Nothing But Iron: Playmakers by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. October 2, 2009 Perhaps I am simply guilty of oversimplification.  Then again, maybe we need a break from the media-magnified complexification of the conceptually simple football games we watch every week.  We endure so much regurgitation about size, speed, passer ratings, spreads and pro sets, field vision and footwork, experience and recruiting class rank and coaching and coaching and coaching, but when it comes to winning, what really matters is the playmakers—the guys who produce under pressure:  the ones who throw strikes on third and eleven, or catch the thrown strikes on third and eleven, or confound blitzing backers or make momentum-killing tackles-for-loss or block punts or pick off passes in the backs of end zones in overtimes.   After three games and one gathering, for its lack of a legitimate opponent, that resembled a bye week more than a football game, it is playmaking that hits me as the characteristic of this Badgers football team that distinguishes it from its immediate predecessor.  The next few weeks will tell if Wisconsin playmaking is a trait or a phase, since such assessments are made only in the context of available opponents.   We know that Michigan State had high hopes, based on published predictions of a top-tier Big 10 finish by those we mistakenly assume are experts at prediction.  As we found last year, prediction of good is not the same as good, though it would be foolish to suggest that the Spartans, with a single conference loss are out of the race.  That is not to say the sports journalism community is lacking of fools, because at least one such fool has already reported MSU’s demise.  I won’t name names, but if I had a horse, I would feed it this Tom grain.       On that note, we cannot even say that recently-5th-ranked Penn State is once again out of the national title race by virtue of once again losing a single conference game to Iowa, except that I think we probably can say that and I just did and I believe it as much as I believe the BCS will always reign and that the BCS is poison and we will never have a true national champion in college football, and most people won’t ever really give a damn as long as their Tostitos bowl is more full than empty.   I will refrain, for now, from going too far down my well-beaten BCS-bashing path and instead refer you to all issues of NBI ever published in the months of October, November and December in which the screams of beaten dead horses have fallen on countless deaf ears with annoying regularity.   Sorry, I strayed from the topic of playmakers.  Each week I add one or more Badgers to the list of players who make me jump out of my seat and yell and clap and think that the $46 price of admission is actually good deal.  This past week it was redshirt freshman linebacker Mike Taylor, who did a credible impersonation of Superman by grabbing a Kirk Cousins bullet out of mid air with one hand while falling down.  His WOW rating for the game was an impressive 124.7.  Other notable WOW ratings:  Chris Maragos, two interceptions, 129.5, Scott Tolzien, who looks at least as good as our best quarterbacks of the 1990's (of course it’s early, but I can dream), 149.466.  Tolzien’s rating is a September school record for junior quarterbacks from Illinois who wear numbers ending in 6.  Others with WOW ratings higher than 120:  Garrett Graham (139.1), Nick Toon (122.8), John Clay (138.7), O’Brien Schofield (139.7).   In case you have not heard of WOW rating, let me explain:  Nobody really knows what it is or how it is calculated, mostly because I just made it up.  It could be argued, if you could prove it, that the numbers are meaningless, merely conjured up to yield a more scientific-sounding way of saying “that guy kicked some serious ass.”  I can’t think of a better way for a sportswriter to create an illusion of intellectual wherewithal (the other is to use large compound words) for his readership.   The important thing to know is that a high WOW rating is good and a low rating is bad.  Only experts can interpret the numbers, and since I invented WOW™, I am the only expert.  Feel free to ask me, but only me, if a number is high or low.  I will probably divulge that “it depends”.   It might help, but not probably really, to tell you it that WOW is analogous to both passer rating and baseball’s slugging percentage.  Passer rating is calculated using idle BCS computers, which are not idle enough for my taste.  The formula is proprietary and guarded by the same guards who protect the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken, which has never been compromised.  That is why no other chicken you have ever had tasted like that.  Slugging percentage is calculated by taking the total number sluggings and dividing that by the number of possible sluggings that could have been slugged and multiplying that by 100.  You probably already knew that.  If all that is too complicated you could ignore all the math except for only math that counts.  In the case of Saturday’s game, it was 38-30.  I did not invent that one.   A bit more about John Clay and his amazing comeback from a three-fumble life crisis in the  Wofford game that nearly ended his career as a college football player, or so you might have thought, the way panic-stricken pessimist, Tom Grain Man, portrayed it in one of hs many melodramatic columns.  It’s not just the sportswriters who are guilty of stupidity mongering, though we are the leaders.  Brett Bielema himself talked of how he and his coaching staff emphasized “taking care of the ball” this season.  Translation: “If I don’t say that you won’t think I am serious about keeping my job.”   Don’t get me wrong, primarily because I really mean this, but “taking care of the ball” might be the least intelligent things to ever come from a coach’s mouth.  I argue that there is not a ball player older than seven in any sport with a ball, with the possible exceptions of dodgeball and sports resembling to ping pong, who doesn’t know it is undesirable to give the ball to the other team.  