calvin

Everybody talks about how much better the Belt is now as compared to when we were winning the title every year so I was curious to see how our two best teams in the Sun Belt era would hold up against the Belt of today. The 02 team went 8-5 and won the NOB, and the 03 team was 9-4 and lost to Memphis in the NOB. I still think those teams could have won the league now b/c we were so great defensively. Man I miss the days of only rushing 3 people on 3rd down and still getting pressure and sacks. Watching the FAU and MTSU game the other night, I still think our teams could have handled either one of them. I hate having good old day syndrome.

How did we ever go 8-5, 9-4, and 7-5 in that stadium ? I say lets ride it out and give him 4 years. If it is still like this into his 4th year, then we know it isnt going to work out. The most disappointing thing for me is, it doesnt seem like we have made any improvement since the opening game last year ? We still cant move the ball consistently when it matters, we cant stop anybody, and we definitely cant play special teams.

I walked on the UNT football team, and I quit before the season started. My wife played college basketball and played quite a bit her freshman year and started her soph. and junior year and quit and didnt play her senior year. If you havent been there, then you really dont know how demanding it is and how it is basically just like a job. Always waking up real early for meetings or therapy or whatever while other kids sleep in. Practice or meetings everyday and in the afternoon, not to mention weights. It is nothing like High School sports. So if the guy's heart wasn't in it, then I dont blame him. And he is the only one that is going to have to live with it. I personally regret quitting but my wife has never regretted quitting one bit. We have 2 kids and I am going to teach them how quitting is unacceptable, but I think once you get into college it is totally different.

As a very proud father of 2 boys, I would say stay home unless your mother and her mother are there.

And what happened to Plum ?

Were the last couple of recruiting classes that DD had just terrible or is it that Dodge was just way over his head ? I cant believe that we have given up 79, 77, 74, 66, and 56 in our last 15 games. I am speechless..............

What has happened to all these WR's that we have recruited ? If you look out there most of the night, we had 2 walk ons playing and Riley who came here to play QB. I was wondering if anyone else was curious about this?

I never thought watching the game last night that if there was a play here or there then would be in or would have been in the ball game.

First of all I want to say that I still believe in Dodge and I was hoping things would be better the other night and I didnt have a lot of expectations but I will say that I will be highly disappointed if we dont show a great deal of improvement as the year goes on. I hope it doesnt but this may be a 4 year project, just like it was with Johnny Jones. We are just going to have to be patient. I really dont see a reason to compare our season openers of our title teams with this team and the game the other night. That seems like a long time ago and I dont think this team is ready to compete for a conf. title just yet. As far as comparing our game with the other teams in our conference, I think the only one you can compare it with was ULL. They are the only ones that got blown out like we did and they were terrible last year just like we were. FIU was down 30-10 at the half the other night, at least they had 10. FAU got blown out but I watched the game and their first 2 drives they got inside of UT's 20 and had a bad snap for a turnover and then Smith had a passed tipped in the end zone that got picked off, so it could have been 14-14 in the first quarter. I thought FAU looked good in the first half the other night. Still think they are the team to beat. ULM didnt exactly get blown out, I think they were only down 14-0 at the half. Then you look at our game and it seems like we were just blown out from the opening kickoff. It seems like our score could have been a lot worse. Like I said, I just want to see improvement week in and week out. I wont be too thrilled if we are still losing 48-20 at home to conference teams or losing 45-0 on the road to conference teams.

There is no doubt we will be better, but that may not necessarily mean more wins. Remember we got blown out in a lot of games last year. I personally think we still may be 1 more year away. My biggest thing is I want to see us actually competing a little with LSU and K-St and Tulsa and not losing by 60 or 70 points. And I want us to show improvement throughout the year. Of course I want 6 or 7 wins, and I would be thrilled to death if we do. But being realistic, I just want us in ballgames and having chances to win and showing improvement week to week. I believe in Coach Dodge and I think good things are coming but it may still be a year away.

