Sunday Over-Reaction: Now What Edition

Good morning Coug Nation.  As I write this, it’s a bright, sunny, crisp October morning here in my neck of the woods.  Here’s hoping you are getting the same thing today, wherever you are.

I am still trying to digest that game last night.  The emotion is always “raw” the closer you are to it, and when we get blown out and embarrassed, basically mocked by the Oregon homerish broadcasters in the process, it’s easy to get angry.  The best thing for me today was to get out and go for a nice long jog with my one-year old golden retriever by my side.  It’s a mind-clearing exercise that gets the juices flowing, sure, in a fantastic way to start any day, but especially on a day like this.  No time to wallow in the mire, so you just push forward.  But getting out there and doing it, it also lets you run through things in your head in ways that you only can do when you engage in that long, thought-provoking jog, with the iTunes going and you get lost in your thoughts.

And I thought about a lot of things, Coug-related.  I guess I went through the usual blame game first.  You know how it goes after a blowout like this:

1) Mike Price never should have left.

2) Bill Doba was over his head, couldn’t recruit and lost complete focus at the end as the program spiraled out of control.
3) Paul Wulff didn’t know what he was getting into or, worse, did know what he was getting into and has no idea how to get out of it, other than wait for the players to get better.

4) We should have hired Kevin Sumlin or brought back Mike Price after all.
5) We sure missed an opportunity to take big steps forward while UW sucked.  That window has been slammed shut now, hasn’t it?

6) Why did we wait so long to get the Martin Stadium renovation off the ground when Oregon and OSU were busy building up their facilities?  Why didn’t we strike when the team was good and the economy was healthy?

But at the end of the run, I came the realization that, well, you know what?  None of the above matters.  We’ve been over all of it, for the last year-plus.  We’ve examined every nook and cranny, turned over every rock, explored every little thing that went wrong with this program.  The list is long, the reasons are many.  But it really doesn’t matter now.  I’m tired of the blame game, and I’m tired of the excuses.  All that does matter is where we are today, and where we are headed.

Read on…

So, some game last night huh?  Outgained and outscored in every possible way is a lousy football experience.  All that talk about hope, about playing better and being more competitive, it all kind of evaporated last night.  Once again we were reminded of our place in the college football universe, and this thing was shoved down our throat with the evil of the green-n-gold.  But I don’t think a lot of what happened was all that shocking, really?  There was a reason we were 45-point dogs on the road last night.  Vegas doesn’t just pick numbers out of a hat and hope it all works out.  Otherwise they wouldn’t be Vegas, after all.  They aren’t always right, but it’s their mortgage that is riding on being correct more times than not!  And our own Sutra nailed the final score, just ONE FRICKING POINT off from the actual final score.  So it isn’t as though we didn’t see it coming.  But still……

The hardest thing for me was watching young Jeff Tuel take a beating, and not make it out of the first quarter before he got hurt.  Hopefully he’s going to be OK, and by the early reports, the hip pointer was feeling better, but man, he took a serious shot in that lower back area.  The worst fears were realized last night, pure and simple, and that’s the young kid QB with so much hope and promise gets crushed because of an inability to keep him upright. 

What now?  We still have SEVEN games left on the schedule.  Think ASU is going to take it easy on us next week?  They’ll come in cranky after losing to the Beavs, smelling blood in a game they have to win.  They will unleash hell up front on defense, and with our youth and inexperience up front, it could be another run-for-your-life experience for young Tuel.  I hate to say it, but today, it feels like we’re back to SQUARE ZERO.  It’s like staring at the peak of Mount Everest, and realizing you haven’t even left base camp yet.  An incredibly long, treacherous climb awaits, and instead of feeling excited or energized about the path in front of you, it instead feels like only the beginning.

Good work by the amazing Bud Withers at the Times today.  It’s worth a read, but here’s a strong quote:

WSU’s insignia should be a Cougar on crutches, so depleted are they by injuries. They’re a mess.

Yet to give in to that infirmity will stunt the growth of this team, and WSU fans can only hope that resolve trumps self-pity in the crimson locker room.

Withers is absolutely right.  They are a mess, young and hurt.  Yet if they start to feel sorry for themselves, start to wallow in the mire, then absolutely nothing can be gained from these bruising defeats.  We as fans might be angry, disappointed, frustrated and embarrassed, but the kids have to dig deep and amp it up on a weekly basis.  They can’t afford to feel sorry for themselves.  We saw enough of that last year. 

However, it’s pretty difficult to summon up the warm-n-fuzzies after last night’s debacle in Eugene, so, I really won’t try to do that Pollyanna-spin that I’ve been accused of doing over the last year or so.  I will say that I am going to continue to hold out hope that the young kids show some improvement, that young Tuel gets back out there at home and they show a little life.  I will continue to hope that we get back to better showings like we saw earlier this year.  I will continue…..to hope.  Will you?

ENJOY the rest of your Sunday, and GO COUGS.