Conf USA coaches trying to keep the Mustang down

[tmustangp]

what hell is this crap from the coaches of the conf usa.. I firmly believe their actions showed that they are a little scared of smu this season..

honestly how did sturdivant and martin get left off the preseason list.. Yes jessie henderson made it, but a special teams player is not as impactful as a an offense or defensive player. so the only player they selected preseason was a less impactful player.

I am sorry but when all the media has mutlitple players on the preseason lists, they cannot be wrong if everyone seems to think the same thing..

Justin R., DMart, JoeStud, and AWood, put this on the bulletin board and look at it everyday and show those coaches that their initial fears were correct this season..

[GoRedGoBlue]

I think you are projecting DMNews headline of the article onto the CUSA coaches.

It is reasonable to expect us to finish 4th...every team above us has out recruited us, and has 2-3 years of 'improvements' to show they are good...we have the last half of last season only.

That's not to say we might not be better. But you have to give THOSE teams their due as well.

Houston has gone to two straight bowls, Tulsa won CUSA, UTEP has pretty much won the recruting and transfer wars...and also gone bowling of late.

Having said that, this is the MOST favorable schedule we have EVER had since DP. We have the most ridiculous non-conference schedule, at home vs. the two easiest CUSA-East teams, and have two teams predicted lower than us in the CUSA-W.

We face TULANE after they get thrashed by three straight road games, including LSU the week before us.

Even playing TECH, I'd rather play them in game 1 than game 4, if only to keep the game close for our own psyche's sake.

It doesn't get any better. A competitive team has a winning season under that.

IF we cannot take advantage of all that, then we simply are not even competitive.

[ponyboy]

Yes, but that still doesn't address the oversights of Martin, Sturdivant, Rogers, and Haywood. DMart's going to light the world on fire this year.

[AusTxPony]

At least the CUSA fans on http://www.ncaabbs.com/forums/cusa/phpbb/ seem to be giving us a lot of credit. Most all are picking us to be BOWL - ELIGIBLE (at least 6-6), and many are picking us #2 and #3 in the West. Uplifting news.

[mrydel]

At least the CUSA fans on http://www.ncaabbs.com/forums/cusa/phpbb/ seem to be giving us a lot of credit. Most all are picking us to be BOWL - ELIGIBLE (at least 6-6), and many are picking us #2 and #3 in the West. Uplifting news.

That and Play Station 2 has us pretty close to a BCS bowl.

[tmustangp]

Yes, but that still doesn't address the oversights of Martin, Sturdivant, Rogers, and Haywood. DMart's going to light the world on fire this year.

thank you that was my only point

[GoRedGoBlue]

At least the CUSA fans on http://www.ncaabbs.com/forums/cusa/phpbb/ seem to be giving us a lot of credit. Most all are picking us to be BOWL - ELIGIBLE (at least 6-6), and many are picking us #2 and #3 in the West. Uplifting news.

Does 6-6(3-5) with one win over a 1-AA (thus 5-6 against 1-A), or

or does 6-6(4-4 with loss to 1-AA) somehow get us into a Conference bowl?

[mrydel]

At least the CUSA fans on http://www.ncaabbs.com/forums/cusa/phpbb/ seem to be giving us a lot of credit. Most all are picking us to be BOWL - ELIGIBLE (at least 6-6), and many are picking us #2 and #3 in the West. Uplifting news.

Does 6-6(3-5) with one win over a 1-AA (thus 5-6 against 1-A), or

or does 6-6(4-4 with loss to 1-AA) somehow get us into a Conference bowl?

It would depend on other conference team records and bowl tie ins. Neither of those scenerios get you in without a tie in.

[SMU Football Blog]

six wins and you are bowl eligible. You can count one I-AA game.

Six wins for SMU to be bowl eligible. Whether that gets SMU in a bowl game is another story. As I detailed on my blog some time ago, there will likely be some teams with six wins that don't get an invite; probably somewhere between four to eight teams won't get a bowl invitation.

[GoRedGoBlue]

My point is, we ain't going no where with 6-6, and only 40% shot at 7-5...

4-4 Conference record is 6th - 8th place. There are only 6 bowl tie-ins.

If we go 5-3 in conference (but 7-5) that means we lost to a horrible team (in non-conference)... that also puts us down.

[SMU Football Blog]

Put tie-ins aside for a moment. Some of these conferences are not going to fill all their tie-ins and some have just one tie in or no tie-in at all.

There are 32 bowls, which means there are 64 bowl invites. There are 119 I-A teams. More than 53% of the teams will get invitations. The last time there were 12 games in a season, 70 teams finished with six or more wins. At most, I am guessing there will be 71 teams bowl eligible. You can make a case there won't be more than 60 teams bowl eligible, but that is unlikely. Most likely, 68 or so teams will be eligible.

Of those, around sixteen will be six win teams and a couple will be from the MAC, a couple from C-USA, one from the MWC, one from the Sunbelt, one from the WAC. A few of those teams will go bowling regardless of tie-ins.

I am rambling but the point is six wins doesn't necessarily mean SMU won't go to a bowl game.

[jkflamebo]

*there are 6 bowl tie-ins if the pac-10 does not have a certain number of bowl eligible teams i.e. the hawaii bowl will most likely have WAC vs Pac-10 selection...so basically we better have a good record or we're s.o.l.

[Pony4Life]

I still think that if SMU wins six games, thereby becoming eligible, some bowl will grab the Ponies for the media exposure.

[jkflamebo]

i like to hear that, but if we don't have fans to fill the stands, they'll pick a team with a seasoned bowl fan following. but acutally i could see em picking a team who hasn't been to a bowl in years, maybe it is in our favor

[SMU Football Blog]

Don't buy the media interest argument; it didn't work in 1997. Bunch of teams would be in the mix at 6-6. Last year 27 teams had 5 or 6 wins. Some bunch of those will be competing for a couple of bowl spots at 6-6 or 7-5. It will come down to some combination of size of fan base, media market, wealth of alumni, etc.