In other words, taking care of the ball is so obvious that one could easily substitute, “don’t swallow your mouth guard”.  Emphasis, though traditional, is not needed, useful or even remotely insightful.   John Clay, because he is just a kid, cannot be faulted for adding to the silliness, but he did by assuring us that the woeful Wofford performance was not a focus problem.  I think there are only two possibilities:  1) It was too a focus problem or 2) The Wofford defenders were just that much better than John Clay.  Pick again, John.  Now let’s see.  Could there have been any possible reason that Clay lost his focus against WOF-frickin-FORD?  Yes, he dropped the ball for the same reason I dropped my spoon when I was mixing my oatmeal:  It just didn’t matter, except that the oatmeal got on the floor and I had to move the rug over it so Kelly wouldn’t see.    In summary:  Duh.  Mishaps in and out of sports are all about focus.  Ironically, it does precious little good to dwell on the obvious goal of not fumbling, because that itself is a focus-stealing distraction.  How do I know this?  Because anyone smart enough to create his own rating system just knows stuff.  For more on focus, check out one of my Bibles: The Inner Game of Tennis, by W. Timothy Gallwey, who single handedly mostly cured me of throwing tennis rackets.       I can’t resist hammering on the other end of the turnover margin.  In today’s paper one of the defensive coaches talked about the emphasis on creating turnovers this season.  Translation: “I deserve the credit for this.”  Yeah, right, Coach.  The reason the Badgers are intercepting and collecting fumbles is because the coaches emphasized it.  Ohhhh kay.  Could it be that all teams everywhere want turnovers, but the ones with better players—faster, quicker, stronger, better-handed, higher WOW ratings—actually get them?   Enough hammering.  I am an angry not-so-young man, aren’t I.  The primary reason the Badgers beat MSU was the secondary.  Well, not really, but that’s such a clever use of primary and secondary in the same sentence, I could not resist.  I do think the secondary far exceeded my expectations.  You might recall, even though it is literary suicide to call attention to one’s own malprognostication, that I said our secondary was not strong.  I now must admit, the consistently-good secondary play was a big factor in Wisconsin’s first conference win.  That’s why some people coach and play sports and I write about it for free.  If over the next several weeks we come to realize that the one glaring weakness identified by more than one sportswriter after the Fresno State game was really a strength in the making, we could be in for some happy times and maybe even some new commemorative t-shirts.   To close, I will comment on the 30 side of 38-30 that might have been only 17 if it had not been more than that.  Michigan State’s late flash of futility was mostly meaningless, but not completely meaningless.  It is illustrative of a principle that seems inescapable in sports:  The shift from trying to win to trying not to lose.  I would not necessarily eliminate it, especially when it is my team trying to catch up, for without it many of the most dramatic comebacks in the history of sports would have never happened.   More importantly, the message of the almost-just-about-came-close-to-blowing-it scenario will not be lost on UW players:  most leads are tenuous and all leads distract from the focus necessary to succeed.  It’s a concept that applies far beyond the boundaries of a football field. I thought I was done, but I can’t close without a few comments on the upcoming Minnesota weekend.  First there are two Minnesotas, reminding me that the old adage, “you can’t have too many Minnesotas” is very wrong.  One, in fact, is too many.  In the Monday night game, all eyes, including at least one of mine will be on Brett Favre.  At least when the Vikings have the ball.  That’s because Favre is old enough and slow enough that we can actually see him.  The same cannot be said about Adrian Peterson, who moves like a Ninja on amphetamines.  How will the Packers stop either the old one or the Ninja?  I do not know.  On paper, now that the hype of the preseason has faded into a cloud of reality, a win doesn’t seem plausible, but that is the beauty of the primitive nature of our predictive skills.  Come Tuesday morning I hope to be scratching my grinning head and saying, “How did they do that?” while tabulating WOW ratings for a dozen or so Packers.   As for the undercard bout with university Minnesota, I guess I will go out on a limb and predict a wild one.  When a large wooden trophy axe is at stake things tend to get wild.  I’ll take the over in the over/under, which I heard was 149.  If the Badgers secondary can manage Sota’s playmaking receiver, Eric Decker, then I will have been again proven wrong, and I love being wrong sometimes.  Managing Decker, by the way, will be holding him to a touchdown, five catches and under 100 yards or any combination that lead the Gophers to fewer points than the Badgers.  I do hate to say anything good about Minnesota, but the building of TCF Bank Stadium, a legitimate sports venue, is a remarkable feat for a program that has traditionally had all the direction of a sun-seeking compass.  It must be said that the lower level of a parking ramp is a legitimate sports venue relative to the Metrodome, but the Gophers should be proud of their new home away from dome, and even prouder that they had the foresight to build a small-capacity facility so that the possibility now exists that they might sell out more than once every other year when Wisconsin plays there.  Heck, next thing you know they’ll start training their own marching band.   __________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column that sometimes is only about sports and not travel or social science or art or amateur agriculture.  This issue is not really dedicated to anyone.  ©2009 DrTM Enterprises.  All rights reserved.