Do other college teams just call it out, get up and run it to get the first down in this situation? It seems like it.
That's all that was needed in the last series last Saturday. 4th and 1/2 yard, get up, run the sneak. Who cares if the whole stadium knows what you're doing. You get the first down and at least get a couple of chances to get closer for a field goal or maybe even get a TD.
Agreed. Our inability to run plays under center when the situation calls for it is indefensible. So is the amount of time it often takes for us to make these decisions and get plays in, as you just pointed out.
I think a lot of our problems are "fixable" if we had a staff that would be open for some change. These aren't had decisions either, literally 80% of our problems could be identified by high school coaches and players.
To simply most of our problems, Campbell and his entire staff are slow to adapt: adapting to the personnel (offensive line), adapting to the opponent in a game (getting killed in an area and waiting until half time to adjust if they even do so at all), and adapting to yardage/down/time critical situations.
He's created a great culture. He's brought in better players. Now he needs mold his staff (get STs coordinator and replace manning), adapt, and come up with better (offensive) scheming.