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View Full Version : Craziest play of the day



Jim3k
11-09-2014, 03:18 AM
Oregon-Utah (http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=11844727)

Lesson: Don't drop the ball before you get into the end zone.

Observation: There were two fumbles on this play, one by each team. Yet Oregon gets the 100 yard TD.

This blunder has all the hallmarks of legend. Kaelin Clay, the ghosts of Roy "Wrong Way" Riegels and Jim Marshall want to shake your hand.

uh_no
11-09-2014, 09:14 AM
Oregon-Utah (http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=11844727)

Lesson: Don't drop the ball before you get into the end zone.

Observation: There were two fumbles on this play, one by each team. Yet Oregon gets the 100 yard TD.

This blunder has all the hallmarks of legend. Kaelin Clay, the ghosts of Roy "Wrong Way" Riegels and Jim Marshall want to shake your hand.

my god....i don't understand how you can be so stupid....it's not like this exact thing hasn't happened before....

budwom
11-09-2014, 09:33 AM
I'm pretty sure they put a big wide chalk stripe over the grass to show where the end zone begins.

jcannon
11-09-2014, 09:50 AM
my god....i don't understand how you can be so stupid....it's not like this exact thing hasn't happened before....


I am guessing this may be part of the reason for such a mistake:
"Kaelin Clay is not in our program," head coach Jeff Tedford said, definitively, on Monday. "He is gone from our program, and he is taking classes somewhere to help his academic situation."
https://cal.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1300204

I know kids making the transition to college can take a toll on them academically, but when you recruit players based solely on athletic ability, these types of things will continue to happen on the field.

Henderson
11-09-2014, 11:26 AM
I hope and assume this was just a real bonehead play. But it was just so bizarre and inexplicable. Oregon went into the game as an 8.5 point favorite and would have been down 14 if Clay had waited one more stride before dropping the ball.

Sorry for the paranoia, but I just watched ESPN's 30-for-30 program on the Boston College point shaving episode. And to repeat, I hope and assume Clay just blew an important fuse.

johnb
11-09-2014, 11:48 AM
If he was trying not to score, he could've just dropped the ball instead of catching it. No indication that this was deliberate.

I'd separate out academic smarts from making bonehead football plays. I do recall our team making loads of mistakes/penalties/bonehead plays in the pre-Cut era while we were also graduating 100% of our players. I don't think we made this particular mistake (dropping a ball just before scoring), but that can be partially attributed to our frequent failure to score.

As with the Carolina scandal, I don't take great joy in finding out that that 20 year old men do stupid things. The single most notable fact about 20 yr old men is that they do stupid things. Wars (and football) are designed with exactly that fact in mind.

As for this particular guy, he wasn't hot dogging or trying to show up the other team. I have no knowledge about him being a bad guy. We know he dropped out of Cal-Berkeley, but we don't really know why (maybe because the school is seen as inhospitable to African Americans: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/why-black-students-are-avoiding-uc-berkeley/Content?oid=3756649). I bet he feels plenty bad about it and wishes that he could get back that millisecond of prematurity.

OTOH, it was amazing.

House G
11-09-2014, 12:03 PM
A similar play occurred in Utah high school playoff game:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nOWYh-3ff8I

subzero02
11-09-2014, 12:28 PM
I hope and assume this was just a real bonehead play. But it was just so bizarre and inexplicable. Oregon went into the game as an 8.5 point favorite and would have been down 14 if Clay had waited one more stride before dropping the ball.

Sorry for the paranoia, but I just watched ESPN's 30-for-30 program on the Boston College point shaving episode. And to repeat, I hope and assume Clay just blew an important fuse.

I have seen other players make similar bonehead plays before crossing the goal line. What I had never seen was the ball go back the other way for a touchdown.

Tripping William
11-09-2014, 12:32 PM
I hope and assume this was just a real bonehead play. But it was just so bizarre and inexplicable. Oregon went into the game as an 8.5 point favorite and would have been down 14 if Clay had waited one more stride before dropping the ball.

Sorry for the paranoia, but I just watched ESPN's 30-for-30 program on the Boston College point shaving episode. And to repeat, I hope and assume Clay just blew an important fuse.

And from the same university that brought us "cold fusion." Hmmmmm. The truth is out there ....

Jim3k
11-09-2014, 05:03 PM
We know he dropped out of Cal-Berkeley, but we don't really know why (maybe because the school is seen as inhospitable to African Americans: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/why-black-students-are-avoiding-uc-berkeley/Content?oid=3756649). I bet he feels plenty bad about it and wishes that he could get back that millisecond of prematurity.

OTOH, it was amazing.

Unlikely that racial inhospitabilty had anything to do with it. Living about 15 miles from the Berkeley campus, such an issue would be well-known to me if it was happening.

Most likely as the other article above observed, Clay had academic issues. Former coach Jeff Tedford was already feeling the heat from AD Sandy Barbour and the alumni at the time. His recruits had not been performing well in the classroom and the graduation rate was under severe scrutiny. I suspect Clay made himself such a visible target that even Tedford could not ignore him.

Soon after, of course, Tedford himself was ousted both for poor performance on the field and for for the players' poor graduation rate. His replacement, Sonny Dykes, appears to have righted the ship, at least to some extent. Barbour's corrective steps have now been formalized, even after her departure though she was blamed as part of the problem. She is now the AD at Penn State.

