I took some time out of my Christmas Eve to watch most of the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl (mostly because I’m intrigued by June Jones (remember, I live in Atlanta and he used to coach the Falcons) and I love the Run and Shoot that he STILL runs.) Well, I expected a back and forth game because Nevada is supposed to be pretty good and they have a long-tenured head coach and all that. Well, I was wrong. June Jones is a damned good college football coach people.
Here is the stat line for SMU after a “Chicago Bears v. Patriots 1986 Super Bowl-style beatdown” of Nevada:
For SMU, Padron threw for 460 yards (an SMU single-game record), they only ran for 74 yards, and they had two different receivers with over 100 yards receiving and 9 different players caught a pass. WOW! That’s 534 yards of total offense.
Nevada ran for 137 and threw for 177, but that’s only 314 yards of offense and not nearly enough to outscore a Run and Shoot at the college level.
I love what this proves…
Even though no one runs the Run and Shoot anymore in the NFL it is STILL an effective offense in college because not EVERY team will have enough talent to stop it. It wears down defenses because you end up on the field so much, and you only have to play a little defense to keep your team out in front. This also proves that June Jones can coach, that he was right to leave Hawaii for SMU, and that SMU is back from the Death Penalty is was dealt 25 years ago. It was an injustice then and it still is today, but at least they have FINALLY recovered from one of the worst acts of stupidity ever perpetrated by the NCAA.
(Now if they could only catch USC red-handed…)
