Wednesday Items

-- From Bobby Bowden's presser:

On responsibility he's given Chuck Amato:
He's ideal. Another words, in my years of coaching I really never had but two coaches that the more you piled on, the more they liked. I never had but two like that and Chuck is one of them. Really, coaching the linebackers is really is second duty which he does an excellent job on but his other duty is, if I'm gone, I'm not at the office, it's in his hands. You take a lot of the administrative things in our office, that was he does. Now Mickey Andrews is our Associated Head Coach but Chuck, we call him Executive, to help handle the problems, the discipline, the liaison in the lunch room, the liaison in housing and things like that. He does a good job on that. You give him a job and you can count it done.

Chuck Amato, Chief Meatball Apportionment Equity Officer. There are a couple of other questions about Chuck as well. Number of times Bobby says doggone during press conference: 3.

-- The Seminoles are dealing with some injury problems along the defensive line:

DTs Budd Thacker (toe) and Andre Fluellen (elbow) both are questionable for Saturday's game against N.C. State. DE Neefy Moffett is day-to-day with a hip injury.

"It [elbow] feels worse than it did last week," Fluellen said. "I probably hurt it a little bit more playing last week. It feels worse this week than it did last week."

Fluellen also said that not being able to extend his elbow all the way has led to some frustrating changes in his playing style.

"I can't shoot my left hand out, so it limits me a lot. I've got to do some things that I'm not used to doing and play with some techniques I'm not used to playing."

-- Running back Antone Smith has struggled a bit:

Junior running back Antone Smith, who has waited three years to be the Seminoles' featured back, is struggling to get going this season. After gaining just 15 yards on 12 carries this past Saturday, Smith is averaging 3.6 yards per carry.

FSU offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher acknowledged that Smith isn't running great, but he suggested that most of the tailback's problems stem from a lack of push from the offensive line.

''Antone's not playing poorly,'' Fisher said. ``I mean, we're not totally just knocking guys out of there. We're not disappointed in Antone, we just have to function better as an offense and get him the ball in some different ways and get him out there and get him going.''

Antone, my good man, this is your lucky week.

-- An NC State professor is one of the creators of a football win probability/win expectancy system (tip 'o the cap to Struttin' Wolf for the link).

They began by downloading plays -- about 180,000 -- from every NFL regular-season game from 2002 through 2006, then creating an "objective analysis" for predicting what percentage a team has of winning on every down during a game.

Included in the complex formula, which can be applied to college and pro games, are seven key elements -- game score, line of scrimmage, time remaining, down, distance, timeouts for the offense and timeouts for the defense.

Example: Five minutes into Sunday's Cleveland-Baltimore game, the Browns had the ball, third-and-goal at the Ravens' 2-yard line. At that moment, Cleveland had a 69 percent chance of winning, Baltimore a 31 percent chance.

Spread, win probability, spread! And coming soon: win probability for college hoops.