Woodling: KU-Tech could take all night
Don’t plan an early dinner if you attend Saturday’s Kansas-Texas Tech football game.
Kickoff will be at 2:30 p.m., and the clock won’t run out until well past 6 p.m. All three factors that affect the length of a football game will be in effect.
One, the Big 12 Conference opener will be televised. It’s on Fox Sports Midwest.
Two, both teams have been penalty-prone, ranking near the bottom of NCAA stats.
And three, the Red Raiders and the Jayhawks have been the passingest teams in the Big 12 so far.
Television means longer time outs. Penalties mean more clock stoppages. And you know what happens when a pass falls incomplete.
Unknown factors also could come into play — like how often an offensive player runs out of bounds to freeze the clock, or how many touchdowns are scored. TDs and ensuing kickoffs add to a game’s length, too. In Saturday’s Texas Tech-TCU shootout, a combined 15 touchdowns were scored. Two weeks ago, when KU played Toledo, the TD total was 11.
Saturday’s meeting is the first between the Raiders and Jayhawks since Kansas pulled off a stunning 34-31 overtime triumph in 2001 in Lubbock, Texas. Heck, that could be the halftime score this time. Expect an aerial circus.
Now in his fifth season as head coach, Mike Leach has turned Texas Tech into what Brigham Young once was — the most feared passing team in the country. More and more, it appears Mark Mangino has KU heading down a similar — if not quite as long — one-way street.
Coincidentally, Leach and Mangino each became NCAA Div. I-A head coaches for the first time after serving as offensive coordinators at Oklahoma. And that’s not all Leach and Mangino have in common. Neither played football in college, and only three other Div. I-A head coaches fall into that category — David Cutcliffe of Ole Miss, Paul Johnson of Navy and Dennis Franchione of Texas A&M.
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Northwestern, looking a lot like a middle-of-the roader in Div. I-A,
proved Saturday that Kansas can be stopped on the ground. Yet the Wildcats didn’t really neutralize KU’s passing attack so much as the Jayhawks ebbed and flowed on a tide of inconsistency (penalties, drops, etc.).
As the season wears on, don’t be surprised if Kansas becomes more pass-oriented. Unlike predecessor Bill Whittemore, KU quarterback Adam Barmann is an average runner at best. Barmann does have a stronger arm than Whittemore and a more outgoing personality.
Still, as precocious as Barmann is, he has played in only seven college games. When the sophomore’s savvy catches up with his physical tools, Kansas should be a dangerous opponent for anyone. Add the suspicion that KU’s offensive line is more adept at pass blocking than run blocking, and you have the ingredients of a team on the cusp of living or dying through the air.
While some might call the defeat at Northwestern a wake-up call, a more rational retrospective might be that the Wildcats merely proved the Jayhawks were riding a crest of euphoria fueled by a couple of fool’s-gold victories.
The season-opening 21-3 triumph over Tulsa — trumpeted at the time as a showcase for significant defensive strides — has been dampened by the Golden Hurricane’s shutout loss to Navy in its home opener. Only three other Div. I-A teams have scored fewer points after three games than Tulsa.
In the same vein, the 63-14 throttling of Toledo two weeks ago — then an apparent ringing statement that KU had discovered a running game — has been watered down by growing notion the Rockets have the worst defense in Div. I-A. After three games, Toledo has surrendered an average of 52.7 points a game, rock-bottom on the NCAA stat chart.
Now that Northwestern has shown us how Kansas actually stacks up in the I-A pantheon, we’ll find out Saturday how the Jayhawks respond to that dose of reality — hopefully before our stomachs start growling.