(06-01-2014 07:54 PM)WKUYG Wrote: (06-01-2014 07:50 PM)AndreWhere Wrote: (06-01-2014 06:41 PM)Volkmar Wrote: (06-01-2014 06:36 PM)AndreWhere Wrote: I want USM to compete at the highest athletic level, and I think we should drop any sport where we cannot.
How do you know which sports you can and cannot compete at the highest levels in though?
Yes = we are allowed to compete for the national championship. Maybe we go 0-12, but it's against the best teams, and if we go 12-0 instead, we don't go to the Little Seizures Valium Bowl or the Hearts of Palm Bowl, we go to the (real) championship game.
No = we compete for some lesser championship.
This is basically the test Howard Schnellenberger suggested when he left Louisville. USM football has been borderline with respect to this test for about 20 years.
Yes has NEVER been on the table for S. Miss...
NEVER
You are 100% mistaken on that point (scary-looking capital letters notwithstanding).
There have been years in which USM played a schedule that, had we won out, would have yielded a national championship.
Things have changed dramatically. BYU won it all out of the WAC back in the 1980s. USM's schedules of that era were at least as difficult, probably more difficult.
And we weren't getting our asses beat, either. We went to some bowl games that won't even talk to CUSA.
USM was fully legit back then. We had a Heisman finalist in Reggie Collier, got good TV exposure, were a part of conference formation discussions, etc.
It's probably no coincidence that this golden era of USM took place right after I-AA was created, and right after USM decided not to participate in that charade.
What's going on now is eerily similar. We made the right decision back then; let's do it again, or let's make a graceful exit that does justice to who we are (or were).