I apologize in advance for this post.

[StangEsq]

[EDIT: Sorry for putting this back at the top of the list. Please note that this references last year's debacle at UNT]

Captain's log. Another 4:00 a.m. post.

I am more depressed and p!ssed off today about SMU football than I have ever been. I went to SMU for seven years through the 90s and have watched this team since I was a kid. With expectations at post-death penalty high this year, this team sunk to a new all-time low last night.

All apologies to the current players, most of whom are busting their @sses for the team and don't deserve to be bashed as individuals, but what the @*#&% @^$#&^$# was that on the field last night? That, my friends, was not football... it was a complete and utter joke.

More importantly, what is there to be excted about with SMU football? Everyone can just officially shut their @sses about anything positive with this team or our football program. There isn't one thing to be hopeful about, and if you think otherwise you're a sunshiner and seriously delusional. The program has ZERO HOPE. ZERO HOPE. Our quarterback situation is probably the worst in division 1. We have big, fast wide receivers who can't catch a cold in a snowstorm. We have defensive backs who make plays on the ball as if it were a nuclear warhead. We have two pathetically [deleted] recruiting classes on the board and after this year's joke of a season, we'll be served up another round of bottom-feeding next year and great excitement about signing a couple of the area's top 100 players.

The @#$*&^(#*@ worst part of everything, though, is that Phil Bennett couldn't coach his way out of a nutsack. He's a great guy and I really have rooted for him to succeed here, but it isn't working. This team is PATHETIC. We're the most ill-prepared and poorly coached team I have ever seen, including a few pee-wee footbally teams I have been associated with. EVERY fucquing decent play we make is followed, WITHOUT FAIL, by a penalty, fumble, interception or the like. On a couple of plays, I was waiting for a safe to fall out of the sky and land on someone. The game last night against NTSU was just fucquing embarrassing. Our team is a joke. What else is new?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm beyond sick of being part of the laughing stock of college football. I'm tired or guaranteeing to friends that the team will be better... that we'll post a winning record or that we're on the verge of being able to stay on the field with mediocre programs like TCU and Tech (yeah, I saw the fluke victory last year against TCU... spare me... ask Robot Greggo about blind squirrels and broken clocks). I'm tired of having false hopes of (GOD FORBID!!!) a winning season. Which will come first, a bowl game for SMU or the apocalypse?

Here are a few predictions for the future: we're not going to win [deleted] this year. We're going to get our fucquing @sses handed to us and holy [deleted] we're going to lose to sam houston junior college and probably el centro, if they can put together a team in time to play us next year. Then Justin Willis will either become a rock star or transfer, followed by a starting role in the NFL. Next year we can start a new mediocre freshman and play QB and running back roulette for another 12 games. We'll hire a firm to find us a new coach and the cycle will begin anew. Maybe it's all part of God's plan to to eradicate SMU from NCAA football relevancy and slowly make 99% of the country forget that our otherwise fine instituion even exists. Pure genius the plan is.

The worst part is that there's not a d@mned thing we can do about it. Alumni throwing money at it apparently doesn't help. A large endowment means very little. Making small changes to the admissions process is like wiping sweat off of your face using your dog's @ss as a towel. Hiring new coaches is pointless... they all turn out to lack severely in coaching ability, recruiting ability, or both. Bennett is already in the middle of a 2nd straight complete failure in recruiting, and next year will be number three after we lose all momentum with this year's 1-11 work of art (if we play 11 games let it go, I don't have any desire to even look at the schedule to verify how many games we're playing). We're losing to schools that shouldn't even be in D1. We're going to be lucky to win the next two games against spare teams that we wouldn't even have thought of playing 20 years ago. Just like the Texas Rangers, we are going to S U C K until the day I die and probably well beyond that. There is no hope. We wil always have a pathetic offense, and we will never average 20 points in a season. It's the curse of death penalty. Did we sell Babe Ruth also? No wait, even the Red Sox won something recently.

Not SMU. Football is officially dead here. I am tired of this [deleted]. Give it up, SMU. It's time to make another gutless move and throw in the towel like we did Track and baseball. Spare us the 40-point losses against respectable teams and the 20-point losses against teams like NTSU that good high schoool teams could compete with. Give our enslaved loyal followers respite from the continuous beating that is SMU football. Raise us up from the depression on 9 out of 10 weekends during football season.

I have been a die-hard SMU fan for years... I go to games and sit until the end while we get our @sses handed to us, I go to basketball games and I have listened to basketball games on stations that sound like we have a tin cup and wire stretching from my house to Moody (I know, this is a football rant, but while I'm on the subject, why not add in some basketball frustration).

