Happy Tuesday Cougar Fans.
Walking out of the CLink with my partner in crime, Grimmace, I felt something that I haven’t in quite some time.
Sick to my stomach…No, it wasn’t the booze or the chili dogs talking, because I was the designated driver, a duty I have always taken very seriously.
Sure, there have been more than enough 50 and 60 point blowouts, that have been routintely bestowed upon Coach Wulff’s teams in his tenure at Washington State. Many of said beatdowns tyou and I spent our energy and money on, while anticipating the program’s return to the upper half of the conference. Click the jump to get the rest of my take on the state of WSU Football.
This was a game Washington State football, in it’s improved state, was supposed to win. It was a game that would allow our team to improve to .500 in-conference play and leave the team only two wins short of bowl eligibility, with five contests to go. This was a game to rejuvenate the disgruntled WSU fanbase, but our fans just were not into the game, while the Beaver faithful were loud and rowdy from start to finish, call it Wulffapathy.
In a neutral setting, that some have guestimated only had 10K OSU fans in attendance, it sure felt like an OSU home game.
From the opening drive of the game, Wazzu didn’t have “it.” The playcalling on the first series by Coach Sturdy was interesting to me. I get what we were trying to pound the ball and play clock control early on, after film showed our staff the Beavs yielded something like 250+ yards on the ground to a very pedestrian BYU team the week prior.
But it wasn’t working, and then on 3rd & 3 and 4th and 1 of the opening series, Sturdy tried pounding Winston up the middle, and were were stopped short of the First Down on both attempts.
Oregon State football, never mind that we were easily within distance of Andrew Furney’s leg.
From there, it was virtually all Beavers. We couldn’t have stopped a nose bleed with a tampon in our nose we were so bad! In fact, the OSU Punter didn’t see the field until 58.5 minutes had gone by in the game.
OSU is not that good. I was talking to one donor who told me he is also an Oregon State season ticket holder becuase it’s his wife’s alma mater. He was telling us how bad of an Oregon State team this is. They lost to Sacramento State, BYU and UCLA in Corvallis, all of which are awful teams. They were shutout at Wisconsin and didn’t do much better at ASU. This is a team starting a RS Freshmen at QB that we made look like a Heisman Trophy candidate (he was named Pac12 Offensive POTW). This is a team that was without two of its starting Linebackers and was very thin at a handful of other positions.
What did we do?
We went out and laid a big, f*****g egg. A big, f*****g Pterodactyl egg.
When Bill Moos stated after the 2010 Apple Cup that Paul Wulff would return as our Coach in 2011, he cited progress on the field. Through the first two weeks, it seemed like things were iprogressing. Despite a tough loss at SDSU, many chalked that up to the team’s inexperience. It took a last minute, come from behind to win at Colorado, and with UCLA and Oregon State two of the last three weeks, many (myself included) thought this team had the ability to head into Eugene 5-2.
That would be progress my friends.
There are no more moral victories for this staff. Talent and youth are no longer an excuse, as they were for some of those poundings we took in 2008 and 2009. There is no excuse for getting kicked in the nuts by a 1-5, banged up, OSU squad.
Hopefully this game will be a catalyst for the rest of the season, like the ASU game was last year. Although, with a road game in Eugene this weekend, I have a hard time believing it will be. If you can’t get your team up for a big game coach, this site may be helpful for you!
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