God forbid a coach accused of being too conservative

Two factors make football coaches—especially new head coaches—cringe when the ugly words "too conservative" get thrown their way.

First of all, football is a game of aggression, and a big part of aggressiveness is playing with reckless abandon, as coaches like to say. Reckless abandon is a long way from being conservative, and a coach understandably doesn't wish his players to feel he doesn't believe in them. But there is a worse way to be called conservative, and it is being labeled by the media, which then influences the fans.

Michigan's Bo Schembechler and Ohio State's Woody Hayes were labeled "too conservative" when they lost 11 of 15 Rose Bowls over a 22-year stretch because their basic strategies were run-first offenses. Never mind that Michigan and Ohio State frequently were deceptively overrated because of easy wins over an awful Big Ten and their faster Pacific-8 and Pacific-10 opponents were underrated because of better balance in the league out west. No, according to the media, Bo and Woody lost because their offenses were "too conservative."

So Friday night there was Doc Holliday, new coach at Marshall, with a 21-6 lead with a bit more than eight minutes to play and on the verge of beating in-state rival West Virginia for the first time in school history. Marshall has first down at the WVU 5 yard-line. Any score, even a field goal, will clinch the win because it will push West Virginia three scores behind, and the Mountaineers will be lucky even to see the ball three times in the time remaining. Marshall hands off to freshman running back Tron Martinez, who loses a fumble.

From that moment on, everything that could go wrong for the Herd goes wrong. West Virginia drives 96 and 98 yards and tacks on a two-point pass to tie the game 21-21 with 12 seconds left in regulation. The Mountaineers win 24-21 in overtime.

Coach Holliday could have played it safe, taken a play by senior QB Brian Anderson to center the ball in the middle of the field and have his kicker win it for him. But that would have been "too conservative," and, God forbid, any coach be accused of that.