One thing I forgot to add was Fitzgerald is a stud. He made a great catch over the middle in some traffic. Also Chase Baine made a couple of nice grabs. We are pretty dang good at WR. Roberson looks like a beast out there, he didnt really do anything but he is just so big. Also forgot to say that Antoine Bush looked good, he may be a suprise this year.

I was able to stop by Fouts and watch about 50 minutes of practice. When I got there they were scrimmaging but they were doing situational type stuff. Working on 2nd and medium and 3rd and medium, and different stuff like that. Nothing spectactular here. I saw about 15 plays and not one run play, I was hoping to see Micah and Cam and Dunbar but I saw all passes. The first team completed nothing but short passes and Vizza hit Micah on a screen that might have scored but they blew the whistle. The Mosley screen was the highlight. The second team struggled a little bit. Riley didnt complete a pass on about 4 attempts and he was under heavy pressure. One thing that I noticed that excited me was that the defense was stemming a lot and gave a different look on every play. When I mean stemming, the LB's would be up at the line like they were going to blitz and then before the snap they would move back in position, same with the db's they were moving back and forth, showing man then getting back in zone, and the d-lineman were sliding and showing different looks everytime. I was real interested to see what we were doing on defense and we really mixed it up. One play we liked like a 4-3, next play a 3-4 and we even had a nickel package at one time. Without a doubt our defense will be a lot better this year. Also Deloach was coaching his butt off, he was into every play and he isnt afraid to call guys out. I dont remember him being that animated on every play when he was here in the past. One thing that stuck out to me was Vizza. I think he is going to be special, it may not be this year but he is going to win a lot of games for us at some point in his career. Just the way he handles himself and some of the throws he made during the scrimmage and 7 on 7 really caught my eye. I am glad we have him and not Nevada. Only thing that scares me is our O-line and D-line. I just dont know about them. I think we have the skill guys on both sides of the ball but it doesnt mean much if you dont have the guys up front. They will be the difference in us going 3-9 or 6-6 or better.

I want to see us run the ball more. Coach Dodge said that is offense is just as much run as it is pass but we never saw that last year. Those OU games and Arkansas games get a little long when we throw 3 incomplete passes in a row and take off 30 seconds of clock. I didnt know if he was just taking the whole year to work on his passing game or had no confidence in the running game or what. But I would definitely like to see us run the ball more and try to make the run game effective like it was at Southlake.

I went to a practice last year and had to stand behind a fence and couldnt see anything.

I havent heard and was wanting to check them out but dont want to go if it is not open. Still think it is dumb that they have closed practices.

He will be the key to our success this weekend. We go as he goes. If he plays well then we win if he doesnt play well we lose. The last time we played WKU he played awful and we lost. Against ULL he played terrible we lost. Against USA he played great we won. I like our chances if he finds his stroke in Alabama. This is something to keep an eye on.

I am writing this post to encourage and demand everybody to stand up for the opening tip tomorrow night. I dont care if you are young or old or an alum or whatever we need to all be into this game from the start. We are the defending champ and we have a great opponent coming in so we have no excuse. I have been going to games for 8 years now and I get so sick and tired of people not being into the game unless there is a minute left and it is close. It is a freaking college b-ball game for goodness sake, not a movie. I have sat through a lot of crap through the years and now we finally got a winning program going and we finallly have students coming, now we need to take it to the next level. During pregame announcements everyone usually stands up so my challenge to you, is to keep standing and make the people around you stand up. Pit Crew, will you guys do the stand up cheer right off the bat ??????? We saw what kind of atmosphere and advantage we can have during the Ok. St. and even the other night during the last minute it was really loud. It needs to be like that the whole game. The players need to feed off our energy. So everyone be standing and make people get into tomorrow night, no excuses!

