the NCAA would refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of any champion crowned by the CFP and set up a competing system. 
   
   However, if enough of the member owners of BCS Properties, LLC (Notre Dame & the 10 BCS conferences) voted to side with the CFP rather than the NCAA, they'd already have an existing turn-key playoff infrastructure in place ready to go.  Yes, they may have to set up a new governing body for the schools/football teams for the regular season.  They could also join some currently existing small-fry competitor to the NCAA who might be thrilled at the windfall of money/attenton & allow BCS Properties, LLC to dictate major amendments to their bylaws and rules.  Either way, if the major football powers ever decided to split from the NCAA, they wouldn't have to start from scratch. 
    
3. Of course, if/when/how the NCAA ever splits up & who the primary movers are largely depends on whether there is a critical mass of schools that are convinced that their relative strength/power will be materially enhanced by making a bold break away from the NCAA.  We all know that the major football powers likely would NEVER leave the NCAA in it's current form, as by definition, they are benefiting from the status quo.  Namely, NCAA rules prohibiting payment of athletes (thus artificially depressing the overhead labor costs of the schools/Athletic Departments), but at the same time adopting a policy of willfull blindness & towards flagarant violations of certain rules & inconsistent enforcement across the NCAA that allows the elite schools who have become masters of that enviornment (off book bagman networks, institutional steroid use, institutional violation of the 20 hour per week limit on required activities in-season, etc) to continue to flourish. 
   
   A more likely scenario would be either the federal government/SCOTUS forcing the NCAA & any other student athlete organization to allow players to enter NIL deals, or if the status quo continues, some critical mass of current NCAA schools NOT in the elite strata breaking off to form/join a new athletic association.  That associaton would either:

• Have a substantially different set of rules (i.e. clearly sanctioning payment of athletes--schools obligated to allow NIL like those in California may join, along with schools with "big money" donor networks who are ABLE to pay players, but who are unwilling to do it if not officialy sanctioned by the governing body--Michigan, Notre Dame, etc.), or
   
• Largely having similar rules to the NCAA, but just with a culture of genuine, uniform, and rigorous rule enforcement against bagmen, steroids, etc. (i.e., if SCOTUS doesn't require the allowance of NIL deals, the smaller/high academic schools in the current BCS breaking off becasue they are sick of being the sparring dummies for the chronic cheaters at the top of the NCAA heap).

I'm gonna say 0% chance the NCAA moves to kick out the CA schools. I don't think the rest of the P5 wants to pay athletes either because it's complex and messes with the cash flow, but I also don't think the P5 is going to support the NCAA banning a single state just because I don't think they'll be ok with the NCAA wielding that type of power.

What I do think will happen is multiple states will pass similar laws, and then the NCAA will fight it all in court for a few years before caving and trying to come up with some type of compensation model or at least a model that allows athletes to benefit from their likeness. I can't imagine this current system will hold up in court

'Analytics' probably supported going for it all 3 times in a vacuum - basically anything 4th & 2 or less near midfield or better (into the opponent's territory) is 'go for it' material, but as you said, other situational factors are there.

You have to realize Army takes 35+ seconds to run each play - they have no up tempo.  Change of possession plus gaining the 7 yard differential is like 140 seconds ... that is 2.20 off the game clock.  I thought the risk / reward trade-off made it a brilliant call given the opponent.  Reward if you pick it up = end the game on your terms.  Risk if you don't = not much as burning that 2.20 in "Army time" means they can't run their base offense to beat you.  They would need to throw the ball which we were confident in defending. 

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but when the staff used the word "analytics" in answering the questions about the 4th down decisions, I interpreted it as either snark or a subtle dig on all the media's dicussion before & during the game of how Army always relies on "analytics" to make in-game decisions while gushing about the Army coaching staff. 

Although contradictory, I read it as our staff either saying, "In the end, "analytics" didn't get Army the damned win...NERDS!" or alternatively, "Stop gushing about "analytics" as if it's something unique to Army.  We do it too."

I had a multi-paragraph reply typed up in which I argued that this could be the death of college football as we know it, since it would essentially create a two-tiered system similar to the one that existed before scholarship limits, where no top player would consider anything but the very top schools that could guarantee paychecks.

Then, in support of that argument, I went through the 247sports Top 100 players for 2018, to find the ones that went to teams that weren't perenially in the top 10, to use in support of my point.

However, the data actually shows that I'm full of crap, and the two-tiered system already exists.  It's unreal how few top players sign with anyone other than the very top schools.  

You need to go down to #36 to find a player that went to a school that is not universally acknowedged as being a football factory-- he signed with UCLA.  (Yes, I know USC isn't great right now, and Miami hasn't been great in a while, but they're still schools that emphasize football and have a history that includes championships and dominant runs, and that most fans would put in the top 10 of all time and all fans would put in the top 20.)  

Out of the top 100 players, 85 of them signed with undisputed football royalty.  If you count the University of Washington, who I don't think quite reach that level but are at least close, that number goes up to 88.

TL;DR The top programs are already getting all the top players, and with limits on team size, and great players not wanting to sit on the bench their entire career, I don't think paying players would actually make much of an impact on the distribution of talent.