gwalker's Criticizing the Football Program for Dummies

[scott715]

http://www.cougarboard.com/board/messag ... d=13210067" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; by GWalker

Disclaimer: gwalker recognizes that his thoughts are not necessarily those of the management and that he is not always right, may be missing some information etc. These are thoughts as they come to mind, in no particular order and they are not necessarily an exhaustive list.

With that out of the way, here goes:

1. Potentially Legitimate Criticisms - You'd have to be blind not to realize we're in the middle of a real rough patch. There are reasons. I believe the following criticisms have more merit than others that are floating around.

A. BYU is paying for a recruiting/coaching lapse on the O-line and the D-line. For whatever reason the culture around the O-line became soft and recruiting appears to have hit a snag. IMO, Tujague is part of the solution to the culture issues and the recruiting has improved over the last year or two (with Kearsley being a good get that hasn't shined as much due to injuries). The D-line seems to be down in experienced talent at the moment. The 2014 class was good, but some are gone on missions.

B. Bronco may be starting to show a pattern of trusting assistants to move up to the coordinator spot when they may not be ready. IMO, Brandon Doman was developing into a good coach, but he wasn't ready to take over as OC. Rather than worry about losing him, in hindsight Bronco may have been better off letting him go somewhere else, develop more and then bring him back if he wanted to make a change at OC later on. I'm not sure how much the drop in talent (no Ziggy, no KVN, no Sorenson) and experience is to blame and how much it falls on Howell, but it would appear that Howell may have been thrust into the role of DC a little too quickly.

C. Allowing Riley Nelson to talk himself into too much playing time when his injuries limited his effectiveness was, IMO, not the best choice. Critics can say Bronco values hard work at the expense of talent. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, but it's a reasonable criticism. On the other hand, a program like BYU has to put a premium on hard work. We aren't ever going to have the talent to get to the top on talent alone.

2. Lame Bob Criticisms - I understand that people are frustrated with losing four in a row, especially after starting 4-0. I understand that the frustration hurts and that people look everywhere they can to find the problems. That said, some criticisms are, IMO, inaccurate. I believe I am paraphrasing Thoreau in saying that for every person digging at the roots of a problem there are a thousand people beating at the leaves. The thousand are attacking the visible symptom while doing very little to accurately diagnose anything. My list of "Lame Bob Criticisms" is filled with easy targets for leaf beaters.

A. Bronco is arrogant. Anae is arrogant. [Insert name] is arrogant. First, I don't think any of us really knows whether Bronco or Anae are arrogant. Very few, if any of us, actually know these guys on a personal and individual level. Second, we have evidence to the contrary in each case. Bronco was a 3-3-5 disciple. He brought it to BYU and had success with it for a time. When it became apparent to him that recruiting LBs is our traditional strength, he switched to the 3-4 to take advantage of that strength. Reportedly, he is always evaluating processes and practices to come up with ways to improve.

Anae intended to bring the Mike Leach Texas Tech offense to BYU. After a few games he realized we had big, bruising backs like Harvey Unga and tight ends like Dennis Pitta and Andrew George and he began to morph the offense into something that was consistently a top 25 offense during his first stint at BYU. When he came back, he brought the GFGH/Read option offense. Taysom Hill gets hurt, and he morphs the offense into something that Christian Stewart can work with.

IMO, it should be fairly obvious to the most casual observer that both men are willing to make changes and give up cherished ideas in order to make things work better. Do they have strong opinions? I believe they do. If you're a wallflower, you wouldn't survive very long at the higher levels of their profession.

B. Criticisms of coach-speak. It doesn't matter what the coach says if the team is losing. People will pick apart the coach's comments when the team loses. If the coach talks about improving execution, people will criticize him for throwing players under the bus. Others will criticize the coach for not naming specific names of players who are coming up short. If the coach says, "I take full responsibility" people will say, "If he takes full responsibility, why doesn't he fix it?" There is absolutely nothing a losing coach can say to make the majority of fans happy.

If a coach is winning, he can say almost anything and people won't care. He can talk about the players having "fat little girlfriends" and the fans will eat it up. It doesn't matter. Obviously, there are limits. He can't come out in support of domestic violence or something like that. But a winning coach has a pretty wide range of freedom in interviews and press conferences.

