Half Truth

Hello Followers.  Hope your Apple Cup week is off to a good start.

As for me, well, on Saturday I told you that I was looking for our Cougars to provide me with a much needed spark.

Instead, what I have received over the past few days from our Cougar sports teams has all-but doused all hope.

For more on that, as well as the reason why I still think Friday is worth watching, read on.

You know Followers, as bad as the season seemed through week 7, the one thing that I kept coming back to was how different this team was than the teams of 2008 and 2009 that were pretty much unwatchable.

And then Utah came along.

And although it was tempting to get REAL excited about our fortunes the next week after Halliday led us to 29 fourth quarter points against the Pac-12's South Division champions, well, it turns out that was fool's gold.

You see, followers, when we look at the score of our last three games at half-time, we get to see what has becoming a very disturbing half-truth.  Specifically, when you consider that the past three games went to intermission with us down 31-0, 37-7, and 32-0, its easy to see that this season has quickly devloved into 2009 redux.  Simply put, this team is no longer competitive, no longer interesting, and frankly, they've become an outright embarassment.

So, in spite of the fact that this team figures to lose to UW much in the same way it did in 2009 (by about 4 touchdowns or so), there is one faint glimmer of hope:

And that hope comes down to the fact that the teams that have caused this group a whole bunch of damage are teams that operate out of spread-style formations. And while a strength of Washington is their ability to operate from multiple offensive sets, the fact of the matter is that they are much  more pro-style (e.g. Oregon State) than the teams we've seen the past few weeks.  And when you factor in this is a short week and the game is at home, well, there's at least a chance that the Hair Raid could buck up, slow down Sankey, and make Price run around a lot.

But ultimately, as we've seen throughout this dismal season, our fate in this game will come down to whether our offense is going to have a pulse, and beyond that, whether or not they can score points.

The good news is that Tuel will start, affording him another opportunity to right the ship and have his career end in a way that is fitting for his incredible character. 

I'll be rooting for him BIG TIME–as well as the rest of our boys–to find a way to salvage this dismal season…

And I know you will too.

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to all of the faithful.

All for now.  Go Cougs.