MIAMI — Enlighten us, Brandon Spikes: Did you really mean to call Big 12 defenses an embarrassment?
“I said that. I said it,” the Florida linebacker reiterated Monday. “That’s what it is. It is what it is.”
“When I watch ‘SportsCenter,’ I look at the scores and it’s 56-49, just basketball scores. I feel like it’s a joke. Like I said, Ole Miss ran up and down the field on a Big 12 defense. It’s just crazy. That’s just my perception of the Big 12 defenses.”
Well, then.
As if the BCS championship game between No. 1 Florida and No. 2 Oklahoma needed to get any more prickly, Spikes perked up the media session at Dolphin Stadium, site of Thursday night’s showdown.
That said, a lot of college football fans feel the same way about defenses in general. Seeing Oklahoma become the highest-scoring team in history, watching Tim Tebow and the Gators trample opponents, they wonder: Doesn’t anyone know how to play D?
Asked to defend the honor of the Big 12 defenses he routinely faces, Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford chuckled, sat back in his chair and said, “Umm, I really don’t know.”
After a five-second pause, the Oklahoma quarterback laughed again and tried his best.
“I mean, everyone wants to talk about it, but it’s still 11 guys playing defense,” he said. “They face some great offenses each week. To their defense, they have to prepare for a lot of things each week.”
That’s true. But it’s like the guys on the other side of the ball don’t even exist. Funny thing, too, because nationwide points, total yards and passes per game all declined this season.
Not that anyone notices, not while coaching wizards keep dreaming up crazy formations. The Wild Rebel, the Pistol, the spread and the no-huddle — it’s like playbooks meet PlayStation.
“If you have success defensively, you just play really hard and you are really tough. If you have success offensively, it is a gimmick,” Texas Tech coach Mike Leach teased before a 47-34 loss to Mississippi in the Cotton Bowl.
“Everyone else isn’t trying to score points, just you are,” he said. “Everybody thinks that if you run it between the tackles you should be knighted the saint of offense or something, just because you are really boring and people have seen it a lot. ‘If we wanted to score 40 points a game we would, but we want to do this.”’
Oklahoma does even better than that, averaging 54 points a game. Florida checks in at over 45.
Easy to see why someone would want to play on that side of the ball. Sooners safety Lendy Holmes did — he was a wide receiver in his first year at Oklahoma.
“Kids want to start out on offense. They see their favorite player, and that’s usually someone on offense,” he said. “Everyone wants to be a quarterback, everyone wants the ball in their hands.”
Holmes was among the nation’s leaders with five interceptions this season. But if the Sooners ever need an ambidextrous quarterback, he’s their man.
“You should see him. He can throw it 60 yards with his left arm and 60 yards with his right arm,” Bradford said. “It’s impressive.”
Oklahoma, however, ranked just 63rd in total defense while Florida was eighth. The teams shared a key trait — they finished 1-2 in turnover margin.
“You get tired of people dogging on our defense like everybody is,” Oklahoma linebacker Travis Lewis said. “We’re going to show up, I guarantee you that. We would like to think that they’re going to score zero. We do have a defense, and we’re going out to prove it.”
Hard to imagine Gators-Sooners will be like the Sun Bowl, where Oregon State beat Pittsburgh 3-0. Then again, through this weekend only 18 of 62 bowl teams had reached their points-per-game average.
Overall, games between teams in college’s top division averaged 52.6 points, down from 55.5 last season, according to STATS Inc. Total yards dropped from 780 to 731, and passing attempts fell from 67 to 62.
Rules changes that keep the clock running more often took away 4-5 plays per team, perhaps accounting for some of the decreases.
Watching Oklahoma and Florida, however, makes it appear it’s been a season of Offenses Gone Wild.
“Football has changed,” Rice coach David Bailiff said before a 38-14 romp over Western Michigan in the Texas Bowl. “The quarterbacks are so much more intelligent on reading all the different coverages. They know where the soft spots are. It’s a wide-open football game.”
“You used to tell a defensive lineman they had 4 seconds to get to a quarterback. Now you have 1.8 seconds and the ball’s probably gone anyway,” he said. “It used to be that your defense had to be in the teens to win a football game. Now, if you can hold somebody to 28, you’re probably in pretty good shape in the fourth quarter.”
Florida cornerback Joe Haden sees both sides. A record-setting prep quarterback in Maryland, he intercepted three passes this season and broke up 10 others.
Once in a while, he gets those old pangs.
“I’ll drop back deep for punts in practice and when I get the ball, I’ll wind up and throw it back. You never get it completely out of your system,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Coach, remember you recruited me as a quarterback.”’
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AP Sports Writers Mark Long and Jeff Latzke and Jaime Aron in Dallas contributed to this report.
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