Stuff and Shenanigans: Extremely Scientific Calculations

Hello and welcome back from my three week-long tangent on Stuff Half-Related to Husky Football. Today, we’ll be talking about Stuff Fully Related to Husky Football. I know, I know, it’s practically sacrilege at this point.

A 48% Sober and 100% Accurate Rundown of Absolutely Everything

It’s games like this that are why the Stuff and Shenanigans Sobriety Meter exist. Is it a one-for-one literal description? No, that would be insane. Also I would be dead. If my sobriety or lack thereoff was in line with my Stuff and Shenanigans headlines the last seven years, all 130 lbs of me would have shrivelled into a terrier-sized raisin from liver cirrhosis by now.

As it stands, based on my Extremely Scientific Calculations, you would have to be 48-or-less% sober to have genuinely enjoyed this game.

Although, game stress notwithstanding, there was one thing about this that I very much liked as far as what it implies about Kalen DeBoer and Ryan Grubb.

This starts out with a fact that actually led to a pretty dang boring first half: Running it. Kind of a lot, actually. The end result was six measly points — although with a bit better execution on some key plays that likely wouldn’t have been quite so low. But what tentatively rules is what that says about this coaching staff’s... I don’t know exactly what to call it... lack of hubris?

That sounds counterintuitive to say that Washington’s worst half of offensive football is an indicator of good things. Kay, just hear me out.

How many times do we see Football Men (extra points if they were a nepotism hire) come into a game, run Their System from the get-go, see Their System eat shit, keep running their system, lose the game, aaaand scene? I mean screw it, that was Apple Cup Mike Leach for what, seven years?

So, despite the fact that it wasn’t a particularly successful first half, it was refreshing seeing a coach come in, acknowledge that Cal was trying to take away Washington’s strength, recognize that Cal’s defense was theoretically good enough to be a threat when the two teams were going strength-on-strength, and go “fine, we can adapt.” (This is part one of what I liked about the offensive coaching staff this game.)

Considering that FBS head coaches make more money than God, it’s kind of incredible how so many of them seem to have a clinical aversion to any sort of evidence-based adaptation. It’s like 130 myths of Narcissus. “No. Me big fast strong good. Better than other big strong good guy. No change, just be strong good. Hey, what’s that pink slip for—”

Now, did that half of football work very well? [Insert Larry David “meh” gif here.] But at least Grubb and DeBoer have the humility to recognize what an opponent’s trying to do and change their approach accordingly. That’s more than what... I dunno... 93% of college football coaches can say.

And then to make things better, when that half of offense went moderately crap, what did they do? They adapted! Again! That must move them up from 93% to 95%!

Initial humility, followed by reacting to the evidence put in front of you and making a change? Say it ain’t so! Just kidding, say it so.

The whole sequence of thinking sure felt like DeBoer going “Ok, well this is working less than we were hoping... F*ck it we didn’t want to force our system, but we can change that and trust our strength is better than theirs.”

While there was some execution inconsistencies that made the end result more butt clench-inducing than we’d like, I’m just happy to see an offensive staff that’s apparently not built on hubris and shoving their head in the sand.

Aaaaaaaand then on the other side of the ball.

The defensive line is so much fun. If we could just just just cover receivers for a couple seconds... Please Mister DeBoer, this offseason please express similar humility and evidence-based decision-making when it comes to any changes that may or may not be necessary on the defensive backend. I know you can do it! We’ve seen you at it before!

Lastly, if you’re active on Twitter — a grave mistake, to be sure — you’d have noticed near the end of the game that either myself or Max was having what could diplomatically be described as a total uncontrolled breakdown. No, I won’t tell which of us it was, and you’ll never be able to guess. Never.

On the flip side, free Dick’s to whomever can guess what that nervous breakdown was about!

Anyone? I bet you can’t do it!

Oh, wait, kidding, I bet you can!

Here, in not-quite-real time, is my I mean shit one of the UWDP admin’s descent into utter deranged madness:

I call this collection “Face of Modern Sanity”

As you can clearly see, I was feeling very hinged in the waning minutes of Saturday night.

I would not, however, complain if many of you wrote letters of various strong-wordedness to the Pac-12, telling them for the last time to get their sweet sweet shit together once and for all.

I wouldn’t, for example, tell you that by Googling “david coleman pac-12 officiating,” the first entry to pop up would be the LinkedIn of the Pac-12’s VP of Officiating and that if you have LinkedIn Premium you would be able to message him a firm — but professional, this is LinkedIn we’re talking about — message about how the product of which he is in charge is a professional embarrassment. I mean, what the crap other reason is there to have LinkedIn Premium than for these sorts of endeavors? If you have LinkedIn Premium, I think you’re a bit of a twerp who’s probably too into phrases like “optimized” and “stack rank,” so you might as well put that subscription to good use right here.

Lines of the Week

Live look at the Pac-12 refs in especially rare form this week:

But seriously my god Pac-12 refs:

Me every time a Pac-12 ref dared open their stupid ugly mouth:

All UW fans and all Cal fans every time we have to play each other from like 2015 until eternity:

Do good things, don’t do bad things, and bow down to Washington.