TheFranchise

How did we beat a team 34-7 in 2013 that had beaten us 38-21 the year before?

Was this Golden Eagles team the exact same team that they beat 52-14 last season? That's really the only valid comparison.

For starters, Nick Mullens was making his first career NCAA start in last year's game. He's improved quite a bit since then. Second, So. Miss's lead rusher in this season's game was a freshman. Then there's the fact that the Golden Eagles were win-less headed into that game last year. It may not seem like it, but your motivation headed into a game with an 0-6 record and an 18 game losing streak is quite a bit different than entering 2-4 and actually boasting a 3-4 record over your last seven.

My point is, yes . . . this season has sucked so far and has been hard to endure, but I've still got a good outlook for the future. I could be wrong, but anyone posting here could be. But I still have faith in this coaching staff. After all, last season proved that given the right group of guys, they can do it.

Not to mention, Southern Miss. recruited in the off-season too, I believe. They held spring workouts and summer camps too, I'm willing to bet. It's pretty ridiculous to expect that they didn't get better from last year to this year.

I will say I'm concerned at this point being 2-5, but I'm not sounding any alarms, yet. There's still opportunity to right this ship and if we can't, then we've got a lot to learn from towards next season.

Food for thought: Everyone keeps bringing up TCU's attendance. You might be interested to know that they didn't have regular sell-outs until the Utah game in 2009.

At the time, ACS had a capacity of 44,000 and had only gotten about 60-75% full regularly until then. It wasn't until they hosted an undefeated Utah that night, that Fort Worth really recognized what they had on their hands. I mean, for crying out loud, they'd flirted with "busting the BCS" a couple of times already and had put up huge winning seasons. But they still only averaged about 31-34k.

My point? Winning a crapload of games and playing a big-time opponent does a lot for attendance. In fact, if I remember correctly, that was about the time that the City of Fort Worth started marketing "purple Fridays" and literally painted the town purple -- even the Trinity River.

Marketing the heck out of this thing certainly doesn't hurt. In fact, Emmitt has excellent ideas to do so. But none of that will compare to what playing big-time college football at Apogee would do. That trumps everything.

On second thought, I guess it all goes hand-in-hand, really, and is all kind of cyclical. Winning gets the fans/students/alumni fired up --> the fans/students/alumni start showing up at games --> the ever-present and loud crowds fire up the players and athletic dept. --> athletic dept. starts putting more into the program --> bigger opponents start coming to Apogee --> The Mean Green start winning big games --> winning gets the fans/students/alumni fired up . . . wash, rinse, repeat . . .

Hopefully that all made sense to someone.

-- Stephen