IMO, people spend WAY too much time worrying about what the coach does or does not say. A coach may not be calling out a player or a position group publicly, but he may be focusing hard on changing their shortcomings behind the scenes. People should realize the root cause of their frustration lies elsewhere.

C. Firesides and spiritual focus. The team was doing firesides and Bronco had a spiritual focus from 2008 through 2011 (or 2007 through 2010, I may be off by a year) when the team had four straight top 25 finishes. IMO, it doesn't make sense to assume the firesides are causing poorer performance than what we saw in those years.

Rob Morris is entitled to his opinion that he would not have come to BYU had the same spiritual focus been in play when he was recruited. KVN would not have come to BYU but for his reluctant attendance at a team fireside. It isn't safe to assume that the best players will have an attitude that shuns a spiritual focus. Some will. Some won't. Some non-LDS kids will continue to be drawn to the cleaner environment. Can the spiritual aspect of it be overdone? Absolutely. But I don't think there is anything like a lot of team meeting time being devoted to scripture study or anything like that.

IMO, people have already forgotten the impact of the scandals that happened under Crowton's watch. I don't think people realize how close we were to having the BOT pull the plug on BYU football. I believe pulling the plug on big-time football at BYU was on the table and being discussed. I know LaVell was asked if he thought BYU could still compete at the highest levels while maintaining integrity.

People love to blame Crowton's "wreckless" recruiting. But I don't think that's blame that is fairly placed. People act like Crowton never spoke about the honor code during recruiting. I remember reading newspaper articles talking about an Honor Code video that was produced with Chad Lewis (then in the middle of his Pro Bowl career with the Eagles). All recruits were required to watch the video prior to committing to play at BYU. Some of the guys caught up in Rape Gate I and II were either LDS or kids who came from strong religious backgrounds who had seen the honor code video and been told about it.

For better or worse, the only way to really minimize the re-occurrence of the Crowton-Era Scandals is to bring such a heavy gospel focus. The trend around the country is more and more in the direction of win at all costs and sweep the ugly things under the rug. We have to fight harder than ever to resist that pull.

D. Football is fifth. Focusing on and maintaining proper perspective doesn't have to get in the way of success. People succeed at the highest levels of all endeavors in American society while maintaining an appropriate and balanced perspective. Look at King Hussein with his company's refusal to ever work on Sunday. Look at Mitt Romney. Saying football isn't life and death doesn't get in the way of caring a lot about it or working very hard to achieve success.

E. Coaches eat dinner with their families and don't always work on Sunday. Most of these guys live within a 15 minute drive of campus. They come back to work after dinner. They come in very early on Monday to make up for not working on Sunday. Brandon Doman had opportunities to coach elsewhere but turned them down because he didn't want to work as hard. I don't know, but I suspect he works fairly hard at whatever he's doing now.

For some strange reason we have come to idolize the coach that doesn't even go home at night, sleeping on his office couch. IMO, the actual number of productive hours those guys work probably isn't meaningfully more than what BYU's coaches work. Between inefficiency in work habits and the law of diminishing returns, the couch sleepers aren't benefiting as much as our society believes. Dick Vermeil coached the Eagles to the Super Bowl as a couch sleeper. The Eagles lost the Super Bowl. He then helped coin the term "burnout" when he temporarily quit coaching. In his return to coaching, he had a much better work/life balance and the Rams he coached won the Super Bowl.

3. Sometimes success and failure lie, at least partially, in things that are beyond our control. As a coach or a player, you have to focus on what you can control and do what you can to make it better. But injuries and bad bounces do happen. Teams that have as many injuries as BYU has this year are almost never successful. Not even in the mighty SEC where depth is supposed to be so much better. Teams that have special seasons often have unearned lucky breaks that come their way. I'm not saying our coaches and players have done everything right or done everything they could. I am saying that pointing to injuries as one of the causes of our frustration is not a cop out.

[Cougarfan87]

http://www.cougarboard.com/board/messag ... d=13210067 by GWalker

Disclaimer: gwalker recognizes that his thoughts are not necessarily those of the management and that he is not always right, may be missing some information etc. These are thoughts as they come to mind, in no particular order and they are not necessarily an exhaustive list.

With that out of the way, here goes:

1. Potentially Legitimate Criticisms - You'd have to be blind not to realize we're in the middle of a real rough patch. There are reasons. I believe the following criticisms have more merit than others that are floating around.

