In previous posts, we've taken a look at the general evolution of how we watch and follow sports and used the magic DVR machine to go back and analyze a big gain in the Oklahoma State game.  Just today, we posted our first podcast on this site.  It's a brave new world at BOTC, only three years behind most of the other blogs.

That said, we haven't really talked much about how we actually view sports these days.  Of course, there's always the option of going to the game itself, assuming you live somewhat near the venue and can afford a ticket.  For decades, TV was the next best option, as you could at least see the action unfolding even if you weren't there.  That was limited, however, by whether the game was on, which was an issue when broadcasts were very limited back in the 1980s and 1990s.  I never would have imagined the day when 10 of K-State's 12 games would be on TV and every single basketball contest would be available, but here we are.  Assuming your school or team had a good radio broadcaster, listening on the radio could work.  The good radio guys from back in the day described the action so well a lot of people felt like they really were there.

One other aspect of how we view the actual games is the people with whom we watch them.  KSB touched on this in an excellent essay where he talked about listening to K-State games on the radio with his dad.  I can describe some of my best memories of games based more on who I enjoyed the game with, rather than the actual game action itself.  There was last year, when mystman995 came to Manhattan and we all met the Rock M crew before and after the game.  We could talk for hours about the weekend in Austin when K-State beat Texas in 2007.  Or maybe my sophomore year in college when a huge group of us got together at the house where four of my friends lived and watched the agonizing loss to Texas in Austin.  Perhaps it was the last-minute decision to go to Kansas City with my friend Dave that December and watch the Cats take on undefeated Oklahoma.  Maybe it was later that evening, when I saw the 65-year-old man next to me at the game hold back tears because he never thought he'd see the day when K-State would win a conference championship.

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It's no secret that K-State is pretty bad against the run.  OK, that's an understatement, as K-State is the worst FBS team at stopping the run, yielding 228.5 yards per game.  

K-State's problems against the run are multi-factorial.  For one, the Cats aren't especially big across the defensive line.  The starters against Oklahoma State were Brandon Harold (258 lbs.), Prizell Brown (284 lbs.), Ray Kibble (295 lbs.) and Antonio Felder (243 lbs.).  As you'll see in the play we analyze, OSU's offensive line didn't have much trouble locking up the defensive line and getting a push at the point of attack.

So a lack of size on the DL is one problem.  But the positioning of the linebackers and the run support of the safeties also comes in for scrutiny here.  Hit the jump and we'll take a look at a simple counter play that went for a 29-yard gain for Kendall Hunter in the first half.

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In the past, I've written about how I remember listening to ball games (both football and basketball) with my dad on a transistor radio. We would take it with us to his work shed out on his boss's farm, and listen through the crackle of static, as Stan Weber ran for first downs, or Mitch Richmond drained jump shots. I think that the crackle of static is one reason I still enjoy listening to games on AM radio from time-to-time, no matter if the Cats are playing or not. Just that sound brings back memories of those days in the 1980s, when Dad and I would struggle to get the antenna situated just right, so that our reception for the game would be perfect.

How times change.

Now, it's no longer a matter of lugging your transistor to just the right spot in the work shed (or house, or apartment, or wherever you lugged it to back in the 80s), tweaking the antenna position to just the right place, and gently massaging the tuning knob, in an attempt to land at exactly the right spot on the dial. Instead, we simply have to figure out where the "stream" of the game is, if we want to listen to Wyatt and Stan's call of the game, or Google around a bit to find out what station might be carrying it on television, and if that station might also be streaming the television feed online (a la ESPN3, for example). Now, in lieu of watching small images, on my family's 17" color television (what can I say, we were poor), my brother and I watched the Wildcats decimate the Jaywaks 59-7 on his monstrous high-def widescreen television. It was a thing of beauty!

The technlogical advances, however, are not without their issues as well. Last week, for instance, many of us who were listening to the Cats game against Baylor had the audio stream cut off right as Carson Coffman was lofting a fourth-down pass with only about 30 seconds left in the game. It should be noted that that was something that never happened when listening on a transistor radio.

With that said, I don't consider myself a technophobe in any way. I love technology, and all that it has allowed us to do. As I'm now living in North Carolina, without the benefit of technology, I would never get to listen to Wyatt and Stan's call of the games, and would often be shut out of any television coverage as well.

As a former football coach, one thing I used to really enjoy doing was charting the plays, based upon the radio call of K-State games. Internet technology has made this unnecessary, as nearly every online box score also includes a "play-by-play" feature, from which one can get the same information that I so tirelessly recorded by hand back then.

It would be easy to develop "good old days syndrome" about the years before all these technological advances. But, if you asked my 12-year-old self back in 1986 whether he'd like to have a little computer that let him look up every possible stat about his beloved Wildcats, and offered him the chance to watch his Cats in high-def, widescreen glory, I know what his answer would be. Still, I can't help but be reminded of times that seem more pure in their technological simplicity, by all the exciting new technologies through which we experience the Cats in 2010.

This is the first in a series of posts sponsored by Samsung.