This [deleted] is just that... a steaming, heaping pile of pony [deleted]. We are a disgrace to college sports. I apologize in advance and wish the best to the guys who have some talent and deserve some modicum of coaching and fan support beyond the 10,000 who make it out to our games. I'm going to concentrate my thoughts on rooting for the Cowboys on Sundays. Wake me in the year 2090 when we win a Division III championship against UTA or we play Highland Park in an under-25 city of Dallas championship or something. This [deleted] is going to get worse. I just can't take it anymore. I am going to have a heart attack from getting p!ssed off about our football team. I am signing off... I am done. I must quit SMU football.

Good night and good luck.

[Insane_Pony_Posse]

re: It's time to make another gutless move and throw in the towel like we did Track and baseball

Dude we just built a 43 million dollar football stadium.

We are not cancelling our football program.

I think Orsini is going to address all of your valid complaints.

[RGV Pony]

Aside from throwing in the towel, I agree with StangEsq 100%.

[bagice]

That post pretty much sums up the way I feel about the current situation.

Time to tear it down and start over again. We have to look at TCU for hope. They sucked for a long time but finally did something about it...and they turned it around fairly quickly. Maybe one day we will do something about it too. The ball is in Orsini's court to turn this around.

This has to be our final wake up call, if we don't get it now, we never will. Losing that game is rock bottom, if the necessary changes are not made to compete in D1 football we should give up. It is a shame to build such nice facilities and let them go to waste like this...

[ALEX LIFESON]

I think with the latest touch-ups, it's 58 million.

[Blunt Pony]

Can we make this a sticky post. This is a must read. This essay encompasses what most of us die hards feel. Lucy once again pulled the football away from the Charlie Brown program that is SMU football.

[03Mustang]

Agreed. Blow it up, start over. Fire Bennett and his entire staff and bring in a big name. Look at TCU, UCF, South Carolina, and even frickin' Navy...it can be done and quickly. Our players have talent but no internal support.

Do it and do it quickly.

[Ponymon]

Ponyrider1947 appears to have hit upon the reason for the continuing failure of our players to perform. He has made a habit of humiliating our players and coaches in front of the team. Evidentally, this is having the opposite effect and the players are underperforming because of it. I also wonder if the word about this coaching technique has gotten out to potential recruits who may be taking us off their lists because of it? Bennett needs to learn how to be a MOTIVATOR not a putdown artist if this team is to succeed!

[covok48]

It's like you've read my mind. I'm a senior who's only wish to go to a bowl game. Now that it's not even a remote possibility, I have the next 50-60 years to be a bitter old fan griping about how good we had it once...before I was even born.

[mr. pony]

[quote="Insane_Pony_Posse"][
[color=blue]Dude we just built a 43 million dollar football stadium. We are not cancelling our football program.[quote]

Ford would be a real nice soccer facility. Real nice.

I must say, I am in agreement with most of this post. I've suffered with this crap for too long too. It's really quite sickening. I love SMU football.

Even when we sucked in most of the 60s and 70s, those guys could come out on a given Saturday and give better teams all they wanted.

They would compete - give you something to cheer about, reason to hope. Ricky Wesson, Arthur Whittington, Emmanuel Tolbert, Gary Hammond, Putt Choate, Mike Livingston, Mac White.

But this ain't football, folks. It's some sort of perverted, lost-in-space, debacle of an exercise that's grown d#mn old.

I find myself wondering if these players care - care about SMU, I mean.
Other teams we play seem to be playing for their school, like it means something to them.

Do our guys have a purpose? Do they have a leader on the team? They look totally lost. Have they just quit?

Was anybody on the line for that first punt at UNT ready to protect the punter? How could that happen? It was gang-busters - one big green wave came through there.

And how does a one-handed receiver come up with 132 yards of receiving??

Coaching is a big part, but come on. Are you a team?? You've let SMU down. There's really no excuse.

[Stallion]

I thought they ran the punt formation shift to perfection. Why is time spent at practice on this stupid exercise.

[LawSchoolPony]

i think i agree w/ most of what this original post said....which is sad, i have been a fan for so long. I had 2 people at church ask me what was wrong today, it was that evident on my face that I'm just sick of it all. I don't even like the fact that I'm that "wrapped up" in all this junk. I'm mad at myself for buying into the hype, and getting all excited about this season when it was just "business as usual" around here.

If SMU games were on tv, I'd get a generator and sit in my Blvd. tent every game rather than waste my time at the stadium.

[jtstang]

I thought they ran the punt formation shift to perfection. Why is time spent at practice on this stupid exercise.

Thay should take punt out of the playbook.

[Dopey Doowrong]

WAH! WAH! I want to win! I want to win! WAH! WAH!

WINNING isn't EVERYTHING, people! Phil Bennett is a nice guy. Do you want to FIRE a nice guy?? WELL DO YOU???

[RE Tycoon]

Great post StangEsq. You summed up my feelings and I'm sure many more fans feelings about this so called "program". Apparently your personal hell continues as the Cowboys followed their college brethren by losing.