Bowl Projections

[realist96]

Also I am glad you mentioned the teams that fired their coaches, check their boards and see how much they criticize the players. The coaches yes, but the players no.

[ponyscott]

ND/SMU would be a shoot-out 45-42 type of game. I am interested to see how we do against a much larger O/D line

See if you can get your hands on some Marshall tape. That should satisfy your curiosity.

Wow ...exactly.....my wife was even amazed at how big their players were ( and she doesn't notice this stuff usually). The OT's were 6"6-6"8 each and one was 6"8 and 275

[EastStang]

Dear Parent of Future Prospect. This is a fan board of a team that has now had its first winning season in 24 years. Think about that. Your son wasn't even born yet, when we had our last winning season. There are alums of SMU in their 40's who have never seen SMU field a winning team and older alums who remember what it was like when we were in the SWC and disenchanted that we are not there anymore. And remember Coach Jones was our coach last year when we were 1-11 and some folks were clearly despondent that not even he was turning us around at this time last year and are not ready to "drink the Kool Aid" after one winning season. We are all thrilled to be bowl eligible, however. At this point we are discussing bowl opponents and breaking down the relative strengths and weaknesses of our team versus their team. This is no slam on our players who have been great this year. This is assessing how well this team would do against that team in a frank manner. Some folks are more negative because fans are awaiting the next shoe to drop. 24 years remember. Others are more positive. The fact is that we will play in a bowl game against someone of relatively equal caliber. We have a chance to do pull off a great win and I think everyone here (except for a few nattering nabobs of negativism) are going to be screaming for the Mustangs to win that bowl game regardless of who they play. But in the meantime, as fans will do, fans discuss these types of things some positively and some negatively. But the fact is that you can't discuss bowl match-ups without saying that so and so will have a hard time against this team.

[realist96]

I agree for the most part, but this is not JUST pertaining to the bowl match. We understand fully the heckling and jeckling part of football, that's part of the fun in the game and also expected from opposing teams. But when you specifically point to players or positions with cruel comments such as a players injury or asking ex-players to come out of the stands to play (everyone is entitled to their opinions, but there is a reason certain players are in certain positions and certain ones are not). Our son has been blessed to began getting interest from all level schools, but none of that matters to us, what does matter is the people surrounding him and the message they send. We have been trolling these and other school boards since he begun getting interest, to get a feel of the atmosphere and truly, the opposing teams need not worry about bashing these players, some of these posters do it for them. I do not mean to rant but we are very interested in SMU but things like not supporting the players discourages us as parents of future recruits. I would hope everyone as fans would stop to think about how recruits and their families can be dissuaded by things like this.

[PK]

I agree for the most part, but this is not JUST pertaining to the bowl match. We understand fully the heckling and jeckling part of football, that's part of the fun in the game and also expected from opposing teams. But when you specifically point to players or positions with cruel comments such as a players injury or asking ex-players to come out of the stands to play (everyone is entitled to their opinions, but there is a reason certain players are in certain positions and certain ones are not). Our son has been blessed to began getting interest from all level schools, but none of that matters to us, what does matter is the people surrounding him and the message they send. We have been trolling these and other school boards since he begun getting interest, to get a feel of the atmosphere and truly, the opposing teams need not worry about bashing these players, some of these posters do it for them. I do not mean to rant but we are very interested in SMU but things like not supporting the players discourages us as parents of future recruits. I would hope everyone as fans would stop to think about how recruits and their families can be dissuaded by things like this.

There are unfortunately some who post here who are less than kind in some of their post when it comes to the players, but I and the majority of the posters do not agree with that behavour. Obviously not all players have the same level of talent and the coaches make their decisions on who gets to srtart based upon those differences as well as player's attitude and work ethics. That is just the reality of life, but I think most of the fans here appreciate the hard work all of these kids put into the program and their contribution to the success of the program.