A. BYU is paying for a recruiting/coaching lapse on the O-line and the D-line. For whatever reason the culture around the O-line became soft and recruiting appears to have hit a snag. IMO, Tujague is part of the solution to the culture issues and the recruiting has improved over the last year or two (with Kearsley being a good get that hasn't shined as much due to injuries). The D-line seems to be down in experienced talent at the moment. The 2014 class was good, but some are gone on missions.

B. Bronco may be starting to show a pattern of trusting assistants to move up to the coordinator spot when they may not be ready. IMO, Brandon Doman was developing into a good coach, but he wasn't ready to take over as OC. Rather than worry about losing him, in hindsight Bronco may have been better off letting him go somewhere else, develop more and then bring him back if he wanted to make a change at OC later on. I'm not sure how much the drop in talent (no Ziggy, no KVN, no Sorenson) and experience is to blame and how much it falls on Howell, but it would appear that Howell may have been thrust into the role of DC a little too quickly.

C. Allowing Riley Nelson to talk himself into too much playing time when his injuries limited his effectiveness was, IMO, not the best choice. Critics can say Bronco values hard work at the expense of talent. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, but it's a reasonable criticism. On the other hand, a program like BYU has to put a premium on hard work. We aren't ever going to have the talent to get to the top on talent alone.

2. Lame Bob Criticisms - I understand that people are frustrated with losing four in a row, especially after starting 4-0. I understand that the frustration hurts and that people look everywhere they can to find the problems. That said, some criticisms are, IMO, inaccurate. I believe I am paraphrasing Thoreau in saying that for every person digging at the roots of a problem there are a thousand people beating at the leaves. The thousand are attacking the visible symptom while doing very little to accurately diagnose anything. My list of "Lame Bob Criticisms" is filled with easy targets for leaf beaters.

A. Bronco is arrogant. Anae is arrogant. [Insert name] is arrogant. First, I don't think any of us really knows whether Bronco or Anae are arrogant. Very few, if any of us, actually know these guys on a personal and individual level. Second, we have evidence to the contrary in each case. Bronco was a 3-3-5 disciple. He brought it to BYU and had success with it for a time. When it became apparent to him that recruiting LBs is our traditional strength, he switched to the 3-4 to take advantage of that strength. Reportedly, he is always evaluating processes and practices to come up with ways to improve.

Anae intended to bring the Mike Leach Texas Tech offense to BYU. After a few games he realized we had big, bruising backs like Harvey Unga and tight ends like Dennis Pitta and Andrew George and he began to morph the offense into something that was consistently a top 25 offense during his first stint at BYU. When he came back, he brought the GFGH/Read option offense. Taysom Hill gets hurt, and he morphs the offense into something that Christian Stewart can work with.

IMO, it should be fairly obvious to the most casual observer that both men are willing to make changes and give up cherished ideas in order to make things work better. Do they have strong opinions? I believe they do. If you're a wallflower, you wouldn't survive very long at the higher levels of their profession.

B. Criticisms of coach-speak. It doesn't matter what the coach says if the team is losing. People will pick apart the coach's comments when the team loses. If the coach talks about improving execution, people will criticize him for throwing players under the bus. Others will criticize the coach for not naming specific names of players who are coming up short. If the coach says, "I take full responsibility" people will say, "If he takes full responsibility, why doesn't he fix it?" There is absolutely nothing a losing coach can say to make the majority of fans happy.

If a coach is winning, he can say almost anything and people won't care. He can talk about the players having "fat little girlfriends" and the fans will eat it up. It doesn't matter. Obviously, there are limits. He can't come out in support of domestic violence or something like that. But a winning coach has a pretty wide range of freedom in interviews and press conferences.

IMO, people spend WAY too much time worrying about what the coach does or does not say. A coach may not be calling out a player or a position group publicly, but he may be focusing hard on changing their shortcomings behind the scenes. People should realize the root cause of their frustration lies elsewhere.

C. Firesides and spiritual focus. The team was doing firesides and Bronco had a spiritual focus from 2008 through 2011 (or 2007 through 2010, I may be off by a year) when the team had four straight top 25 finishes. IMO, it doesn't make sense to assume the firesides are causing poorer performance than what we saw in those years.

