College Football Coaches as Star Wars Characters

Jan 12, 2015; Arlington, TX, USA; Oregon Ducks head coach Mark Helfrich on the field during warm-ups prior to the game against the Ohio State Buckeyes in the 2015 CFP National Championship at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Mark Helfrich: C-3PO

The Oregon Ducks football program does absolutely nothing but create protocol droids who use math and numbers to determine football games.

And it gets them very far each year, but it’s not enough to win the national championship.

As the coach of the Ducks right now, Helfrich is the most relevant protocol droid in college football, just like C-3PO was in the Star Wars movies.

See, the flaw with Oregon is you use protocol droids as assistance. You don’t use them to run the show, because they can still be wrong.

In Empire Strikes Back, C-3PO annoyed everybody by constantly telling Han Solo his odds based on his decision making while operating the Millennium Falcon trying to avoid attackers, most notably going into an astroid field and hiding from an Empire Ship in plain sight. But Han was right on both counts because he trusted his gut and has unnatural skills.

Oregon does not take into account unnatural plays and going with your gut, and it does them in every time.

This makes Helfrich just like C-3PO. Both do their jobs well, but what they do should be the role of a statistician on the team, not the end-all be-all. And that is the problem with analytics in football in general.

Next: Bobby Petrino: Jabba the Hutt