As fans, a lot of us like to pretend to be coaches and state our thoughts on who should be starting, etc. even if those thoughts don't match up with the coach's evaluations. That is just part of the fun of being a fan, but demeaning and plain mean comments are not appropriate in my way of thinking. The players are all Mustangs and deserve our respect for their willingness to work long and hard to be their best for SMU.

I don't frequent other school's fan sites so I don't know if they are better or worse than us in this respect. I do believe though that the majority of our fans support all the Mustang players.

[PonyDoh]

I agree for the most part, but this is not JUST pertaining to the bowl match. We understand fully the heckling and jeckling part of football, that's part of the fun in the game and also expected from opposing teams. But when you specifically point to players or positions with cruel comments such as a players injury or asking ex-players to come out of the stands to play (everyone is entitled to their opinions, but there is a reason certain players are in certain positions and certain ones are not). Our son has been blessed to began getting interest from all level schools, but none of that matters to us, what does matter is the people surrounding him and the message they send. We have been trolling these and other school boards since he begun getting interest, to get a feel of the atmosphere and truly, the opposing teams need not worry about bashing these players, some of these posters do it for them. I do not mean to rant but we are very interested in SMU but things like not supporting the players discourages us as parents of future recruits. I would hope everyone as fans would stop to think about how recruits and their families can be dissuaded by things like this.

I hope your son develops thick skin should he go elsewhere, b/c this fan base is tame. It's perfectly ok for us as fans, to discuss the physicals limitations of our team. Certain match-ups don't bode so well for a undersized, still under-talented squad. God Bless them for bringing it every damn week, and exorcising this demon, but it doesn't make us Florida. Should we continue to build, at the rate we are, and become Boise in the near term, I'll go into every game expecting victory and dominance. Until then, Nevada poses serious problems, and Notre Dame has far more players. We have a punchers chance vs both, but Vegas is gonna give us a bunch of points, mostly for the reasons mentioned on this thread. Do you really think we're going to get to Clausen and lock down there receivers, even w/our starters? It's great to be a rah rah polyanna, but I want the momentum to build, and losing huge, on a big stage, never helps.

[couch 'em]

To be honest we don't have the talent to stay on the field with right ND now (but we are getting there). We barely beat Rice, lost to Marshall (which fired their coaches yesterday), and barely beat Tulane. We need a winnable game for this young small team to be encouraging.

to be honest, I am the parent of a future prospect, son is ending his freshman year of high school and is receiving quite a bit of interest from several schools, but I can tell you this we will not encourage him to play for anyone who waits for winnable games all the while discouraging him or his team by badly criticizing them. Go ahead with the WDWHA. How do you think Coach Jones got this such untalented team where they are, ENCOURAGEMENT.

Are you for real? If you think saying "I don't think we can hang with Notre Dame" is too discouraging and is badly criticizing, what is the point of a message board?

[EastStang]

I don't know of a message board tamer than ours except maybe TCU's and that's because they're winning. Give us 11 straight winner seasons and it will be sunshine and light except for maybe Stallion who tries to keep us from getting too rosy. Even Stallion has booked his trip to Hawaii to cheer the Mustangs on and is trying to figure out the best pick up spots in Honolulu. I still say Karaoke bars with drunk Japanese chicks. Oops, parents of recruits look at this board and see us talking about picking up women and not football what terrible influences will be on young johnny.

[Cadillac]

I have no problem agreeing that posters shouldn't make personal attacks against players. I know that Bo has received a lot of that over the past two years, and that's pretty jacked up. But I really don't see in this thread where there was anything worth protesting about. Our Defense struggled against a ginormous o-line. Our secondary is very dinged up and doesn't match well v. ND's receiving corps. We'd like a tomato can to play in Hawaii. I can't see how any of these things could be interpreted as being unsupportive of the team or in any way disrespectful to the players.

Civility is important, especially in Southern Society, however there are limits to this rule that must be kept in place to ensure proper discourse and the sharing of ideas.

-CoS