Rob Morris is entitled to his opinion that he would not have come to BYU had the same spiritual focus been in play when he was recruited. KVN would not have come to BYU but for his reluctant attendance at a team fireside. It isn't safe to assume that the best players will have an attitude that shuns a spiritual focus. Some will. Some won't. Some non-LDS kids will continue to be drawn to the cleaner environment. Can the spiritual aspect of it be overdone? Absolutely. But I don't think there is anything like a lot of team meeting time being devoted to scripture study or anything like that.

IMO, people have already forgotten the impact of the scandals that happened under Crowton's watch. I don't think people realize how close we were to having the BOT pull the plug on BYU football. I believe pulling the plug on big-time football at BYU was on the table and being discussed. I know LaVell was asked if he thought BYU could still compete at the highest levels while maintaining integrity.

People love to blame Crowton's "wreckless" recruiting. But I don't think that's blame that is fairly placed. People act like Crowton never spoke about the honor code during recruiting. I remember reading newspaper articles talking about an Honor Code video that was produced with Chad Lewis (then in the middle of his Pro Bowl career with the Eagles). All recruits were required to watch the video prior to committing to play at BYU. Some of the guys caught up in Rape Gate I and II were either LDS or kids who came from strong religious backgrounds who had seen the honor code video and been told about it.

For better or worse, the only way to really minimize the re-occurrence of the Crowton-Era Scandals is to bring such a heavy gospel focus. The trend around the country is more and more in the direction of win at all costs and sweep the ugly things under the rug. We have to fight harder than ever to resist that pull.

D. Football is fifth. Focusing on and maintaining proper perspective doesn't have to get in the way of success. People succeed at the highest levels of all endeavors in American society while maintaining an appropriate and balanced perspective. Look at King Hussein with his company's refusal to ever work on Sunday. Look at Mitt Romney. Saying football isn't life and death doesn't get in the way of caring a lot about it or working very hard to achieve success.

E. Coaches eat dinner with their families and don't always work on Sunday. Most of these guys live within a 15 minute drive of campus. They come back to work after dinner. They come in very early on Monday to make up for not working on Sunday. Brandon Doman had opportunities to coach elsewhere but turned them down because he didn't want to work as hard. I don't know, but I suspect he works fairly hard at whatever he's doing now.

For some strange reason we have come to idolize the coach that doesn't even go home at night, sleeping on his office couch. IMO, the actual number of productive hours those guys work probably isn't meaningfully more than what BYU's coaches work. Between inefficiency in work habits and the law of diminishing returns, the couch sleepers aren't benefiting as much as our society believes. Dick Vermeil coached the Eagles to the Super Bowl as a couch sleeper. The Eagles lost the Super Bowl. He then helped coin the term "burnout" when he temporarily quit coaching. In his return to coaching, he had a much better work/life balance and the Rams he coached won the Super Bowl.

3. Sometimes success and failure lie, at least partially, in things that are beyond our control. As a coach or a player, you have to focus on what you can control and do what you can to make it better. But injuries and bad bounces do happen. Teams that have as many injuries as BYU has this year are almost never successful. Not even in the mighty SEC where depth is supposed to be so much better. Teams that have special seasons often have unearned lucky breaks that come their way. I'm not saying our coaches and players have done everything right or done everything they could. I am saying that pointing to injuries as one of the causes of our frustration is not a cop out.

I agree on pretty much all points. Thanks for sharing.

[Wickchad]

http://www.cougarboard.com/board/messag ... d=13210067 by GWalker

Disclaimer: gwalker recognizes that his thoughts are not necessarily those of the management and that he is not always right, may be missing some information etc. These are thoughts as they come to mind, in no particular order and they are not necessarily an exhaustive list.

With that out of the way, here goes:

1. Potentially Legitimate Criticisms - You'd have to be blind not to realize we're in the middle of a real rough patch. There are reasons. I believe the following criticisms have more merit than others that are floating around.

A. BYU is paying for a recruiting/coaching lapse on the O-line and the D-line. For whatever reason the culture around the O-line became soft and recruiting appears to have hit a snag. IMO, Tujague is part of the solution to the culture issues and the recruiting has improved over the last year or two (with Kearsley being a good get that hasn't shined as much due to injuries). The D-line seems to be down in experienced talent at the moment. The 2014 class was good, but some are gone on missions.

