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By Dale Anderson
Sports Columnist 

Worst Seat In The House: That time of year

 

Last updated 1/2/2020 at 9:36am



I’ve noticed that the news media is doing its best to remind us what happened in the last decade, as in 2010-2019. We are reminded of all the good and bad things that took place in the last ten years. There will be special issues of magazines with photos and stories that will make you reminisce or cringe or cry or laugh. There is a lot of crying and laughing in every reminder of a decade.

There are people that get hired to research this information because we forget about so much of what happened. Then when we see it again we say, “Yeah, I remember that now.” If it wasn’t real earth shattering or historical we do seem to blot it out our memory bank, or maybe we don’t want to remember.

When you get older it seems that what we think is relevant information changes. I must have a file cabinet stashed away in the back of my brain that I will rummage through and come up with an obscure name that someone needs to know and maybe even a weird stat that will impress those nearby (or not). And then I will try to figure out the name of the person that I met 30 seconds ago and having a conversation with at that moment. Do I have an excuse or did I not pay very close attention in the first place?

Now that I have completely befuddled you or maybe made you think, let me just say Happy New Year! I’m not going to waste your time doing a decade in review or even a year in review but maybe just a few things I thought about from the past few days.

Did you watch the Cheez-it Bowl Friday night? All I can say is that I saw too much Air Force offense and too many Cheez(y)-it commercials. I have a box of Cheez-it snacks in the cupboard but I refused to eat any that night. I’m not sure why not.

Anyway, I’m not as big of a Coug fan as some of you are but it seems to me that WSU has the ability to get the ball inside the 10 yard line on a regular basis but in the last several years they have had trouble punching it in for a TD. That happened twice on Friday night. Air Force was smart enough to figure out that there was only one runner, Max Borghi in the backfield on 4th and two and on both occasions the Falcons stopped the Coug running back short of a touchdown.

This is a serious problem that needs to be resolved and the Cougars had a great opportunity to do that this season. Many college football programs have gone to a Wildcat formation in short yardage situations by using either a big QB or running back getting the direct snap and reading the blocks and usually scoring inside the 10 yard line.

With Anthony Gordon at QB there are two options, either handing the ball off to Borghi or pass. WSU needs another option in the backfield as in a running QB and maybe a tight end which they don’t have. But the Cougs did have former EWU QB Gage Gubrud, who was a running threat in Cheney that they could have utilized in situations like Friday night. Now instead of one running threat there are two and still the possibility of tossing a pass similar to what Tim Tebow did at Florida. It’s just a thought, and a good one if I do say so myself.

Former interim head coach at USC and LSU, Head Coach Ed Orgeron has his LSU Tigers in the NCAA football championship game. Orgeron fits LSU very well since he is a native of Louisiana. Going back a few years Orgeron replaced Lane Kiffin midseason at USC and led the Trojans to 6 wins in their last 8 games that year. The Trojan football players loved playing for Coach O but he wasn’t what USC was looking for. After a Holiday Bowl loss to Iowa the Trojans fired a defensive coordinator and a special teams coach. I wonder how Coach O would have done.

I know some of you are bummed that the Seahawks lost on Sunday and will be traveling to Philadelphia to play the Eagles. But remember the Hawks had a better record on the road this season. It’s the time of year that anything can happen.

 

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