This is not another Fire Doc post but I wanted to share why the last 15 years have been so frustrating. We have not progressed as a program since 2004. This isn’t going to be a post to talk about how great we were during those years, it’s the fact how incredibly backwards we went from those years.
Since the end of the 2004 season, we have things we didn’t have during 97-04 that we now have yet our program is going backwards. We joined a bigger better conference (our initial entry into the CUSA conference), we built a state of the art IPF, we pay our head coach close to a million dollars a year, built a first class weight room, new awesome locker rooms, remodeled the facilities building with a hall of fame. Consistently have had some of the top recruiting classes that we have ever had at Marshall in the past 15 years.
But the play on the field has not matched any of these improvements at all. Would you take any of the Marshall teams of the past 15 years in a game against any of the teams from our MAC days. Before you say 2004 remember that was also the team that lost to Ohio State on a 56 yard field goal at the final whistle, and played UGA toe to toe for 4 qtrs before losing 13-3. I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on any of our last 15 years teams beating any of our previous 8 years.
That’s not good, that’s not good at all! Other than the 99 team or the Moss team of 97, our most recent Marshall teams should be much better than those teams with all the advantages our program has now over that era.
But the single biggest thing we have lost in the last 15 years and that is fans expectations. I remember during the that era we felt we were going to win every game, it didn’t matter if we did or not it was our expectations. It was a great feeling.
We have basically become now to the majority of our fans what we hated about the MAC. The team that people root for as their “little” team but they have a P5 team that is their “big boy” favorite team. Marshall students half the time Marshall isn’t even their favorite team. We have truly become what Huggins said the only people that give a crap is the little pocket outside Ashland. We aren’t cultivating many new fans due to the fact we aren’t winning anything of any consequence. So we have kids growing up not caring about MU at all. Many of our fans have also fell for the biggest bs line of all well we just don’t have the money. Even though in the last 15 years there have been teams that have been in BCS games and Access Bowls from schools with similar budgets to ours.
We went from having heisman finalists, putting kids in the pros, being a nationally respected G5 program when we had a lot less money, less facilities, a smaller terrible conference to a mediocre G5 in a terrible conference who now believe that Cincinnati is a team that we shouldn’t be able to compete with at home. It really sucks.
Since the end of the 2004 season, we have things we didn’t have during 97-04 that we now have yet our program is going backwards. We joined a bigger better conference (our initial entry into the CUSA conference), we built a state of the art IPF, we pay our head coach close to a million dollars a year, built a first class weight room, new awesome locker rooms, remodeled the facilities building with a hall of fame. Consistently have had some of the top recruiting classes that we have ever had at Marshall in the past 15 years.
But the play on the field has not matched any of these improvements at all. Would you take any of the Marshall teams of the past 15 years in a game against any of the teams from our MAC days. Before you say 2004 remember that was also the team that lost to Ohio State on a 56 yard field goal at the final whistle, and played UGA toe to toe for 4 qtrs before losing 13-3. I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on any of our last 15 years teams beating any of our previous 8 years.
That’s not good, that’s not good at all! Other than the 99 team or the Moss team of 97, our most recent Marshall teams should be much better than those teams with all the advantages our program has now over that era.
But the single biggest thing we have lost in the last 15 years and that is fans expectations. I remember during the that era we felt we were going to win every game, it didn’t matter if we did or not it was our expectations. It was a great feeling.
We have basically become now to the majority of our fans what we hated about the MAC. The team that people root for as their “little” team but they have a P5 team that is their “big boy” favorite team. Marshall students half the time Marshall isn’t even their favorite team. We have truly become what Huggins said the only people that give a crap is the little pocket outside Ashland. We aren’t cultivating many new fans due to the fact we aren’t winning anything of any consequence. So we have kids growing up not caring about MU at all. Many of our fans have also fell for the biggest bs line of all well we just don’t have the money. Even though in the last 15 years there have been teams that have been in BCS games and Access Bowls from schools with similar budgets to ours.
We went from having heisman finalists, putting kids in the pros, being a nationally respected G5 program when we had a lot less money, less facilities, a smaller terrible conference to a mediocre G5 in a terrible conference who now believe that Cincinnati is a team that we shouldn’t be able to compete with at home. It really sucks.