B. Bronco may be starting to show a pattern of trusting assistants to move up to the coordinator spot when they may not be ready. IMO, Brandon Doman was developing into a good coach, but he wasn't ready to take over as OC. Rather than worry about losing him, in hindsight Bronco may have been better off letting him go somewhere else, develop more and then bring him back if he wanted to make a change at OC later on. I'm not sure how much the drop in talent (no Ziggy, no KVN, no Sorenson) and experience is to blame and how much it falls on Howell, but it would appear that Howell may have been thrust into the role of DC a little too quickly.

C. Allowing Riley Nelson to talk himself into too much playing time when his injuries limited his effectiveness was, IMO, not the best choice. Critics can say Bronco values hard work at the expense of talent. I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, but it's a reasonable criticism. On the other hand, a program like BYU has to put a premium on hard work. We aren't ever going to have the talent to get to the top on talent alone.

2. Lame Bob Criticisms - I understand that people are frustrated with losing four in a row, especially after starting 4-0. I understand that the frustration hurts and that people look everywhere they can to find the problems. That said, some criticisms are, IMO, inaccurate. I believe I am paraphrasing Thoreau in saying that for every person digging at the roots of a problem there are a thousand people beating at the leaves. The thousand are attacking the visible symptom while doing very little to accurately diagnose anything. My list of "Lame Bob Criticisms" is filled with easy targets for leaf beaters.

A. Bronco is arrogant. Anae is arrogant. [Insert name] is arrogant. First, I don't think any of us really knows whether Bronco or Anae are arrogant. Very few, if any of us, actually know these guys on a personal and individual level. Second, we have evidence to the contrary in each case. Bronco was a 3-3-5 disciple. He brought it to BYU and had success with it for a time. When it became apparent to him that recruiting LBs is our traditional strength, he switched to the 3-4 to take advantage of that strength. Reportedly, he is always evaluating processes and practices to come up with ways to improve.

Anae intended to bring the Mike Leach Texas Tech offense to BYU. After a few games he realized we had big, bruising backs like Harvey Unga and tight ends like Dennis Pitta and Andrew George and he began to morph the offense into something that was consistently a top 25 offense during his first stint at BYU. When he came back, he brought the GFGH/Read option offense. Taysom Hill gets hurt, and he morphs the offense into something that Christian Stewart can work with.

IMO, it should be fairly obvious to the most casual observer that both men are willing to make changes and give up cherished ideas in order to make things work better. Do they have strong opinions? I believe they do. If you're a wallflower, you wouldn't survive very long at the higher levels of their profession.

B. Criticisms of coach-speak. It doesn't matter what the coach says if the team is losing. People will pick apart the coach's comments when the team loses. If the coach talks about improving execution, people will criticize him for throwing players under the bus. Others will criticize the coach for not naming specific names of players who are coming up short. If the coach says, "I take full responsibility" people will say, "If he takes full responsibility, why doesn't he fix it?" There is absolutely nothing a losing coach can say to make the majority of fans happy.

If a coach is winning, he can say almost anything and people won't care. He can talk about the players having "fat little girlfriends" and the fans will eat it up. It doesn't matter. Obviously, there are limits. He can't come out in support of domestic violence or something like that. But a winning coach has a pretty wide range of freedom in interviews and press conferences.

IMO, people spend WAY too much time worrying about what the coach does or does not say. A coach may not be calling out a player or a position group publicly, but he may be focusing hard on changing their shortcomings behind the scenes. People should realize the root cause of their frustration lies elsewhere.

C. Firesides and spiritual focus. The team was doing firesides and Bronco had a spiritual focus from 2008 through 2011 (or 2007 through 2010, I may be off by a year) when the team had four straight top 25 finishes. IMO, it doesn't make sense to assume the firesides are causing poorer performance than what we saw in those years.

Rob Morris is entitled to his opinion that he would not have come to BYU had the same spiritual focus been in play when he was recruited. KVN would not have come to BYU but for his reluctant attendance at a team fireside. It isn't safe to assume that the best players will have an attitude that shuns a spiritual focus. Some will. Some won't. Some non-LDS kids will continue to be drawn to the cleaner environment. Can the spiritual aspect of it be overdone? Absolutely. But I don't think there is anything like a lot of team meeting time being devoted to scripture study or anything like that.

IMO, people have already forgotten the impact of the scandals that happened under Crowton's watch. I don't think people realize how close we were to having the BOT pull the plug on BYU football. I believe pulling the plug on big-time football at BYU was on the table and being discussed. I know LaVell was asked if he thought BYU could still compete at the highest levels while maintaining integrity.

