A Happy New Year to all. I returned from Orlando this morning after what was definitely a great close to four years of marching in the Hardest Working Band in America. Great show, but also a win. Doesn't get better. But I'm not here to write about that. I'm here to make some observations on the game.
Wisconsin won because of two things. First: there was excellent control of both the ball and the clock. Wisconsin had the ball for almost 40 of the 60 minutes and knew what it wanted to do with it. On the rare occassions when Wisconsin wasn't exactly sure, they remained calm and collected, made the fix, and proceeded. For example, at one point in the game, Wisconsin looked like that it was going to try for the FG. A called timeout allowed them to calmly reassess and opt for a well-placed punt instead. Many's the time when Wisconsin would have sent out it's FG team, had second thoughts, but proceeded anyway, and missed. In summary, Wisconsin executed a fantastic game. There are countless debates about "speed" vs. "size", but I'm pretty sure that the winner of the game executes better than their opponent.
Second: Miami is a team that doesn't seem to take its games seriously. It was talking all about taking the National Championship next year. Why on earth would a team think about the end of next season, when this season's not over? Miami also embraces this concept of "swagger". If you check out college football boards now and again, you may have heard of it. Apparently, at Miami, swagger is a verb, a noun, and probably serves the same purpose that the word "smurf" does for those little blue toadstool-dwellers. Essentially, it is bravado. When a Miami player makes a regular tackle and gets in the opponent's face, that is swagger. Late hits and blatant personal fouls (that aren't called by crappy SEC officials) are swagger. Swagger is a failure to look ahead, to consider the single act in the scheme of the bigger picture. As long as Miami has a mindset that places more importance on celebrating and bringing attention to themselves than making the play and moving on and repeating, it'll remain a mid-conference player.
Also: the turf was ridiculously soft, and it was basically sod that had been laid down perhaps that morning, or even that afternoon. It was noticibly hard to manuver on, and it definitely affected bounces and rolls, in addition to runs.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the game.
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