Or just shear stupidity?  Over the last couple of days I’ve been looking at SI’s Iowa page to read stories from various sources.  As part of that, they have a loop of 10 pictures that rotate past, letting us see some snapshots from the last games.

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That felt good.  I don't think there is any other way to say it.  No miscues, no "what the hell" sort of plays, just solid football.  They couldn't stop the run, so we ran.  Occasional play action.  Simple.  Effective. (as opposed to the normal "Simple.  Ineffective.")

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[bumped. also, his second tag would be a better title.--OPS]

I had a thought the other day.  Maybe it's nothing.

I assume that most coaches careers follow a curve.  Certainly not a standard distribution one, but for the most part, I would imagine that that they are not as successful in the beginning, more successful in the middle, and again less successful at the end, resulting in being fired or retiring.

Following this through, it makes sense to me that a lot of early failures, either within a single program, or across more than one job, are due to coaching mistakes and not having the personnel, players and assistants that you want.  Both of these are correctable (in theory) over time, so that by the time the coach gets to the middle of their career (or single job), their success can be seen coming.  The effort that it has taken to get the proper people in the proper scheme making the proper calls pays off in victories that are built upon the lessons learned in the past.  But then at the end, what happens?  You can't tell me that the coach doesn't get the people he wants; he knows who works based on the past.  In older coaches, the game is sometimes said to "pass them by", but parts of the game haven't changed in a century.  It’s just the application of those parts that’s passing.

Football, like all sports, evolves.  It's been said that the NFL is a copy-cat league, but it really isn't any more so than at the college level.  One team finds something that works, and suddenly everyone is doing it...which leads to the next leap frog advance, and obviously in some cases, leads back to schemes that have worked in the past.  So it struck me, what if the issue with coaches as their time passes isn't the coach or the assistants?  What if it’s simply the schemes being used.  What if the success of a coach in the middle of their career with a particular scheme leads to assistants getting their own coaching positions, which leads to new blood being brought into a program, which leads to innovation within the program.  What if stagnation is the demon that drags programs down.  If this is the case, it seems to me that great coaches with great programs will frequently have significant coaching trees as a result, as opposed to smaller trees based on coaching staffs staying together over time.  Obviously, this is something that can't be seen until well after the fact, but you still should see the evidence in staff turnover.  Staff turnover isn't the key, however, the key is change.  Staff turnover is just any easy way to get there.  You can change from the inside, for example, Penn State has been talking about JoePa's retirement for years...but no one is talking about it now.  With the "Spread HD" system that they're using, defenses are struggling to adapt to stop it.  So it's successful.  So he's successful.   

Look, I don't know what the turnover rate here has been.  I don't know what it's been at Penn State  Or Ohio State, for that matter, but isn't it beginning to look like people know what Tressel is doing?  That he's still going to win a lot of games based on the talent level there, but in equal talent situations, he's gotten beaten because his opponents know how to beat his team.  Isn't that what happened to Carr at Michigan?  And that's what's happening to us.  It's not that the talent isn't there, but there is no innovation.

There's nothing earth shattering here, just the ramblings coming out of my brain.  As fans here, we've been complaining about lack of innovation on offense for several years, and frankly, the same can be said on the defensive side, only the defensive players either have had more talent or better coaching to offset the fact that our opponents know our schemes.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm suddenly looking at this in a slightly different way, not blaming the coaches for week to week or quarter to quarter adjustments, but year to year scheme shifts.  That our problems now started back in 2004 when we were having success.  Those years didn't translate into new coaching personnel, (with the exception of our line coach, obviously not all change is good) which has lead us to where we are now. 

I don't know.  Maybe I'm missing something that someone with a better knowledge of our program or football in general can tell me.  Maybe it really is all about execution and motivation, and that winning schemes will always be winning schemes.  It just seems to me like the important thing is to never stand still.  And that's what we've been doing.

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I'm not mad.  I'm not depressed.  Either of these things would imply that something completely unexpected happened Saturday. 

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