People love to blame Crowton's "wreckless" recruiting. But I don't think that's blame that is fairly placed. People act like Crowton never spoke about the honor code during recruiting. I remember reading newspaper articles talking about an Honor Code video that was produced with Chad Lewis (then in the middle of his Pro Bowl career with the Eagles). All recruits were required to watch the video prior to committing to play at BYU. Some of the guys caught up in Rape Gate I and II were either LDS or kids who came from strong religious backgrounds who had seen the honor code video and been told about it.

For better or worse, the only way to really minimize the re-occurrence of the Crowton-Era Scandals is to bring such a heavy gospel focus. The trend around the country is more and more in the direction of win at all costs and sweep the ugly things under the rug. We have to fight harder than ever to resist that pull.

D. Football is fifth. Focusing on and maintaining proper perspective doesn't have to get in the way of success. People succeed at the highest levels of all endeavors in American society while maintaining an appropriate and balanced perspective. Look at King Hussein with his company's refusal to ever work on Sunday. Look at Mitt Romney. Saying football isn't life and death doesn't get in the way of caring a lot about it or working very hard to achieve success.

E. Coaches eat dinner with their families and don't always work on Sunday. Most of these guys live within a 15 minute drive of campus. They come back to work after dinner. They come in very early on Monday to make up for not working on Sunday. Brandon Doman had opportunities to coach elsewhere but turned them down because he didn't want to work as hard. I don't know, but I suspect he works fairly hard at whatever he's doing now.

For some strange reason we have come to idolize the coach that doesn't even go home at night, sleeping on his office couch. IMO, the actual number of productive hours those guys work probably isn't meaningfully more than what BYU's coaches work. Between inefficiency in work habits and the law of diminishing returns, the couch sleepers aren't benefiting as much as our society believes. Dick Vermeil coached the Eagles to the Super Bowl as a couch sleeper. The Eagles lost the Super Bowl. He then helped coin the term "burnout" when he temporarily quit coaching. In his return to coaching, he had a much better work/life balance and the Rams he coached won the Super Bowl.

3. Sometimes success and failure lie, at least partially, in things that are beyond our control. As a coach or a player, you have to focus on what you can control and do what you can to make it better. But injuries and bad bounces do happen. Teams that have as many injuries as BYU has this year are almost never successful. Not even in the mighty SEC where depth is supposed to be so much better. Teams that have special seasons often have unearned lucky breaks that come their way. I'm not saying our coaches and players have done everything right or done everything they could. I am saying that pointing to injuries as one of the causes of our frustration is not a cop out.

I'm quoting the original post to make my reply look longer.

[EM_Puma]

I’d have to say that this last month of BYU sports has been the most difficult period I have ever faced as a sports fan. I never followed a team that was ranked in the top 20 nationally and who suddenly lost their superstar and have dropped off the deep end. I’ve followed losing teams going back many decades of growing up a Cleveland Indians fan, but there simply has never been this radical turn of events and it’s made me question why I follow sports.

Some of the points made here are very spot on and are not so reactionary as many have been over these last four weeks. That’s been like someone fanning a wild fire.

The bottom line for me is that it “feels” like this BYU football coaching staff is arrogant and unapproachable. I can’t help it, that’s how it feels from this fan’s perspective. I like Bronco and I believe he’s a good guy. I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced this scenario where I felt this way about a coaching staff of the team I followed. I truly believe that a lot of us fans put up this feeling of arrogance when the results were generally a winning team, but now many of us fans are faced with a complete different scenario. Everything that made me a passionate fan doesn’t just turn off and I can “turn the other cheek” and ignore what I believe are some of the problems. I wish I could, but what I’ve gotten out of fandom is the euphoria it is to win. I understand losses will happen and maybe this all happened because of a “perfect storm”, but I simply am dealing with a situation that is totally uncommon to me.

I honestly don’t know how to properly respond to this situation as a fan and basically I’ve withdrawn a bit. As I noted, if you’re passionate about sports, it’s very, very difficult to ride the wave we were on and suddenly and expectantly being tossed in the dumper. It looks as though I’m not alone in that challenge.

[scott715]

LIke I have said before, when you expect to be undefeated and then lose it is a heartbreaker. I think the team is feeling it. I was only talking about the fans and keep us from getting too high. It looks to be the same for most of the team.