Apathy at a fever pitch

I have heard the the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Having long ago sworn off of posting angry I waited to get twenty miles of cycling and a swing by work in before letting myself comment on yesterday's calamity.

In a word , "Ouch."

That was the kind of homeflogging we come to expect from bowl eligible Big XII teams, not from bottom tier MAC outfits. 'Ouch" again!

I have dear friends who live in Lawrence. They are KU graduates and very intelligent people in virtually all aspects.

However, since spring they have encouraging me to visit for a football game assuring me that "things are different than the last eight
grease-fires on train wrecks in the midst of toxic waste sites. My response was to wait and see.

After yesterday "I don't wanna see no more."

As I see it we have one of two very serious problems. 1) Talent, this roster is still too small. slow. timid, unable to catch, unable to read a coverage and execute throws ... to compete. I would add lack of depth to that list of maladies, but the horror show started early on . before attrition had much impact. I might to pressing to see our backup ( almost starting) QB but obviously fixing the offense leaves us still horrid on defense.

2) The physical skill set has been upgraded, but after holding SEMO at arms length the lads got overconfident. Seems impossible if you have the slightest historical context. Younger people sometimes lack that. This is both a bigger problem ( getting cocky about being a 4.5 pt favorite in a critical game for the program at home. If there is a silver lining mental malfunctions such as this might be corrected . ( At least it could be possible, unlike upgrading the 40 time of every DB on the team.)

Then again we might have both problems.

The opposite of love is fear, and I fear this football season will be another disappointment . . .

RC

I was one who had guarded optimism this season. Optimism was for three wins, with a truly successful season being four wins.

How down I am now after that horrible showing, which made us look so unprepared and overwhelmed. Bender looked completely lost, and the defense was even worse.

I'm more sad than mad. I so badly wanted to have some semblance of a competitive team. Doesn't look like that will happen.

Is this a matter of player quality? Our football program is so poor that we can only get kids who want to play college football regardless? Are we at the point where a prospect may choose a good division II team instead of the worst (?) Div I program?

Like AZHawk....I was hoping for a surprise win to give us 4.

I'm sad. Very sad.

It's hard for me to say anything about the talent, but I suspect we're so far down after so many bad seasons that it will take at least two more recruiting years to get quality players beyond just a handful of very good players. Unfortunately one or two win seasons make recruiting so difficult.

More so I would say it's also about the inexperience of the coaching staff. Not that they're bad, just that maybe they need a few years to mature as well. Recall how many assistants bolted last year (better jobs or realization that Beaty isn't that great???) and thus how many new coaches are here this year. I noticed that our offense almost always snapped the ball with less than three seconds on the play clock. and often the QB barely got the play from the sideline in time to call it and get a snap. That's the antithesis of the air raid, fast paced offense, and causes chaos for a young QB. It shows me that the offensive coordinator is also a little confused and in need of game time experience.

Ultimately, though, I think it's foolish to think that we can attract ANY coach with more experience that what we have. Who in the world would even come from a solid D-11 team to KU? Right now KU is without argument one of the worst programs in the country. I hope we figure out how to get better, but boy is it taking a long time.