You remember the epic scene in Shawshank Redemption, don’t you? Where Andy crawls through miles of waste-laden cement pipe, losing his lunch several times along the way, only to “come out clean on the other side”? And then for a moment, he strips down and lets the rain that only a free man can feel fall down and wash the stink off? Not just the stink of the climb through the s*it pipe, yeah that was bad enough. But to wash the stink of the last 20 years off of his body, after being stuck in a hopeless, miserable hell hole like Shawshank.
Weren’t we done with the miserable, embarrassing losses? I sure thought so. After everything we heard and read since the end of the ’09 season, we wanted to believe that the past was just that – the past. But it wasn’t just us, any other fan site or blog, or even mainstream media that thought so. It was coach Wulff himself.
Here’s what Wulff said in the 2010 Blue Ribbon Football Preview of our beloved Cougs:
“You’re going to see a very competitive football team, a team that’s going to win some ballgames,” he said. “….There’s going to be a lot of improvement.”
Disappointing to see that, then remember back to 65-17 on Saturday, isn’t it? But then, you look a little deeper at some of what Wulff also added in that same Blue Ribbon preview….and I wonder if the warning signs weren’t already there. For example, Wulff also added this:
“We’re definitely a much-improved football team,” Wulff said. “We’ve got a lot of young talent that’s going to show itself a little bit. The key is can we play consistent football week in and week out – a lot of times immaturity doesn’t allow that.”
Kind of ominous when you read it today, isn’t it? Consistent football, something immaturity doesn’t allow. Isn’t that exactly what we just saw, a team that was unbelievably young that got shocked and wide-eyed during an onslaught in the first 30 minutes? Outside of Marquess Wilson anyway, the youth looked like just that – YOUTH. And as my good friend Sutra has been cautioning under his breath all summer long, “You know…..young teams in the Pac-10 rarely do well.”
All I know is, after two miserable seasons, we WANTED TO BELIEVE on Thursday of last week, and Cougcenter wants to believe too. Heck, we all want to buy in, drink the Crimson “DRANK”, and go arm in arm as an army of one.
But that’s not reality, at least not where we sit today, is it?
The cliche’s are endless, the blame game never-ending, about where we are now. You’ve played the game, you know how it goes. One side blames the prior regime for basically not even giving Wulff a pot to piss in when he took over, the other says Wulff should find a way to win anyway. One side says Wulff wasn’t much of a success at a lower level job before this one, the other side says well neither were Mike Price or Dennis Erickson. On and on it goes, where or when it stops, who the hell knows?
I guess this year’s “thing” is going to be youth. So much so, that so many on this team are barely out of diapers and they just got ambushed on the road in Stillwater. But the year of 2010 will be all about youth and the lessons learned – the HARD way. Grippi pointed it out the other day, that 24 players of the 70 that were making the trip to Stillwater, it was their very first NCAA football road game. That’s a tough hand to be dealt, for sure. But it’s not just the newbies who are trying to figure out what in the world is going on.
Did you know that per the weekly release at WSUCougars.com leading up to the OK State game, that out of 113 total players on the roster, just 17 of them had been on the roster prior to Paul Wulff’s arrival?? So that’s what, 96 players who have shown up after Wulff arrived, less than three years ago? And of those 17 players here pre-Wulff, among starters you saw on Saturday, there’s basically two on each side of the ball – Micah Hannam and BJ Guerra on offense, and Kevin Kooyman and Chima Nwachukwu on defense. That’s it folks. Four senior starters who were here since 2007. You start to peel back the layers, and you see that the lack of experience is everywhere.
That’s simply too young – too young to win right now, that’s for damn sure.
Times like this will try us all. The important thing, Coug fans, is that we stick together.
As the Joker said in the Dark Knight, “When the chips are down? You’ll see. These “civilized” people, they’ll EAT each other.”
The last thing we should be doing is attacking one another, eating each other alive, after one game. Yep, we leave comments wide open and you are free to vent and rant (within reason, obviously!). We enourage your feedback, we really do. And right now, it is sad, and the truth hurts, but it is reality – this is only the start of year three of an overwhelming and exhaustive rebuilding job. And the light at the end of all this might be nothing more than a faint flicker amongst the deep, dank darkness. The question is, are you sick and tired of fighting? Is it simply a case of enough is enough? Or are you ready to get your second wind, dig in and plow ahead, hoping that ultimately you will in fact come out clean on the other side?
All for now. GO COUGS!
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