Who Do We Think We Are?

Early this year, I wrote an article about Boise State’s Fiesta Bowl win, where I called it the best thing to happen for college football and Southern Miss in a long time.  Well, Thursday night’s game between Boise State and Southern Miss has destroyed any benefit the Golden Eagles may have gotten from the Fiesta Bowl game. 

The announcers love to pick up stats and under most views, Bower appears to have had a great run at Southern Miss.  Number to wins, number of winning seasons, number of bowl attendances.  All seem to make Bower look like the best man for the job and make Southern Miss look like a dangerous opponent.  But what happened afterward changed that.

A close, well played game would have been the appropriate response.  Two “top” mid-majors going head to head on TV should have been a great match up and demonstrated two great programs.  What we saw, for a Southern Miss fan, was quite embarassing.  I won’t take anything away from the Broncos, they executed flawlessly and deserved the win.  But what happened on the other side of the field?

We weren’t really out played beyond the clear lack of discipline on defense and kickoffs.  But discipline is a coaching issue.  Boise State did what they wanted, when the wanted, and exploited every weakness with ease.  We are all sitting back now waiting for Bower’s “Get Back to Basics” press statement.  Why does it always take a loss like this before we “Get Back to Basics?”

My point is this, if this were the first time this had happened, I could let it go.  It isn’t.  Many of us expected 3 losses and believed Boise State would be one of those.  But every year it seems something comes around to hit us in the face.  Be it the critical losses to Houston, Tulsa, ECU or Central Florida or being out right embarassed by OOC teams, each year there is a bitter moment where fans are brought crashing down.  We then spend the rest of the season just hoping we can show some pride from a good C-USA run.

So, the Boise State game was the crash and burn moment for the 2007 season.  But worst than that, it clearly demonstrated that we lack the ability to compete outside of our conference.  I hope the Southern Miss athletic administration comes to recognize how damaging this is to our program.  How many potential recruits saw this loss and now devalue our program?  How many fans will now drop out?  We need something to happen, and a “Back to Basics” speech is not it.