The Morning Commute for Wednesday, October 16th

Welcome to the Morning Commute

Today we’re talking about bulletin board material.

Motivating a football team to get “up” for a game is an artform as old as the game itself. Sometimes an upcoming opponent says something that is truly ignorant and riles your team up (anyone remember “old man football” by Sheldon Richardson before playing Georgia?), sometimes it’s an innocent comment that gets blown out of context, and sometimes stuff is just flat made up in the form of propaganda.

If you hadn’t seen/heard, Auburn Coach Hugh Freeze held his Monday media presser and tried to hand a compliment down to Mizzou’s Eliah Drinkwitz. However, it didn’t come out quite right, because when he complimented Drink for doing a great job of building the program, he said that Drink has done so despite having a “lesser roster in recruiting.”

I’m going to give Freeze the benefit of the doubt and believe he truly meant it as a platitude but just did so in a poorly-worded effort. Either way, you know that those words are plastered all over the football complex this week to light a fire under the Mizzou players’ feet. Not that they needed extra motivation knowing what is still within reach for this team, but that little turn of phrase was probably a welcome sight for the Mizzou coaches.

This kind of bulletin board material can give, as in this instance, and it can take away, as it worked against Mizzou just a couple weeks ago leading into the Texas A&M game. If you’ll recall, Brady Cook was asked about the crowd noise he anticipated dealing with at Kyle Field, and he gave an answer about how loud they make practice with crowd noise piped in over big speakers. He said he felt practice was louder than any game, and he clearly didn’t mean that as a slight of Texas A&M fans – he was just saying that they prepare in a way where they try to make it harder in practice than it is in the game.

But that didn’t stop pundits from taking his comments out of context and presenting it as if Brady had said practice is louder and tougher than it will be at A&M. That’s not what he said, and definitely was not what he’d meant. Lesson learned I’m sure about being very intentional about the words you use.

Talk about this subject always reminds me of an instance long ago with the master of disingenuous bulletin board material – Bob Stoops at Oklahoma.

In 2002 when Oklahoma played at Mizzou (this was Brad Smith’s redshirt freshman year), there was news surfacing from Norman that reporters down there had seen signs posted in the OU team facilities that had Mizzou players talking smack about how they were going to beat the Sooners that week.

We found out about it because the local Mizzou media asked our coaches and players about those remarks. Problem was, none of our guys said anything of the sort. This was in the early stages of Gary Pinkel’s tenure when we were very reserved in all comments to the media. It was completely fabricated by OU coaches/staffers as a way to motivate the Sooners in a game they were heavily favored in.

I get why coaches do that stuff, but it really pissed me off at the time because then our guys were blindsided by the questions from the media. But in the end, Mizzou got the last laugh as we nearly pulled off the upset in a classic game against #3 OU, before falling by a 31-24 final score.

To each, his own I guess.

Did you see how Oregon brilliantly manipulated the rule book at the end of their 32-31 win over Ohio State Saturday? The Ducks were clinging to that one-point lead, and Ohio State was driving for a game-winning field goal attempt as time was winding down.

The Buckeyes had the ball at the Oregon 43-yardline on a 3rd down snap with just :10 seconds left to play. OSU had a timeout left, so they could use the whole field and needed maybe 10-15 more yards to have a decent shot at a walk-off game-winner.

Prior to the 3rd down snap, Oregon called a timeout. When they came back , Oregon took the field with 12 players, and Dan Lanning has confirmed that it was done so intentionally. Ohio State snapped the ball and threw an incomplete pass because it’s hard to find someone open when you’ve got 12 defenders. More importantly, four precious seconds ticked off the clock, leaving just :06 seconds left.

Yes, Oregon got called for the 5-yard penalty, but that only moved the ball to the Oregon 38-yardline, which would have left a 55-yard field goal attempt by OSU. Oregon gambled that Buckeye Coach Ryan Day didn’t have the kicker to make that long of a kick, and they were right, because OSU ran one more play.

And if you saw how the game ended, it ended when OSU QB Will Howard scrambled and slid on the Oregon 26, but he did so with no time left, so they couldn’t use a timeout to set up the shorter field goal try.

Because a 12-man penalty is a live ball foul, Oregon knew that the 3rd down play that didn’t count would still burn some clock, and that stroke of genius worked to perfection since Howard couldn’t get down in time on the ensuing play. It was a big gamble and it’s not something we’ll likely see too often, but it sure worked this time.

I do wonder if the rules committee will look at this going forward and try to make this penalty a dead ball foul, because doing this the way Oregon did clearly manipulated the rule book. I commend Oregon for doing it, because they used the rules to their favor. I just wonder if it will be allowed in the future?

Here’s this week’s hilarious SEC Shorts video.

Yesterday at Rock M and Rock M+

• A football game was played in Amherst, Mass. this past Saturday, and the Tigers won easily. Nate Edwards has the analytical takeaway in his weekly BTBS installment.

It was cool to see some younger guys get in on the action and have this one comfortably put away early, but for the most part the W is the only real thing to take away from this game. Nothing done during the course of this game gave you any insight of foresight to predict how the rest of the year will go. So don’t sweat anything about this game.

As Nate writes, good job Tigers, way to take care of business. Now, we’ll see what this team really has under the hood this Saturday when the talent level is more even.

• Josh Matejka’s weekly Revue compares Mizzou’s game at UMass in the vein of streaming service filler.

I wish I had some more humorous or profound observations on what this game means in the context of Mizzou’s season or its story as a program… but that’s not the point of filler! It’s not to teach us anything or to explore any meaningful depth of life (or football). It’s there to fill a slot on the schedule. And that’s it. It’s not good, it’s not bad. But it is there.

He said what we were all thinking. We all watched the game because we had to, not because we were all that excited about it. Let’s hope these types of games are a thing of the past going forward.

• The men’s hoops opponent preview series by Sam Snelling continues with a look at the SEC newbie Oklahoma Sooners.

The Sooners only lost three players to graduation or expiring eligibility, but five others hit the transfer portal. And of those five, three were among the Sooners’ leading scorers. Losing that sort of production from players who have been in your program and developed could signal some NIL struggles.

Sounds like a bit of a rebuild situation for the Sooners. You hate to see that. But more than that, you love to see that.

• Tuesday’s morning commute gave updates on Mizzou’s football TV schedule, volleyball weekly awards and some men’s hoops predictions.

• It’s election season, so time to cast your vote in the weekly SBN Reacts poll that asks Tiger fans to chime in on their confidence with the rest of the season.

• Bookmark this page as your go-to spot for Homecoming Central on Rock M Nation. This is where all of the week’s stories, previews and analysis will be housed.

• Check out what was discussed at Tiger Talk right here.

• Over at Rock M+, we’re talking about Drink’s prospects with Auburn down the road, and on the hoops side there were posts about computer rankings and a new recruiting visit by a big-man prospect.

Rock M Radio: Before the Box Score reviews the UMass dub

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