Good Read on Borges

[SDtiger 0]

Here is a story that I picked from another site about Borges.

Since the Auburn Offensive players seem to be drawing so much draft attention, I feel it my duty to disclose the truth about Auburn's offense and it's Master at the controls, Alan Borges. This is the long version, sorry but he has a story worthy of "Football America". His relevance to this year's draft will be discussed at the end, so feel free to scroll. But if you have a few minutes, especially if you are an Auburn or SEC fan you are advised to read on.

In 1986 Pokey Allen was hired as head coach for the mediocre division II Portland State University Football Team. Allen was another story himself, suffice to say one of football's greatest characters and class acts. He was the quintessential head coach: administrator, delegator, big brother, general, and prankster. See his biography "Pokey". A great man and a great coach. But his football success was largely due to the genius of one of his assistants, Alan Borges. They were both refugees from the USFL. Allen was a DC, who was fired the same night his defense posted a shutout, Borges was an offensive assistant (Disclaimer: please forgive me if I exaggerate or forget exact details, scores, seasons etc. I will try to be accurate). Borges was hired as PSU Offensive coordinator. The first year the players all had to learn a new system and they were 5-6, slightly improved but they were embarrassed by 1-AA bullies Idaho and Montana. The next season there was an uncanny enthusiasm for the long-boring program. It was Allen's wacky TV commercials and the offensive explosion taking place each Saturday. PSU would annihilate conference opponents in the first half. They beat Montana and thrashed Idaho all game but lost on the scoreboard. The team was selected in the final 8 and went to the National Championship in Florence, Alabama losing to eventual Div 1-A Troy State. PSU's defense always had trouble stopping the unfamiliar option offenses at the point of attack.

PSU returned to Florence the next year as well against Div II bully North Dakota State. Once again turnovers and defensive failure cost the game but Pokey's PSU Vikings were all the rage. Fans would design plays and "run" "pass" signs were handed out so the fans could call plays. During the next few years they embarrassed Montana in the Grizzlies brand new stadium and fianally beat Idaho. After that Montana and Idaho refused to play them any more. PSU had to recruit opponents from all over the country to fill their schedule. Oregon and Oregon State were Pac-10 doormats and wanted no part of neighboring PSU. (They would have been smoked).

One day PSU went to Boise to take on the Broncos. On the news the BSU coach told the fans to come out and see the Broncos even though they were playing a lowly division II opponent. Well, It was PSU 29 BSU 0 at halftime (as I recall) and Boise had 19 yards. PSU was doing anything it wanted. So when Boise was looking for a new coach they knew who to hire. Pokey went there with his staff the next year. Borges, however, was offered the PSU head coaching position, but Borges did not want the limelight, he wanted to stay with Pokey and do what he does so well, torture defenses.

Boise's second year under Allen and Borges, they were in the 1-AA National Championship against Youngstown having beat Marshall. Youngstown was loaded with talent and won the game.

These teams all had some great atheletes and NFL prospects but Borges coached greatness into some of the most unlikely players. All three of his QB's won All-American titles and all were under 6' tall. The star RB was 5' 5" but ran a 4.4 and could flatten bigger tacklers by hitting them so low. One playoff game was decided when an emergency 4th string tailback threw a TD pass to an emergency TE who was actually a converted LB in triple OT.

The offense was a finnesse offense, desiged to confuse the defense. Borges would change his plays every week or alter them to make the defense read them, but backwards. He would shift all 5 skill players before a snap, use triple motion, personnel sets, and non-stop play action, always aware of what his "tendencies" were known to be. In all, offensive records were shattered both running and passing, even some of Lomax's records fell. Balance.

Oregon hired Borges away from Boise and the great Pokey passed away after a vicious battle with cancer. Naturally, Oregon was in the Rose Bowl in Borges year II(was that the year they were #2 but got screwed by the BCS?). So he was hired away by Bob Toledo to run UCLA's offense. UCLA's offense exploded, of course, and they were ranked #1 nationally. Hurricane fans probably remember when they came to Miami ranked #1 and got beat, single handedly, by one Edgerrin James. In a shootout, of course. Edge had like 300 yards and five TD's and Miami had the ball last so they won. UCLA's QB was one Cade McNown. A kid from Portland who had heard about PSU. He was another undersized QB who learned to execute Borges' lethal system and nearly won it all except for the defense.

