Quote:The greatest recruiting class in Mid-American Conference history has been assembled. It's one that dinged a few bluebloods – particularly the bottom section of the Big Ten – while leaving the rest of the MAC in the dust, giving Western Michigan and second-year coach P.J. Fleck the horses to ride back into postseason play.

Quote:His recruiting prowess will give Fleck a two-year pass – and he'll take every second, I'd think. The first pass was for 2013; the second is for 2014, when the Broncos' staff will be taxed by the responsibility of getting an unparalleled recruiting class ready for August and September. These three-star freshmen are still freshmen, after all.

Quote:The foundation is in place for a pretty good defense – not this year, perhaps not next year, but at some point in the future. The defense as a whole is dreadfully young along the front seven... So the front seven embarks on a painful learning curve.

Quote:...the future isn't merely around the corner; it's years away, as in two or more, and this year's team is far too young, raw, untested and inexperienced to expect any major growth from a season ago. How can WMU turn the tide? By being patient as the talented roster grows accustomed to the college game... This is not the year WMU turns the page.

Quote:Dream season: WMU sweeps that winnable quartet, upsets Ohio and sneaks past rival Central Michigan to secure bowl eligibility at least one season ahead of schedule.

Quote:it's hard to digest just how rapidly this program fell from the MAC's top half: Western Michigan wasn't merely bad but buffoonish, taking the field every Saturday for three months and ineptly dropping game after game against teams good, bad and ambivalent.

(07-02-2014 08:24 PM)Hoekjeness Wrote:  It's refreshing to see a national writer be realistic about our expectations as well.

For every "buffoonish" comment, there are two or three more comments that see the bigger picture for what it is. More than one season.

(07-03-2014 06:12 AM)Hoekjeness Wrote:  

That's why I get upset when I see people "guaranteeing" 4 wins and "realistically expecting" 6 wins. USA Today is calling a 6-win season for WMU a dream season.

Let's be realistic about this and understand it's going to take a few years before we see any real, significant progress.

Now if we turn around ago 0-12 or 1-11 again, then I'll start raising some red flags. But for now, this is a process.

(07-03-2014 06:12 AM)Hoekjeness Wrote:  

That's why I get upset when I see people "guaranteeing" 4 wins and "realistically expecting" 6 wins. USA Today is calling a 6-win season for WMU a dream season.

Let's be realistic about this and understand it's going to take a few years before we see any real, significant progress.

Now if we turn around ago 0-12 or 1-11 again, then I'll start raising some red flags. But for now, this is a process.

(07-03-2014 06:56 AM)Chipdip2 Wrote:  Purdues QB started the last 7 games of the season as a true freshmen, and their team improved.

(07-03-2014 07:05 AM)Dirty Ernie Wrote:  The part that worries me is most of us are predicting and assuming that "in a few years we will see real, significant progress". That is Probably true, but nothing is guaranteed.

(07-03-2014 08:47 AM)DesertBronco Wrote:  Barometer, and we should be favored road or not. Doesn't matter, we lose any of those and we have either been surpassed by a 1AA team or a team coming off a season as bad or worse than ours with a first year coach.

Can't mealy mouth that fact down.