(09-01-2021 08:05 AM)mebehutchi Wrote: The difference for us is that the only time to actually make an impression on the greater college football world in the context of the current sea change is our out of conference schedule. We need to be more ready for these games not less and not working kinks out. That's the reality, and if Bloom is no more ready than DB then the only difference is that one of them can't seem to even get the "regular season" right.
But here's the problem, Hutch. We are a long way from being able to make any kind of splash in those games today. We've got to build to get to the point where we can change that.
We've had the old argument about whether it is more important to win CUSA or to register a "signature" win against a P5. They are the same thing. We won't be good enough to beat a P5 until we are good enough to win CUSA. It doesn't matter which one you consider most important, because doing one is the best way to do the other. Right now we have to be all about the business of getting better.
TCU had a bunch of "signature" wins from the Sun Bowl win over Southern Cal in 1998 until the Rose Bowl win over Wisconsin in 2011. And they got invited to step up in conference affiliation twice in that time frame. But the reason they were signature wins was because TCU was backing them up with 9, 10, 11, and 12 win regular seasons.
If we come up with a decade of 9-3, 10-2, 11-1, and 12-0 regular seasons, like TCU did, we will get our share of "signature" wins--and we will attract the attention of some conference that we would want to belong to. But we have to do both. Right now, to paraphrase Groucho Marx talking about country clubs, why would we want to belong to any conference that would be willing to have us as a member?
And treating those games as "preseason" games may be the best way to build to that point. My problem with Bailiff is that he called them "preseason" games but didn't treat them the way the NFL treats preseason games. Play a bunch of people, find out what you've got. Instead he just kept sending the first team out there all game, wore them down, and then used the "preseason" excuse for the loss. There is no excuse for wearing a player out, and getting him hurt, in a game you can't win, when there are plenty of games on the schedule that you can win, if you keep that player healthy.