I lost track of Borges after Toledo's firing but read about him during bowl week and realized he was at Auburn now and it all started making sense. Apparently, he had a couple years at talentless and overmatched Cal and Indiana, from which he was rescued by Tommy Tuberville who was in danger of losing his job. Nothing personal, but when teams from the south came to play PSU they were especially exasperated by his offense. They just had never seen anything like it(Just like PSU was ineffective against their options). So now that Borges is in the SEC, Y'all better get familiar with a guy who has the ability to turn regular players into superstars; who can teach a college kid a pro-style offense between classes; designs offenses unlike Y'all have ever seen before; And who has won everywhere he has coached.

Now! (finally!) Think again about your Auburn offensive players in that light! Were they superstars before Al Borges showed up, or was he just devising coverage breakdowns and misleading tacklers so they could pad their stats? I don't know much about Auburn Football so I couldn't tell you whether these kids are top prospects, but I can tell you that anyone that can execute Al Borges' Offense will be very successful with or without lots of talent. And of course Auburn's offense became much more effective this year and those of us from Portland and Boise have a pretty good idea why that is. Just Borges' luck, however, to once again lose out on his opportunity to be the national champion. We'll see what happens next at Auburn, and keep an eye on the offense, it's a thing of beauty! Don't forget how enamored Chicago was by Cade McNown (didn't they take him ahead of Dante?) and look where it got them. Now maybe they should have hired Borges to come to Chicago with him. Maybe he would still be in the league.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the story!

Cheers!

[woods1110 0]

Excellent!!!

Couple of good points from that...

Seems like Borges' best year is his 2nd!!! We shall see...

Also, he has the nack for turning no name players into superstars, well it would be awesome to see Brandon Cox turn into a superstar!

[weaglewagon 1]

Excellent!!!

Couple of good points from that...

Seems like Borges' best year is his 2nd!!! We shall see...

Also, he has the nack for turning no name players into superstars, well it would be awesome to see Brandon Cox turn into a superstar!

149141[/snapback]

i thought cox was already a star? isn't he a lock to be the starter? WT? anybody?

seriously, good read. didn't know all that stuff about the genius of the O.

[AUslug 1]

Borges is brilliant! You know where he gets the brain power? Sunflower seeds, I was at a baseball game recently with a friend and Gorgeous Borges was sitting in front of us and off to the side, and he was taking it to that bag of sunflower seeds!

[StatTiger 3,188]

Thanks for the sharing the article. Here are some numbers to follow up on the article.

I did a little research on Borges during his coaching stays at Portland State ( 1986-92 ) and Boise State ( 1993-94 ).

Portland State:

During his tenure with the Vikings, he developed two QB’s.

1) Chris Crawford: 588-954-7543yds-48tds / 62% / 7.9 avg

2) John Charles: 340-527-5563yds-58tds / 65% / 10.6 avg

Charles numbers were very impressive, established over a two year run. He completed 65% of his passes for over 10 yards per pass attempt. His average of one TD pass per every 9.08 pass attempts was incredible. To put it into better perspective, Danny Wuerffel averaged a TD pass every 10.26 pass attempts during his career at UF.

He also fielded a runningback ( Chris Delgardo ) who finished his career with 4178 yards on the ground and 45 rushing TD’s. This included 20-100 yard games! It appears that Borges had balance at Portland.

Portland’s Yearly Records and average points per game:

1986: 6-5 / 26.2

1987: 11-2 / 31.2

1988: 11-2-1 / 33.8

1989: 9-4 / 29.3

1990: 6-5 / 27.7

1991: 11-3 / 33.6

1992: 9-4 / 38.6

Boise State:

I was unable to find any individual data. In 1993 ( his first year ) BSU went 3-8, scoring only 19 points per game. In 1994, BSU improved to 13-2, scoring 29 points per game. They went from 2-30 pt games to 7-30 pt games in 1994. The following year after Borges left, BSU dropped to 7-4 in 1995 and 2-10 in 1996.

I did not have the TD totals so I averaged out the number of points per game. Here are Coach Borges’ numbers against 7-win opponents:

1995: Oregon / 27 pts / 447.5 yards / 5.34 avg

1996: UCLA / 17 pts / 314.2 yards / 4.53 avg

1997: UCLA / 40 pts / 465.8 yards / 6.35 avg

1998: UCLA / 42.pts / 530.0 yards / 6.82 avg

1999: UCLA / 24 pts / 359.2 yards / 4.88 avg

2000: UCLA / 19 pts / 343.5 yards / 4.94 avg

2001: CAL / 23 pts / 362.7 yards / 4.89 avg

2002: IND / 21 pts / 352.8 yards / 4.92 avg

2003: IND / 9 pts / 253.3 yards / 3.58 avg