I’m a Cincinnati Bengals fan. Hold on – this isn’t a gratuitous Bengals reference, so don’t click away.
All season long, through six losses and a likely seventh today against Pittsburgh, I keep reading quotes from my favorite players, all insisting it’s just a matter of time before it all comes together, or how it’s just a matter of execution, or something similar.
But you know what the truth is? As much as it pains me to say this – and if you know me, you know it does – the Bengals aren’t very good. And you want to know how I know? Because you only hear those types of comments from teams that aren’t very good. It’s all talk instead of action, instead of implementing good, sound, winning football.
Which brings us back to Kansas State.
Are you tired of hearing about the game played out exactly how the Wildcats expected, but a play here or a play there would have been the difference?
This is the rhetoric of losing football teams.
This is what K-State is. And I’m not bagging on the Wildcats, or Ron Prince. This is just the reality.
We all know how the next three weeks will play out. Heck, Prince has known since January – why else do you buy out Fresno State? It’s always been about getting to six wins, about being bowl eligible, about being able to point to tangible evidence – five wins in 2007, six in 2008 – of growth and improvement.
The Wildcats should have emerged from Folsom Field with a victory. We all acknowledge this. But you know what the difference was? Colorado played its heart out. The Buffaloes have some athletes, but they’re not overly talented. And say what you want about Dan Hawkins, but he’s not messing around? Benching his son again? Do you realize how tough that must be? Then again, if he doesn’t go to Tyler Hansen, this offense has no life at all.
Suddenly, CU has to feel good moving forward, especially if Hansen can progress. At least there’s hope in Boulder, and let’s be honest here – K-State has been good about doing that for the opposition. Look at Texas A&M. The Aggies hung with Texas Tech after being competitive against the Wildcats.
When does K-State find its dose of hope? Not in the next three weeks. Maybe not against Nebraska, which will be a toss-up when the Huskers roll into Manhattan. And then there’s lowly Iowa State, but wasn’t that what we were saying a year ago before K-State went to Ames?
It’s not just a game of confidence any more. At some point, there’s a credibility aspect. What I mean is, if the coaching staff has consistently predicted or warned the Wildcats about what to expect every Saturday, and the Wildcats still aren’t performing well, that suggests to me some sort of disconnect. Something is amiss. No inside information or such, but it doesn’t make any sense otherwise.
But things could always be worse. You could be a Bengals fan.
6 Comments
Ron’s convenient clairvoyance (after the fact) is comical. I didn’t hear any of the players saying “coach said it would go this way” after the Tech game. Bad teams find ways to lose…when the offense can’t be stopped the defense can’t stop anyone…when the defense gets stops, the offense can’t get anything going…this is what bad teams do. Ask Ron, right now, how the OU game is going to go.
I hear a lot about “the organization”. Every organization has goals; realistic and ones that have a carrot out there to try to achieve. Let’s see what their goal setting says. If we all knew “The Plan and Expectations” it would be easier to accept the performance or lack there of.
Without knowing what is a reasonable expectation given the situation, we all just resort to expecting a winning season and bowls games.
The “after the fact” statements after games and seasons is a little too much to swallow.
JMart, are you sure you weren’t a carpenter in a former life because you sure nailed this one.
As a student at K-State, I have to say that we really feel for our players, our friends. While I’m not on the inside knowing exactly what Prince is telling the team, I do know that perception is reality. I hear Prince that that he “takes full responsibility” for what happened, and that is fine but when is he going to start doing something about it? Talk is cheap.
The defense looked much better this week however, one thing that I consistently saw was our defense trying to tackle with their hands and tackling too high. If you have one or two kids doing this it is a issue that can be addressed with proper coaching. However, many do it so it must be something wrong with the coaching.
Obviously at this point, I believe that the JUCO experiment is for a large part a flop. It sounded like a nice idea but with more than half the season over, I would have thought there would have been more synergy and tangible performance increases but I’m not seeing it. I could be wrong but with the amount of yards that teams are racking up on us, it would seem that I’m not. And should Josh elect to go to the NFL early, my goodness, we could be in for a 2-10 season next year, or worse!
You, JMart, having interviewed HCRP must know better than most of us that he is probably one of the most intelligent and nicest guys in the world, he’s just not the head coach material that we expect here in Manhattan. Unfortunately, we probably won’t see a three and out with him; that is three years and we’ve had enough, mercy.
It’s embarrassing to see the stands empty out before the fourth quarter. The last time this was happening on a regular basis disco was all the rage as well as big hair bands. Do we really want to go back there? All I’ve got to say is I know that HCRP received a premature contract extension and if he is going to prove to us that he should be our coach then he has got five games left in the season to show us.
As a parting note, like investing, historical performance does not guarantee future success, or in our case, failure. Maybe there is still hope.
expect to see over 10,000 OU fans in the stands saturday. Perhaps the lone sellout at KSU this year…
He always has the “excuse” in hand, almost myopic to never really put it on himself and the staff. How many sprints does RP run for his coaching blunders?
he was very fortunate to get away with running out the clock with 8 seconds left in the 1st half and Colo sitting in FG position if it went bad.
HCRP needs to wake up! Tim Tibesar is a lousy pick as a DC. Cornell Jackson is not a linebackers coach and we need a secondary coach that knows what they are doing. OU is going to kill us on the ground and through the air, ditto MU, and KU will kill us through the air and probably lay 300 on us rushing when the can’t run against air so far this season.
I sort of hope JF leaves after this year, we might find out that CC is of the same cloth as Todd Reesing or Chase Daniels. They just make plays, they are not the glorified diva that JF is. When we have needed JF to make plays – Louisville 2nd and 3rd quarters all we got were three and outs; Colorado 2nd, 3rd & 4th quarters inconsistency – we have got nothing of leadership leading us to decent offensive consistency and winning the game. In the NFL, JF will be a Daunte Culpepper – a few good years and good bye, but by then he will be rich.
At best we have the chance for one more win this year, ISU, but we will probably make them look like the greatest thing since sliced bread like we did last year. NU will kill us through the air and then be able to run at will because we will be trying to cover the pass and forget that they can run the ball fairly well.
If there’s 10,000 OU fans in the stadium, that’s our fault. Homecoming. Big-time opponent. It should be all PURPLE, but I digress..
Here’s to KSU pulling out a win in the next month.
Go ‘CATS!