One of those years where we get no breaks and injuries just ruin the season ? I hope not but if you look at it we havent been healthy all year. Beginning of the year Collin and Dez werent healthy. Then it was Josh an Keith and when we finally get some momentum going the whole team and the coaches get sick and we put together two stinkers. There is no way we will be the team we want to be if Keith doesnt get healthy. He was very good against Memphis last year and OSU and UT this year but he hasnt been able to get going b/c of the injuries. Hopefully he gets healthier this week, otherwise it will be a tough road. And what has happened to Harold Stewart ? Is he in the doghouse ? I thought he was very good at the end of last year but his PT has been cut way down, hopefully he can get going as well. The 8 day break could not have come at a better time, usually you dont like these breaks during the year but we need it badly. Hopefully JJ we give the team a couple of days off so they can get healthy and refreshed. I expect to see a different team the next time we get on the court. I hope I am right.

I wanted to post this a long time ago when the season started but forgot but I wanted to ask this question. Is it just me or has #17 Brian Nelson been on the team for the last 8 years, and hasnt he been listed as RS Soph. for all these years ? I could swear he was on the roster for the first New Orleans Bowl. So here is the question, what position does he play and what's the real answer of how long he has been on the team. I was shocked to see him this year. I did see him however on special teams. I have to give it to him though, he has stuck it out this last decade even though he has no position and hasnt played much.

I went to the football game but b/c of kids I couldnt go to the b-ball game. I was suprised to see that 3100 showed up, I thought that was pretty good, was that not accurate ? Usually the attendance for b-ball games before X-mas is usually around 1500-2000 so I thought 3100 was pretty good. I bet there will be at least 5K on Wed night.

Navy scores to make it 49-38 with a minute left and we dont have great field position after the kickoff. I was hoping we would go in the half up 49-38 and feeling good about a great first half. Instead we throw on 2nd and 3rd down and stop the clock and give Navy the ball with 24 seconds lefts and they score in 2 plays to make it 49-45 and now they have all the momentum b/c they get the ball to start the 2nd half. Otherwise their first 2nd half TD would have made it 49-45. I think Coach Dodge is used to being able to go score quickly with Carroll and was hoping that we would do the same yesterday. Hopefully in the future we will take it into the half. Other than that what a great game.

Yes the game that clinched our 2nd Belt Title. I believe the score was 38-27. That game had everything you could ask for. We were losing at the half, we come back and make big play after big play. Booger recovers the fumble to seal the game. Man I wish I had that thing on video.

I know I have said this in the past but College Football was meant for Saturday afternoon. I am so excited about the Navy game b/c its Navy and b/c it is a Nov. afternoon game. I dont even remember the last time we have had an afternoon game. They are so much better than night games. For some reason I think Fouts is a horrible venue for night games. I cant pinpoint what it is but to me it is no comparison to a day game. If you have never been to a Saturday afternoon college football game, then it enjoy it next weekend. By the way, my greatest college football memory was a Saturday Nov. afternoon day game about 5 years ago against New Mexico St. One of the greatest games I have ever been to and I will never forget that afternoon. That was special.

I have heard a lot of people say, "well what did you expect this year, or I knew this was going to be a down year." I wasnt expecting that at all. My expectations were for us to be about 7-5 or 6-6. I thought we would lose all 3 OOC road games and at Troy and at Ark. St. but I thought we could win the rest. My thoughts coming into this year was we had a good defense coming back that would have been a lot better last year if the offense would have been better. But with Dodge coming in, I thought he would fix this horrible offense and we would be in good shape. Maybe I along with some others were naive about where this team was. Maybe I was too optimistic b/c what had happend at Rice last year and what Briles did at Houston a few years ago. Also coming into this year I was expecting that we would run JaMario more than we have. He has 5 carries for 94 yards at the half the other night and I was thinking why didnt he have at least 10 carries. This is not a post to bash Dodge and the coaching staff. B/c I think he is bringing in good recruits and I think he will get this thing going in the right direction. And I think just the turnout in attendance that we have shows how much he means to the University. But I just wasnt expecting this year to go like this. So my realistic expectations for this year were at best 7-5 but probably around 6-6. Any thoughts?

The most discouraging to me is, we pretty much had the same front 4, the same LB's and all but 2 of the same secondary guys that were at Lafayette last year and this same group gave up 7 points last year as compared to 38 last night. I kept thinking in the second half that we would come up with a stop and we never could. Very disappointing.