(11-27-2012 12:31 AM)LifetimeTopper Wrote: (11-27-2012 12:11 AM)KAjunRaider Wrote: Two Words:
McNeese & State
I know I'm gonna get slaughtered over this, but McNeese is traditionally a damn good football team and I don't think it's as big a loss as it was made out to be. For perception's sake it's bad, but when looking at the quality of the team, they're a very good team.
I hope the lesson learned is that if you're not positive you're going to have a strong team from the onset, it's probably best not to schedule a top tier FCS opponent. There is literally NOTHING to gain by it. And this is coming from a guy who used to be on the other side of that argument and thought all the SBC teams were sissies for not scheduling WKU when we were 1AA....especially Middle.
I know this wasn't really on topic, but just wanted to throw that in.
I don't really disagree with what you're saying, in fact I wholeheartedly agree with you about if you're going to schedule FCS you need to go as soft as possible, a win over the FCS national champion looks no better than a win over a winless FCS team and so it should follow that a loss to the FCS national champion looks no better than a loss to an otherwise winless FCS team.
Having said all that, with the way we've played since that game, it's clear we should have beaten them, and honestly from the start of the fourth quarter of that game, it's clear we should have beaten them.
So knowing that, it's certainly a little easier to say "what if" regarding McNeese, than if we were like 3-8. But I have found myself wondering if the McNeese loss perhaps didn't help us as a wake up call, perhaps we wouldn't have come into Georgia Tech as hungry for a win, if we didn't feel like we were having to make up for a upset in week 1.
I'm not willing to say "what if" on any individual game yet...but IF we beat Arkansas State on Saturday and to be totally clear, I don't think we're going to, but IF we beat Arkansas State on Saturday, it will be a lot harder to not look back at McNeese and ULM to be honest, don't get me wrong, ULM with a 100% healthy Kolton Browing is a much better team and may have won the title outright, but I think lately Arkansas State is playing as well as the early ULM team was playing, so if we beat Arkansas State with how they're playing now, I'd feel confident in saying our team was probably good enough to beat McNeese and ULM and give Miss State a much better game and possibly be entering the bowl season at 11-1, with a close loss on the road against an SEC team. Again, to clarify, I don't think we're going to win on Saturday...and if we don't and we finish with a surprisingly good(following last season) record of 8-4(which would be Stock's second best regular season since his arrival) regardless of the outcome of the bowl game, I'd have no real regrets, no reason to look back and say "what if?" because we were clearly a piece or two away having dropped two conference games, but at the end of the day, we were probably better than even the most optimistic MT fans gave us credit for in the offseason and we bring back a lot of this team. That being the case, if we lose on Saturday, I'll turn the "what if?" game in a bit of a different direction and say "what if we hadn't beaten Troy?" I mean clearly, there was some kind of hold going on there, they beat us six consecutive seasons, but when you get to seven you have three consecutive classes of fifth year seniors who have never seen your team beat Troy...I think we were
dangerously close to that streak getting out of hand, now we know that for at least four more seasons there will be at least one person who has seen their team beat Troy, that might sound a bit dramatic, or defeatest(like I expect Troy to take it back next year) but honestly, when your team goes on a losing streak like that, it's hard not to become a bit of a battered fan(which should be obvious by the way our fans were reluctant to pick us to win) so I honestly am already dreading the game next year, because regardless of whether or not Troy is the genuinely better team next season, if Troy beats us next year to get to 7 out of 8, there will definitely be people saying 2012 was a fluke, we very well could be the lesser team next season and maybe even be about to start our run of like four or five wins in a row one year later, but none of that will matter because for at least one year that win would be viewed as a fluke and I think until we string together a few, or go back and forth alternating wins for like four or five consecutive years, our wins over Troy will be viewed with come skepticism, by both fan bases and posters from other conference members. So I'm glad we got "the monkey off our back" so to speak, because it just means that we're one year closer to swinging this rivalry back in our direction or at least to the point where it's not completely one sided.
