Start Your Engines

Hello Followers.  Hope your game week is off to a terrific start.

Many early September moons ago (2001 to be exact) I got an email from my good friend and colleague Hooty McBoob.  The topic of that email thread was the Seattle Mariners, who at the time, were well on their way to their historic 116 win season.

And let me tell you, me and Sedihawk were beside ourselves with excitement.

But Hooty, despite being a huge baseball fan, wanted none of that Mariner talk.  Instead, Hooty wanted to talk about the Cougs.

You see, Hooty was absolutely enamored at the time with a young quarterback named Jason Gesser as well as a stable of young talent who were oh-so close to putting it all together the previous year.   And that combination of returning talent and moxy had Hooty convinced that the 2001 Cougs were headed back to Pasadena THAT year.

And my response to his drivel:  “We’re not going to win even 4 games this year, Tad.  Outside of Lamont Thompson, we have no talent on defense and our wide receivers aren’t any good.”

14 weeks later, Gesser, Riley, Bush, and company were 10-2 and had just started the greatest three year run in program history.

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So, the reason for bringing up this story is as follows:  Since the 2001 season, I have started every Cougar campaign with a high sense of optimism and possibility.  And while I have tried my best to temper that optimism on the blog, the fact of the matter is that if I have said that I thought we were going to win, say, 5 games in a given year, I really thought we were going to win 7 or 8.

Hope just happens to spring eternal with me.   At least in most years……

But when I look forward to this year and try to figure out how we’re going to finish, I find myself nervously pondering a question that I cannot answer right now.

And that question is as follows:  “How will the Cougars stand six games into the 2015 season?”

You see, if you follow the view that the past is often prologue, then you know that the outcome of the season’s first six games typically mean EVERYTHING for Cougar football.  Consider the past 30 years as a case-in-point.

1988: 4-2 (9-3 Finish)

1989: 5-1 (6-5 Finish)

1992: 6-0 (9-3 Finish)

1994:  4-2 (8-4 Finish)

1997: 6-0 (10-2 Finish)

2001: 6-0 (10-2 Finish)

2002: 5-1 (10-3 Finish

2003: 5-1 (10-3 Finish)

2006: 4-2 (6-6 Finish)

2013: 4-2 (6-6 Finish)

To wit, every single Cougar team that has been bowl eligible has started 4-2 or better.  And every Cougar team that has started 3-3 or worse has not gone to a bowl.  It’s just that simple.

So, in order for the Cougs to make it to the promised land this year (if you can call six wins the promised land), we’re going to have to find at least four wins from the following six opponents.

• Portland State
• Rutgers
• Wyoming
• Cal
• Oregon
• Oregon State

So, for me, the season hinges on games 2 and 4, with Rutgers being the most consequential of them all.  And as of this writing I have to say that I don’t feel very good about that game………

Meantime, here’s to hoping that Mike Leach can do something that he hasn’t yet done as a Cougar Football coach and that is get us to 1 and stinking OH!

Thankfully, I think we’re gonna do that on Saturday in grand fashion (54-17)–setting the stage for a season defining moment the following week in Jersey…

All for now.  Go Cougs.