Anyway, Clay is what we used to call a "tramp athlete." Utah got what it paid for. Utah (and Cal before it) probably suffer from the same ill which Carolina caught, but AFAIK their enamoredness with academic marginality has not fallen to Chapel Hill levels. Until they decide to become legitimate students, tramp athletes don't belong in a four-year college. (I recognize that Clay may have buckled down before the transfer and I hope he did, but I have my doubts.)

Henderson
11-09-2014, 09:54 PM
Anyway, Clay is what we used to call a "tramp athlete." Utah got what it paid for. Utah (and Cal before it) probably suffer from the same ill which Carolina caught, but AFAIK their enamoredness with academic marginality has not fallen to Chapel Hill levels. Until they decide to become legitimate students, tramp athletes don't belong in a four-year college. (I recognize that Clay may have buckled down before the transfer and I hope he did, but I have my doubts.)

More than one transfer certainly raises my eyebrows, but I'm not sure I get this. Clay played Juco, then to Berkeley, and transferred to Utah apparently for academic reasons. So he -- and all other such players -- is a tramp athlete that doesn't belong at a four-year college? Without knowing how his academics are going at Utah? That seems unfair to him without more information about his situation.

Jim3k
11-10-2014, 12:25 AM
More than one transfer certainly raises my eyebrows, but I'm not sure I get this. Clay played Juco, then to Berkeley, and transferred to Utah apparently for academic reasons. So he -- and all other such players -- is a tramp athlete that doesn't belong at a four-year college? Without knowing how his academics are going at Utah? That seems unfair to him without more information about his situation.

I'll take the risk of being unfair.

Maybe I should have modified it to say that he doesn't belong at a major university or high quality small college. (Maybe Carolina :cool: would work for him.) Initially, he'd have been a better fit at one of the less selective state schools. Cal was certainly over his head. Another question is, what did he do to fix his record at Cal before transferring to Utah? Back to Mt. San Antonio or another juco? For what? Special student at one of the Cal States? Or was he able to get legal drops from Cal and slide over to Utah without a fix?

I'll stick with tramp athlete.

duke96
11-10-2014, 01:18 AM
Living about 15 miles from the Berkeley campus, such an issue would be well-known to me if it was happening.

This is a joke, right?

ricks68
11-10-2014, 01:32 AM
As an interesting aside here, I happened to meet Mario Savio on the beach on South Beach around 1964-65 wearing my sweatshirt with "Duke University" on the front in very, very tiny letters. Is there anyone out there that knows the tie in with Mario Savio in the discussion?;)

ricks

Jim3k
11-10-2014, 03:20 AM
This is a joke, right?

Why would it be a joke? My local newspaper(s) cover all things Berkeley. My daughter has a graduate degree from there; my neighbors have students attending; my circle of friends is well-versed; I've even (many years ago) been a guest lecturer there; and I know a ton of Boalt Hall grads who are on top of such things. After all, it's the local university. And sensitivity issues make the local news; the activists see to it. Why wouldn't I be abreast of such things there?

If the year-old article has any veracity, it's due to admissions changes resulting from Prop 209, but that has nothing to do with the treatment of African-Americans on campus, i.e., friendliness. Even so, Prop 209 applies to all the public universities in the state, UCs and Cal States alike not just Berkeley, so why pick on that campus? Besides, the UC admissions rules are based on numbers such as GPA, class standing, number of applicants from a particular high school, etc. Nothing else.

devildeac
11-10-2014, 08:38 AM
This is a joke, right?


Why would it be a joke? My local newspaper(s) cover all things Berkeley. My daughter has a graduate degree from there; my neighbors have students attending; my circle of friends is well-versed; I've even (many years ago) been a guest lecturer there; and I know a ton of Boalt Hall grads who are on top of such things. After all, it's the local university. And sensitivity issues make the local news; the activists see to it. Why wouldn't I be abreast of such things there?

If the year-old article has any veracity, it's due to admissions changes resulting from Prop 209, but that has nothing to do with the treatment of African-Americans on campus, i.e., friendliness. Even so, Prop 209 applies to all the public universities in the state, UCs and Cal States alike not just Berkeley, so why pick on that campus? Besides, the UC admissions rules are based on numbers such as GPA, class standing, number of applicants from a particular high school, etc. Nothing else.

Well, ol'roy is the MBB coach at c*rolina and he "didn't know.":rolleyes:;)

(kidding, Jim, kidding. Just couldn't resist the outstanding opportunity and overwhelming urge to take another shot at our neighbors down the road outside the scandal threads;).)

Kfanarmy
11-11-2014, 01:09 AM
" Wars (and football) are designed with exactly that fact in mind..." What?

Kfanarmy
11-11-2014, 01:25 AM
I'll take the risk of being unfair.

Maybe I should have modified it to say that he doesn't belong at a major university or high quality small college. (Maybe Carolina :cool: would work for him.) Initially, he'd have been a better fit at one of the less selective state schools. Cal was certainly over his head. Another question is, what did he do to fix his record at Cal before transferring to Utah? Back to Mt. San Antonio or another juco? For what? Special student at one of the Cal States? Or was he able to get legal drops from Cal and slide over to Utah without a fix?

I'll stick with tramp athlete.

I don't get any of this. Are you claiming knowledge of his GPA, SATs, ACTs? This seems pretty demeaning without a basis in fact.