15 College Teams That Have "Bought Into The System"

In an earlier slideshow, I mentioned a theory I have that college football teams tend to absorb the personality of their coach.

This is another way of saying they've bought into a system. In spite of the players recruited or the teams played, programs either succeed or fail based on how well they can get their players on board.

After the first four weeks of college football, it's time to take a look at fifteen college team their coach.

Florida's Team Under Urban Meyer

Intelligent, resourceful, sometimes vengeful, hawkish to a fault, Meyer's Gators are willing to sacrifice anything for the win.

Case in point: this weekend the Gators lost Tim Tebow to concussion despite no sign of a threat from the SEC rival Kentucky Wildcats. Meyer doesn't like to let off the pedal, and it might cost him.

The Gators are never caught unprepared and are competitive even in loss, never rolling over. They punish teams into submission rather than sitting on a lead. There are very few vulnerabilities here.

However, if a team hangs with them for too long, the discomfort becomes palpable. We'll see if that becomes a weakness, and possibly, an Achilles heel, if the Gators ever come back to earth.

Notre Dame's Team Under Charlie Weis

The Irish have bought into Charlie Weis's system. Unfortunately, the system often asks them to be too clever for their own good.

In last night's game against Purdue, they ran 11 straight times on the Purdue defense with backup Dayne Crist in the game, and marched the ball into the endzone. On the next drive? Jimmy Clausen went in and three threw incomplete passes, forcing the punt.

When things are working, Charlie Weis looks to alter them. The emphasis is less on execution than on pure cleverness, the Decided Schematic Advantage over the Obvious Talent Discrepancy. A team that wins in spite of its brains.

It often leaves the Irish facing more questions than answers.

USC's Team Under Pete Carroll

Pete Carroll's system calls for beating, even destroying, elite competition. They will out-execute on both sides of the ball, utilize their playmakers, and establish themselves as no-brainer picks to win the PAC-10 and possibly the MNC year after year.

There is no possible way you can out-recruit or out-talent the Trojans for now or for the foreseeable future. The Winning Forever system will bring in another top five recruiting class this year.

Luckily, through sheer arrogance or antipathy to risk, this system also calls for the Trojans to lose games they should never lose.

No marquee team can hope to beat them; our only hope resides in the two-star teams of the country.

Michigan's Team Under Rich Rodriguez

The team's transition to Rodriguez's system is still a work-in-progress, but the foundation is there.

Rodriguez, a walk-on himself at West Virginia, fields teams that are scrappy, undersized, and often underestimated.

Their wins correlate directly to the successful execution of a system designed to overcome talent discrepancy, which makes them positively scary as soon as Michigan's talent level catches up to the rest of the national contenders.

For the time being, they're winning on naive youth and pure moxie. Once the system is perfected, watch out.

On defense...don't ask.

Alabama's Team Under Nick Saban

Pick a Saban team, any Saban team, and you will see a system including one or more of the following: a strong, speedy, ferocious defense, especially in the secondary; a running game with more than one featured back; a complete nobody at quarterback who is rarely entrusted with the game; no penalties; few mistakes.

Saban has refined this system in his third year at Alabama and continues with Terrence Cody, Trent Richardson/Mark Ingram, and Greg McElroy, who is succeeding with the ball almost in spite of the playcalling.

Julio Jones is what Plaxico Burress was to Saban's teams at MSU. It's the x-factor that has me believing in the Tide's chances at a Natty Championship.

Pitt's Team Under Dave Wannstedt

In Pitt's case, Wannstedt's system does more ill than good.

Sloppy and ill-prepared, a typical Dave Wannstache team will rise to the occasion in dogfights and play with absolutely no heart in games they ought to win, shutting down West Virginia in 2007, yet allowing an awful Syracuse unit to hang around the next year.

The disconnect between Wannstedt and his players occasionally translates to cold play on the field. Yet he remains a relatively good recruiter despite Pittsburgh's lack of national prominence. Somehow he's been able to get players to believe in him. One of these days, that has to translate to more Big East titles.

Virginia Tech's Team Under Frank Beamer

Frank Beamer would agree with what Woody Hayes said about throwing passes: "Only three things can happen, and two of them are bad."

Thus, the term "Beamerball", which refers to strong defense, outstanding special teams play, and almost no risks on offense beyond the handoff. In the past ten years, Virginia Tech has scored off of more blocked punts than any other team.

This year's version of Beamerball has upheld the tradition. After an ugly loss against Alabama, Virginia Tech regained dominance in the ACC by holding Miami, boasting the nation's third most prolific passer, to under 160 yards and seven points while putting up 31 points and forcing turnovers.

Texas Tech's Team Under Mike Leach

Wildly unpredictable, detestably calculating, maddeningly prolific, Mike Leach's system continues to produce huge numbers in the offensive category, and the added dimension of the draw play executed by Byron Batch has made Leach's attack even scarier.

Like Weis, Leach sometimes defeats himself by his own love of risk, as when Tech onside kicked after a score versus the Longhorns in last week's game, dramatically shifting the field position battle in favor of the Longhorns, a challenge his defense could not rise to.

Nevertheless, the players at Texas Tech are extremely well-coached within the system, and have honed the schemes and patterns Leach hangs his hat on.

This weekend, Texas Tech faced a mirror version of itself in the Houston Cougars, whose offense is coached by a Leach disciple in the Airraid attack. They just used a little more motion in defeating the Progenitor. 29-28, in the most exciting game of the weekend.

