[NU Sports] No one talking basketball

Tue Jan 5 13:00:17 CST 2010

I agree.

Though there was a great quote from Zeke in the 'trib about Demos.  He
said that the whole team reached out to Demos because he is, "part of
the family".  He knew he had a bad game.  The team rallied around him
and let him know that they would not have made it to Florida without
him.  

You're right about bowl wins too.  The Outback Bowl was the best 4 hour
commercial for NU Football that one could have asked for.  What smart
football kid wouldn't want to part of a team that came back twice from
14 point deficits and had the guts to go for the win with a fake field
goal?

I went back to see if I could find any parallels.  The last bowl the New
Mexico State Aggies went to was in 1960.   They won.  Kent State lost
the only bowl they have been to in 1972.  SMU and Temple had the next
longest droughts end this year.  SMU won.  Temple lost.  

As far as "smart" football school bowl records, Stanford is 9-10-1 (1-4
over the last 15 years).  Vandy is 2-1-1 (1-1 over the last 15 years).
Duke is 3-5 (0-2 over the last 15 years).  So at least the teams that we
are competing with for smart football players are not doing
significantly better than us in the post season.

Jeff

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From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com]
On Behalf Of cherron604 at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 12:27 PM
To: bwdolphin146 at yahoo.com; nwu-sports at tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] No one talking basketball

In my humble opinion,

We need a guy kicking off who can put the ball in or through the end
zone often.  Auburn had that, we didn't.

We need a punter who can consistently kick them high and long, and drop
them near the coffin corner to limit the return guys options

We need a backup kicker who has at least kicked field goals or extra
points, so that if something happens to our starter, we have a
believable option coming off the bench.  Against Auburn, nobody believed
that our backup was even a legitimate kicker.

I do wish we would win another bowl game someday, but that is mostly
selfishness.  As a group, what do we think of the 'Bowl game win
drought', other than the fact that it is an easily quoted number on
ESPN, and allows anchors and analysts short on insight and/or analysis
to quote something that makes them sound clever ? 

a) I don't think any potential recruits care - the fact that we have
been to 7 bowls in the last 14 years (5 of them very competitive,
exciting games) is or should be far more important to them than the fact
that we have ended up on the short end of them lately.

b) We care as fans because we have watched or attended the 7 bowls, and
we naturally prefer winning to losing, but the value of bowls (it seems
to me) consists of added practices, greater program visibility
(recruiting and attendance), a treat for the players, and a chance to go
someplace warm for the fans, and we are (it seems to me) reaping these
benefits.  Have we lost any recruits due to losing Bowl games ?

c) This whole thing we have been doing is a journey.  First we had to
learn to look respectable in games, then we had to start winning games.
Then we had to start winning conference games.  Finally we had to start
putting together winning seasons, then winning conference titles (our
three titles since 95 are still the moments that give me gooseflesh).
>From that we have moved to playing in bowls.  Soon we will learn to win
most of them (like Penn State does), then it will be time to learn how
to compete for National Championships.  It's a difficult journey, and
not everybody can complete that journey, but we need a special kind of
coach, special assistants, and very special kids.  It would appear that
we are progressing well in this journey, but we are not 100% there yet.

Anyone who understands facts would see clearly that the '61 year bowl
game win drought' is fairly meaningless, since for 26 of those years (49
to 75), only 1 team, the conference champion, got to play in a bowl.
And for 8 of those years (73-80, very conservatively), we weren't even
attempting to win football games, much less bowl games.  So a more
meaningful stat is that we have gone to bowls in 4 of the last seven
seasons, losing those games, on average, by 6.5 points.

I am already looking forward to fall 2010, and seeing what we can manage
next season.

Chuck Herron   Tech '85 

-----Original Message-----
From: bwdolphin146 at yahoo.com
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Sent: Sun, Jan 3, 2010 1:30 am
Subject: [NU Sports] No one talking basketball

... Thank goodness. 
I was at a 2003 (I think) game against Wisconsin when the fumblerooski
Fg worked or a key score and the Bucky fan I was with was yelling
"Fake!" from the outset not that that helped any) so perhaps it is easy
to spot. 
I still agree with going for the win, though. 
To my mind the biggest thing about next year is eliminating the need
this year's eam had to get (at the least) 10-14 points behind before
starting to play (PSU nd Wisky the exceptions). We were exceedingly
fortunate to beat Purdue, ndiana, and Iowa after double-digit deficits
and we lost to Syracuse and Auburn ecause we fell behind early. That has
to stop. 
My second worry is special teams and no one who watched the Outback Bowl
could isagree.  
Third is who replaces McManis, to my mind the biggest defensive
playmaker at NU ince Fitz. 
Brad Wilson
ent on the Sprint(r) Now Network from my BlackBerry(r)
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