What we should have expected (in hindsight)

[The PonyGrad]

Most of us expect this season to be an improvement over last season. Why did we think that? We won three of the last five and could start the year with a "proven" QB. And all that great recruiting...

Let's review.

From last season we lost our top three receivers: Hampton, Cardwell, and Francis (what happened to him, should be a sophmore?) The represented 115.7 YPG. Somehow the return of the Comet let us ignore these losses. This may have had something to do with Bartell's problems, or not. Anyway Bartell is gone. On the line Chandler, Davis and Hampton graduated.

Kris Briggs the #2 rusher, #1 in YPC and #1 in TDs graduated. And no Shan D. this year.

KK and Shan D. and maybe another should have done the trick. Not to be.

On defense we lost Garrett (NFL) and Vic Viloria and Lute Croy. Between them we lost 2 of our top five tacklers, 2 of top 4 TFL, and our top two in interceptions.

It was a recipe for lower expectations and adding to that the loss of Shan D. and the disappearance of Bartell and you have a bomb of a season.

Yes, we had a great freshmen class but they can not be expected to fill these holes in their first year. :no:

<small>[ 10-28-2003, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: The PonyGrad ]</small>

[PonyFan]

Very good points. I hadn't broken it down that specifically, in terms of those players we lost. That kind of loss is significant for any team, and for a team with as little depth as we had .... it's showed this season.

[Johnny Rock]

Well put Pony Grad. That is why I do not blame the coaches for this season or last for that matter. It is easy to second guess play calling, etc. from the bleachers, but the true problems lies with the last decade of higher recruiting restrictions placed on the athletes. For some reason, the administration feels that SMU'S academic standing will suffer if standards are lowered to allow the coaches to recruit from a wider pool of talent. This has not lowered Miami's academic standing, nor has it lowered TCU's academic standing. I am puzzled to what is going on at SMU. We desperately want to move to a better athletic conference but we do not take the necessary steps to improve and but our coaches in the best possible chance for success. That is why I would not mind seeing SMU drop out of Division 1-A athletics so that we may compete with other schools and more money can be used on academics like the administration wants. Why get the crap kicked out of you by some of the worst teams in Division 1-A every week when we could drop down and compete and win games? Any answers or just more b.s.?

[FloridaMustang]

johnny-- the problem is, everybody wants the money and publicity (and interest) generated from I-A, but they don't want to compromise SMU's academic standards because the SMU alumni with influence are pretentious morons that demand that they be able to throw money at a problem and that it should be instantly fixed without having to sacrifice their pride.

it's insanity.

hopefully, hitting rock-bottom this year will convince the bastards that changes must be made or their pride will have up and left.

<small>[ 10-27-2003, 07:50 AM: Message edited by: FloridaMustang ]</small>

[Nacho]

I'm not into excuses.

I can't refute all your points PonyGrad. Cardwell was a loss. He was the best WR on the team last year which says tons. Francis had some nice catches and some bad drops. Hampton gave us a presence at TE, not that he was used very much anyway. Brigggs was a backup to KK. Shan D didn't play. Bennett has stated that the freshmen are an upgrade at DT. Viloria was injured. Garrett was a loss. Every team loses players every year. We had a lot of starters who returned.

This sounds like more excuse making. I don't see how that serves any useful purpose. We are what we are. The coaches have to share a huge part of the blame. They haven't gotten the best out of the team. We have regressed.

<small>[ 10-27-2003, 07:56 AM: Message edited by: Nacho ]</small>

[FloridaMustang]

Nacho - what the else is there to do. obviously, there are excuses, because no coach in the history of college football can be this bad. ive been a part of this program and i dont believe that coach bennett is a bad coach. i think that he chose the wrong coordinators from the get-go. what we needed were well-respected coordinators that knew the x's and o's as part of programs that all had similar schemes. these coordinators that we have can't find common ground on anything. what we basically have is a bunch of bickering little boys that are destroying this team at the sake of these kids that i believe are busting their tails off. bennett and his staff are anything BUT motivators. and when times are tough, even a bad coach can get by on motivation (ie tyrone willingham).

bennett doesnt foster a very honest environment. these guys are all buddies, yet they all fear bennett. there needs to be an environment where they can all speak up and work out a GAME PLAN week by week that doesn't stink worse than a crusty [deleted].

<small>[ 10-27-2003, 08:06 AM: Message edited by: FloridaMustang ]</small>

[Stallion]

that IS one big excuse-the problem is not who we lost last year that is killing us-its the fact that the players replacing them aren't doing the job. Come on-we lost some good kids but none we're even NFL materal

[OldPony]

This isn't the NFL. Players graduate from every team. That's a BS excuse. One that you might find a little more tolerable if we had graduated a good team. We had a lot of guys coming back. This team has disintegrated right before our eyes. I asked earlier if we had a bunch of high school coaches but it appears we have some guys with solid experience but they just can't coach together. Copeland needs to find out what is going on. Copleand knows football. He should be able to judge if our schemes are decent. If he watches games and practices, he might learn what is going on otherwise too. This is a train wreck. I have been an ardent fan for many years but with this kind of performance, it has become very difficult. I can find local colleges to watch that I have interest in and if someone doesn't do something soon, many who feel like I do will switch loyalties because it just isn't any fun to watch a horrible team get beaten by very bad teams. Recruiting has ZERO to do with what we are now watching. When your Sagarin rating is below schools who don't give scholarships, you are living on borrowed time. Bennett better perform next year or he should be fired. This is coaching, not recrutitng. Thanks God we don't have to play a powerhouse like Cornell or Harvard or teams from leagues I never even heard of- otherwise we would find out how bad this really is. Bennett should clean house immediately after the season. If he doesn't, then Copeland should. This bickering and BS has got to stop. As Dennis Miller would say after his rant "That's my opinion but I could be wrong".