Ole Miss's Team Under Houston Nutt

Erratic and emotional, Houston Nutt coaches with his love of drama on his sleeve. His teams behave like hyenas, reacting powerfully to turnovers and other swings in momentum rather than grinding out the win.

Nutt's system of play doesn't perform well as a frontrunner. It's much more suited to notching the upset - see Arkansas v. LSU in 2007, or Ole Miss's defeat of the Gators last year, their only loss.

He's also a helluva recruiter, pulling in 33 signees last year despite the mathematical impossibilities of all of them playing.

Ole Miss will lose a few more games and slide out of the national spotlight before beating a team as a complete surprise later in the season, once we've all forgotten about them.

They won't beat Alabama - too soon - but Auburn, Tennessee, and LSU should maintain vigilance and are the most likely victims of the Rebel upset this year.

Cincinnati's Team Under Brian Kelly

Brian Kelly is a newcomer in this elite company, but his teams have acquired the stalwarts of his belief system: overachievement, strong defensive secondary, and scoring a lot of style points.

Kelly's teams at Central Michigan and Cincinnati rank among their school's best at points allowed and points scored. On offense, his strategy is to never let up; the only way to get noticed is to win big.

Most notable is how resourceful Kelly is with what he's given, and how effective he has been at "coaching up". Both programs are not elite in their respective states, so Kelly has had to make do with lesser athletes, and has overachieved.

Like his Big East colleague Rich Rod, Kelly will be a scary good coach at whatever elite program he eventually lands at.

Florida State's Teams Under Bobby Bowden

Bobby Bowden's edge is gone. But don't tell that to his players.

The clear lack of direction in the Seminoles' camp has resulted in inexplicable losses to teams against whom they have every advantage, talent and coaching-wise.

Bowden used to be able to win on pure talent, but because of the onset of parity and the importance of investing risk, that strategy is no longer viable (see also, Carr, Lloyd or Paterno, Joe).

The upset loss to South Florida following the upset win over BYU in Provo bears out this infuriating trend. There's enough talent on the Seminoles to win the ACC, but still keep them out of the realm of national respectability in what must be the tail end of the Bowden era.

Their recruiting remains at or near elite level, but their inability to get it together will gradually erode the myth of the Seminoles superiority as a system. The losers here are the players that continue to buy in while other, better programs in the South pass FSU by.

Auburn's Team Under Gene Chizik

Or, I should say, Auburn's teams under Guz Malzahn. The Tigers' offensive coordinator, Gus Malzahn, was the architect of the hurry-up scoring offense at Tulsa that put up huge numbers in Conference USA play.

Malzahn has taken the formerly-beleaguered Auburn team, a unit that won games mostly on the strength of defense, and converted them into the nation's 3rd-most prolific scoring offense.

In fact, I'll bet Auburn's teams don't want to absorb their coach's personality. Chizik was poor-to-average at overcoming his obvious talent discrepancies at Iowa State, and never scored an upset( unless you count a few unpleasant wins over the Iowa Hawkeyes, their in-state rivals).

If Chizik had a tendency, it would be as the new coach trying to prove himself on the strength of his coordinators or his scheme (see also, Brown, Mack) rather than as a dynamic personality himself.

Unless Auburn hits a roadblock, that shouldn't prove to be a problem.

Wisconsin's Team Under Bret Bielema

Bret Bielema was Wisconsin's defensive coordinator under Barry Alvarez, and, for all we know, is contractually obligated to pound the running game and rely on his shutdown defense regardless of the viability of either.

His obstinacy to the movement towards speed has either given the Badgers a unique edge over undersized teams, or severely handicapped Wisconsin's chances at national recognition, depending on your perspective.

Bielema's system is susceptible to going down early because of the lack of offensive explosion, and the loss of both starting safeties has also called his defense into question.

He's too hardheaded to notice. To him there's just a gap in between the guard and tackle that his running back missed.

Still, he's managed to recruit and field players who believe in the smashmouth system, and the Badgers scored a resounding win over a Spartan team that has yet to win a meaningful game. We'll know more after a few more weeks of Big Ten play.

Iowa's Team Under Kirk Ferentz

Ferentz's strategy is to never lose big, maintain calm, hang around as long as possible and win on defense and special teams plays, as the Hawkeyes did this weekend in defeating Penn State.

He's the Big Ten's version of Frank Beamer or Nick Saban, without the love of zone-blitzing.

His defenses are well-disciplined, and DC Norm Parker particularly loves strong defensive lines, though the Iowa pass defense is emerging as a force.

Ferentz has established a solid running game on the shoulders of a few freshmen in spite of losing Shonn Greene to early draft entry and Jewel Hampton in the preseason.

Iowa's teams win it on the line. If they lose any games this year, it will be against teams that can beat Ferentz in the trenches.

Georgia Tech's Team Under Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson's scheme is important, but his personality is crucial in understanding what makes the Yellow Jackets buzz.

He is detail-oriented and wears a sideline demeanor that is "overwhelmingly displeased" to put it kindly. He loathes missteps, particularly in an offense where execution is the difference between success and failure. The strictures of the triple option leave little room for winged improvisation.

The pitch is not a choice - it is a reaction to circumstances. Johnson makes sure his players get that, and that when it fails (as it did against Miami), it's a matter of execution.

He's trying to instill this hatred of mistakes in his players. And if they don't completely crack, this is another offense that will put up huge numbers on the strength of Johnson's, er, "winning" personality.

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