... well, at least generally. Read any of the articles about Mike Leach that have come out in the past billion years and you’ll get it. He has a great spread-passing attack that’s productive for two reasons: 1.) All the passing tends to slow down the game clock, giving Leach more time to figure out the defense (he usually blows people out in the second half) and 2.) It’s a high-risk, high reward offense. When looking at Tech’s numbers, you have to look at their efficiencies more than their cumulative totals. The better the players (presumably) the faster they will get Leach’s system moving, and that correlates to efficiency much better than raw yards.

That said, Crabtree and Harrell are possibly the most talented players ever at their positions at Tech. I can’t dig up the link right now, but I believe SMQ has talked about their relative awesome, and I know billyzane at Burnt Orange Nation has. While I don’t think Harrell is (Can I say it? Is it just SMQ that can’t say it?) H&!sm@n-better than his peers at Tech, Crabtree definitely is. I believe if you put a Harrell-level talent in a “normal” offense, you’d see good production, definitely above average, but not anything people would crap themselves over unless he happened to be on an MNC team. Crabtree would put up sick numbers anywhere, because he’s seriously, seriously talented. Tech fans, I’m sorry I said your quarterback wouldn’t get so much attention without Leach teaching him whatever’s on that wristband. I did say he was talented, but I think it’s a fair assessment that he wouldn’t be on everyone’s H&!sm@n dark horse list without the crazy numbers associated with that offense.

As far as the Big 12 having sucky DB’s, that could be the case, or it could be we have sucky DC’s (I know Texas did last year) that can’t keep up with playing a vastly potent offense every week. Seriously, you have A&M’s option-esque disaster, then there are teams like OU and Texas with more conventional offenses but far superior talent, then there’s the pro-style sets at KSU (only dangerous to Texas) and Nebraska, then you’ve got your spread teams, ranging from Kansas, to OSU’s Run-and-gun, to Mizzou’s passing spread, and finally, Texas Tech’s wonky war-machine that is literally run internally by gremlins (Eric Moriss?). It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.

The point is, when a conference has crazy offensive numbers, it’s usually a combination of bad D and good O that’s far more complex than just “sucky DB’s.”

I would agree with you that Rudy probably isn’t deserving of being on the list. He is statistically pretty good, and assuming he stays healthy (which certainly isn’t a slam dunk, if you saw his O-line last year!) he will finish in the top 3 in most of ASU’s career passing categories, as well as having one of the better winning percentages as a starter in Sun Devil history. That said…

His receivers have absolutely bailed him out alot of the time with spectacular catches - without a top flight receiving corps as a sophomore, his stats and the team’s performance plunged. He is not the cool, calm customer that he tried to project as a freshman. And his role in the Sam Keller fiasco cannot be understated - he projected a very laid back, “whatever happens, happens” image that seems very much at odds with how he has conducted himself since.

Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s definitely an above average QB who will find himself in some NFL team’s training camp after he graduates—he’s just not quite as good as he seems to think he is, and is somewhat overly demonstrative on the field. But to rank Wee Willie TuINTama above him as a college QB is ricockulous.