{"id":196541,"date":"2025-09-01T20:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T01:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=196541"},"modified":"2025-09-01T20:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T01:28:15","slug":"monday-mailbag-special-tuesday-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2025\/09\/01\/monday-mailbag-special-tuesday-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Mailbag: special Tuesday edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong>independent sports<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week\u2019s Monday Mailbag, a day late due to the Labor Day holiday, features a question about Saturday\u2019s Ohio State vs. Texas game, the Midwest Athletic Conference, and a comment and explanation of high school football statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What\u2019s your opinion \u2013 was it Ohio State\u2019s defense or is Arch Manning wildly overrated? Name withheld upon request.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: It was probably a little of both. Ohio State\u2019s defense looked very impressive on Saturday and Manning looked downright overwhelmed at times.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He did show flashes, but those were offset by quite a number of bad passes \u2013 underthrown, passes that sailed, were behind receivers, etc. Plus, there were a couple of drops that didn\u2019t help matters for him.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of the game, I almost felt bad for Manning. Here he was, hyped as the pre-season Heisman Trophy favorite, the potential No. 1 pick in next year\u2019s NFL draft, etc. and he looked\u2026not good. Obviously, his last name and his family tree has a lot to do with the hype. If it was anyone else, he probably would have spent at least some of the second half watching another quarterback taking snaps, but there\u2019s no way Texas could have done that. The expectations were\/are crazy high for him.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I never understood the hype. If he was truly that good, why couldn\u2019t he beat out Quinn Ewers, who turned out to be average to slightly above average while at Texas? This is not to say he\u2019s not good or can\u2019t be good \u2013 he very well may turn out to be a star someday but at least for now, expectations need to be tempered.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What\u2019s going on in the MAC? It seems like there were some surprises Friday night. Name withheld upon request.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: The MAC went 6-4 in Week No. 2 but there were perhaps a couple of surprises. I\u2019m surprised Minster lost by four touchdowns to Minster \u2013 didn\u2019t see that coming. I thought Parkway would defeat Delphos Jefferson, but I\u2019m not shocked the Wildcats won. Lima Central Catholic was a tough matchup for Delphos St. John’s and I’m not sure that’s really considered an upset. As far as the other game \u2013 Coldwater vs. Clinton-Massie \u2013 I\u2019m not shocked. While I thought Coldwater would win, Clinton-Massie has a rock solid program. They\u2019ve made the playoffs every single year since 2002 (not a misprint) and they\u2019ve won three state championships (2012, 2013 and 2021) and finished as the runner-up in 2017. Ever see them play? They line up in the two tight end wishbone and slug it out. It\u2019s definitely old school football. Friday\u2019s game was a showcase between two powerhouses.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MAC still has six undefeated teams, including of course Marion Local, who has now won 66 consecutive games.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

C: It might be a good idea for you to explain how football stats are kept \u2014 the unofficial ones that may appear in various news publications and the official ones \u2014 why they may vary and the publication timing factor of each. Name withheld upon request<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

A: No problem. At the local high school level, each football team has an official stat keeper. It may be someone who has that title and logs the numbers after each play, or it might be done by an assistant coach or the head coach while watching video of the game after its conclusion. At the local level, sportswriters and sports broadcasters might keep their own stats for use in a story and\/or on the air. I guarantee if you put 10 of all of us in a press box during a game, we\u2019re going to come out with 10 different sets of numbers. Most of the time, the numbers will be close or very similar, but everyone sees the game a little differently. Sometimes the yardage may be off because, for example, the ball is placed just inside the 40-yard line. Is it counted as the 40 or 39? Those little differences can add up. Other times, if it\u2019s tough to read the numbers and teams are in the hurry-up offense, was it No. 20 or No. 28 that carried the ball?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, the person designated as the stat keeper has the final say. Those are the numbers that are submitted to the WBL and the NWC for weekly statistical leaders reports.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often times, the official numbers are available shortly after the game or the next morning. At higher levels of football \u2013 college and pro \u2013 they\u2019re available immediately, but that\u2019s a whole different ballgame, no pun intended.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are a couple of funny stories on stats, experiences from my time covering sports. I\u2019m not going to name names, but these are true stories.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One school, not from here, but in north central Ohio, had a program that struggled for many years. One particular season, the defense was being gashed week in and week out. I remember games where opponents would rush for 400+ yards as a team. My stats reflected that, as did others covering the game. When the official stats came out, those numbers were cut in half. Also, the offensive numbers of this particular team were \u201cenhanced.\u201d Instead of 4-of-10 passing for 44 yards, it would come out 6-of-9 for 62 yards. In other words, there was some stat padding taking place on both sides of the ball.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another one. A conference in north central Ohio once had a commissioner who refused to count quarterback rushing yards in the official stats. We literally had a verbal argument about it. \u201cQuarterbacks don\u2019t get rushing yards,\u201d he said. I asked him how he counted it, if on a quarterback keeper, the QB ran 60 yards for a touchdown. His response: \u201cteam yards.\u201d I told him he was dead wrong, but he wouldn\u2019t budge. Here\u2019s the kicker \u2013 in addition to being the conference commissioner, he was also a sportswrite, and the main team he covered ran the wishbone offense. The rest of us (along with the coach) had the quarterback down for just over 1,000 yards rushing for the season, but it never showed up in the official conference stats.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, we don\u2019t have issues like those around here.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have a question or comment for the next Monday Mailbag, please email it to sports@thevwindependent.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent sports This week\u2019s Monday Mailbag, a day late due to the Labor Day holiday, features a question about Saturday\u2019s Ohio State vs. Texas game, the Midwest Athletic Conference, and a comment and explanation of high school football statistics. Q: What\u2019s your opinion \u2013 was it Ohio State\u2019s defense or is Arch Manning wildly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-05 00:45:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196574,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196541\/revisions\/196574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}