[GoRedGoBlue]

Originally posted by FloridaMustang:
johnny-- the problem is, everybody wants the money and publicity (and interest) generated from I-A, but they don't want to compromise SMU's academic standards because the SMU alumni with influence are pretentious morons that demand that they be able to throw money at a problem and that it should be instantly fixed without having to sacrifice their pride.

it's insanity.

hopefully, hitting rock-bottom this year will convince the bastards that changes must be made or their pride will have up and left.

I disagree. The alumni with influence WANT the football program back on top. It is the ACADEMIC leadership (not Turner, the Senate Faculty) that has been holding us back...

The handcuffs were JUST release less than TWO years ago...

As Bennett has been saying, the FACTS are that 41 of the 78 scholarship players are FRESHMEN...

Let's inverse that:

of the players on the team...
10 are SR, something like
13 are JR and
15 are SOPH...

and that includes WALK-ONS!!

Let's not FORGET that these are the recruiting years that SMU was on PROBATION (99,00,01) or thereabouts, where we were limited by 4 per year (available scholarships in 1999 up to 85, minus 4 = amount you could offer in year one, then available up to 81 in 2000 minus 4, then available up to 77 in 2001).

THIS TEAM IS IN FACT VERY YOUNG.

[EastStang]

We should not yet give up the ghost and drop to 1-AA unless Tulane, Rice, TCU, and Baylor do the same. I went to grad school at a 1-AA institution and it was fine for that school it is in the east and its historic and natural rivals were almost all 1-AA as well. Even if the above named schools went 1-AA, it would be a hard pill for our alums to swallow.

[Stallion]

GOREDGOBLUE---when are you going to wake up and see that SMU will always have an underclass dominated team if it doesn't take JUCOs and transfers. You recruit at least 22-25 each plus at least 1/2 of the third class is redshirted. Right there every year we will have 55-62 players ho are underclassmen-CAN'T YOU PEOPLE COUNT t is the oldest excuse in the book for every losing program and its a pile for dung. The reason many teams in FB and BB rely on JUCOs and transfers is precisely to have a more mature experienced team with more Juniors and Seniors on the Roster.

<small>[ 10-27-2003, 01:03 PM: Message edited by: Stallion ]</small>

[OldPony]

Anyone who thinks that the disgrace that SMU is putting on the field this year is a talent issue isn't getting it. There are teams with much less talent that are better. Guys- We aren't even in the top 25 of D1aa. That is not a talent issue!!!!!!!
If we were playing midway up in the WAC and losing close games, I would get on my talent rant but this is total BS.

[Stallion]

You know I've heard you post these anecdotal comments for years-you've been wrong for years and will continue to be wrong for years because you don't take the time to study the facts behind your statements. It is a fact that the senior recruiting class is composed of not a single player who made the Texas Football Top 150, that the junior and senior classes were universally rated at the bottom of all schools in Texas, that the senior class had something like only one 3 star player in the entire class. And yet you continue to come on here and claim our problems don't have anything to do with recruiting. You and the rest of the blind bats who want to fire each and every coach hired after two years can post that crap all you want but just be sure I'm going to call you on it and show you that you are quite wrong.

[Hoop Fan]

well OP, the games were very close against Nevada and Baylor. Nevada subsequently beat Washington and Baylor whipped Colorado. The fact is that our team has quit and you can trace that directly to the Utep debacle when several crazy things happened including KK fumbling at the one. We ran KK too much that night as always, but you can't blame them for him fumbling after a great 60 yard run. I think the coaches share the blame in this team quitting and losing focus. Nobody can make you give up though, so the players can't be commended either. Its a sad situation, but no one aspect is to blame by itself.

[The PonyGrad]

Originally posted by Nacho:
I'm not into excuses.

I can't refute all your points PonyGrad. Cardwell was a loss. He was the best WR on the team last year which says tons. Francis had some nice catches and some bad drops. Hampton gave us a presence at TE, not that he was used very much anyway. Brigggs was a backup to KK. Shan D didn't play. Bennett has stated that the freshmen are an upgrade at DT. Viloria was injured. Garrett was a loss. Every team loses players every year. We had a lot of starters who returned.

This sounds like more excuse making. I don't see how that serves any useful purpose. We are what we are. The coaches have to share a huge part of the blame. They haven't gotten the best out of the team. We have regressed.

Nacho, I did not intend this to be an excuse, just a statement that we had higher expectations than maybe we should, as fans. Does this excuse the disaster on the field. No.

Now to the content, you did not refute my points with your generalizations. You may make comments like Hampton "not that he was used very much anyway" but in fact he was. The facts are that the three missing receivers accounted for 3/4 of our receiving TDs, almost 2/3s of the yards. Hampton had 33 receptions and 3 TDs. Briggs was a backup, yes, but he had OVER HALF the rushing TDs.

The defensive losses were better accounted for but we did lose HALF of our int production from last year.

Hey, there were 20 seniors last season.

The point about some of the players like ShanD and the Comet and Bartell was to say that their contribution this season was less than hyped for various reasons.

This is not to excuse anything except our (my) initial higher expectations. :confused: