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I got into it with a couple of my OU fan friends today ... there's been some calls amongst the fan base here in Sooner Nation that Kevin Wilson (the Sooner offensive coordinator, or OC) is doing a poor job of offensive play-calling and, as a result, our beloved Sooners are losing important games and failing to win the close games.

 Let me say at the outset that I'm not saying that this is a patently false assessment.  Kevin Wilson might be at fault for recent Sooner losses.  My concern, however, is about the basis for such an assessment.  Who among the fans knows everything about what went into the play-calling?  There are many factors that an OC must take into account when deciding on a play call.  What seems obvious to fans might not be so obvious if they were engaged in the discussion along the sidelines (and/or the booth above the field) where decisions were made. Without being involved, we simply don't know the reasons for any play-calling choices.  If we don't know the reasons, how can we decide we know better than the coaches?

Moreover, the outcome of any given play depends on another host of factors:  weather and playing conditions, injuries, officiating, individual decisions of players all over the field, etc.  It's not only a matter of the right or the wrong call.  One misstep or slip, and a player can be out of position to make the play work.  A penalty can nullify what happens on the field.  The validity of the play-calling is easy to see once the play is over ... if the runner is stuffed for a loss or the pass is completed for a touchdown, pretty much anyone with the benefit of hindsight can assess how good or bad the play call was.  But the OC has to anticipate all those things correctly if the play is going to go well for the offense.

 There are so many factors that determine the outcome of games (I've mentioned them in other blogs here), that the game can be thought of in terms of chaos theory, associated with the field of nonlinear dynamics.  In nonlinear systems, a seemingly tiny change can have a dramatic impact on the outcome.  College football looks very much like an example of nonlinear dynamics to me.  A momentary loss of footing can affect a game-changing play such that it succeeds (or fails).  Does it make sense that we should hang all the blame on coaching when things don't go the way we want?  It seems to me that too many of these debates are driven by losses that make us unhappy and we want to establish blame.  But without all the information we might need to do so.

 Many coaches have had careers that include losing a lot of big games in a stretch ... Paul (Bear) Bryant,  Bobby Bowden, Joe Paterno, Mack Brown, Tom Osborne, Bob Stoops, etc.  Is it possible that a combination of factors caused that negative string, not simply incompetent coaching?  When you consider that list of names, is incompetence a word that springs to mind? 

 What about strings of big game success?  Consider Urban Meyer and Pete Carroll ... they're both considered to be geniuses because their teams have been so successful in recent years.  The same complexities that make college football games so hard to predict can result in positive strings, as well as negative.  I think unless a coach gets a swelled head because of a string of successes, he'd have to admit that he probably deserves less credit than what's given to him as a result of that success.  And it seems reasonable to suggest that coaches deserve less blame than what's given to them when things go badly.  In fact, this is exactly what coaches (and QBs) say about their successes and failures - it's a cliche in sports because it contains a healthy dose of reality.  

Most fans, like me, have never played a down of college football.  Most of us have never coached a college football team, either.  On what basis do we think we know more than someone who has played the game and gone into coaching?  Yes, there are good coaches and bad coaches.  Some coaches seem to inspire their players to succeed, whereas others seem unable to come up with a winning formula. 

I happen to think that the current OU coaching staff is under the microscope because OU fans are spoiled by our long tradition of success.  This coaching staff (which has included a number of OCs and DCs that have been grabbed by other universities, including to fill head coaching jobs) has a track record of success that most schools would be ecstatic to have.  Very few fans at Baylor, or Iowa, or or Oregon State, or Vanderbilt, etc. would be complaining about the achievements of their teams if they were comparable to those of OU's coaching staff.  We Sooner fans want OU to play for and win the national championship every year, however unrealistic that expectation might be.  Do you think our coaches would deliberately and consistently do anything to threaten our chances for that?  Do you suppose that at least some of the recent OU losses might be because the team talent level wasn't up to the task, or because of some key injury, or because the players made critical mistakes, or because of some strange officiating, or whatever, rather than blaming Kevin Wilson for all of that.  How many games has his play-calling won for OU during that stretch?

 Again, let me re-iterate that I believe the Sooner coaching staff has to accept some responsibility for specific game outcomes.  There are times when any coach has been out-coached - even those coaches widely acknowledged as excellent coaches.  I'm just saying that when things don't go our way, it's not at all clear to me that we fans have any reason to believe that we could do any better if we had to make the calls.