New Season

[Cowboy20]

Non-con is officially in the books, and while I share some of the same disappointment from threads below, I don’t think anyone is surprised we are 2-2 heading into conference play. That said, I do think this team let an opportunity pass in the CU game, but their urgency was more prevalent than ours. A loss for Deon to the Pokes would have been the first nail for him, and his players stepped up. Let’s turn the page.
How many games will this team win in conference play? Will there be 4 more and an opportunity for a bowl game? Will that be enough to keep a fan base that clearly isn’t behind the current staff? Will our players rise to the occasion to save their coaches, like the Buffs did? I have a lot of questions. And it’s hard to have a positive outlook at this point.
My hope is, that this team can pull it together for a 6 win season at the least. A bowl appearance for these players would be great. Then, J Johnson gets walking papers. Sawvel, I can see him saying, “ I’d rather be a DC” and he may go on his own. He just doesn’t look like he likes being the head man and that uncomfortable uncertainty is obvious. Can’t have that in your head coach. I still think this team can be successful, but it’s going to be on the shoulders of the players at this point. Step up boys, get your fangs back, and play for each other. Don’t inherit the mediocre mentality displayed last night!
At this point, all I can say is, at least we aren’t the sheep! Yikes!

 

[ragtimejoe1]

We should be competitive with every team remaining on the schedule.

 

[Bear Claw]

6 wins???? Hahahahahaha

With this boneheaded group of leaders, this team will have to be lucky to win two more games.

I’m not into moral victories. I’m into actual ones and I don’t see those coming anytime soon.

 

[Subcanis]

We should be competitive with every team remaining on the schedule.

Man, this conference has gone to shit.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Man, this conference has gone to shit.

That's no lie.

 

[PorkerPoke]

Good thing we don’t play BSU (perpetual loss), Bronco’s USU or UNM.

Remember UNM could only score points against Bohl and then Bronco took over for one season and put together a decent offense. In fact UNM has gone from a perpetual 2-3 win team on a path of improvement. Jason Eck is a vastly superior coach than Sawful is. It’s sad to be trading places as a contender for the cellar.

 

[FTR]

I would love to have Jason Eck, a winner, as the Cowboys head coach. Sawvel is NOT a head coach. Send him home.

 

[Hotkarl]

I think we should be competing going forward. With this coaching staff I dont know. I think we lose at fresno and sdsu and thats it.

 

[phxpoke]

I think we should be competing going forward. With this coaching staff I dont know. I think we lose at fresno and sdsu and thats it.

I don’t see us beating Vegas either. I agree with you on all of the other games

 

[LanderPoke]

Yup! It’s a new season. The more important season at that. I hope they can flush the last two weeks down the toilet and start with a clean slate and a good mentality going forward

 

[Itsux2beaewe]

Why does it take an embarrassing event like the 4th quarter at CU for Sawful to say, gee, yeah that wasn’t very good management of the game? Or changing QBs last season. If I were Sawful I would have put Simms in the last 2 games at some point. What do we lose. It just seems he’s………awful.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Why does it take an embarrassing event like the 4th quarter at CU for Sawful to say, gee, yeah that wasn’t very good management of the game? Or changing QBs last season. If I were Sawful I would have put Simms in the last 2 games at some point. What do we lose. It just seems he’s………awful.

It upsets some people but it's now obvious that PBJ has a fairly steep learning curve relative to other potential hc candidates at the time and within our budget. A search committee may not always pick a winner but would have undoubtedly detected the level of PBJ s inexperience. This is all on the hiring process. I actually feel a little bad for PBJ; part of a hiring committee's job is making sure they aren't setting a candidate up for failure. They don't always hit on a hire but they are usually good at identifying what certainly won't work.

 

[307bball]

It upsets some people but it's now obvious that PBJ has a fairly steep learning curve relative to other potential hc candidates at the time and within our budget. A search committee may not always pick a winner but would have undoubtedly detected the level of PBJ s inexperience. This is all on the hiring process. I actually feel a little bad for PBJ; part of a hiring committee's job is making sure they aren't setting a candidate up for failure. They don't always hit on a hire but they are usually good at identifying what certainly won't work.

Whatever you are talking about upset's nobody. What people are upset about is a crappy team.

What little cautious optimism (and the even lessor in-cautious optimism) there was around the time of Sawful's hiring is long gone. I don't share your belief that a committee has some inherent ability to not f-up something. The specific twists and turns that led to hiring Sawful have no bearing on his inability to lead a team (as a HC) to victory.

All fan bases are guilty of trying to read the tea-leaves positively when looking ahead...saying things like "this will be where we turn things around for these reasons". Mostly that is all wishful thinking and after the fact, when the wheels have come off, nobody who was hopeful is defending any of the players/coaches they previously had hope for.

Anybody who thinks Burman has made the right call in making Sawful the head coach is free to chime in here and tell me I'm crazy.

 

[TheRealUW]

Whatever you are talking about upset's nobody. What people are upset about is a crappy team.

What little cautious optimism (and the even lessor in-cautious optimism) there was around the time of Sawful's hiring is long gone. I don't share your belief that a committee has some inherent ability to not f-up something. The specific twists and turns that led to hiring Sawful have no bearing on his inability to lead a team (as a HC) to victory.

All fan bases are guilty of trying to read the tea-leaves positively when looking ahead...saying things like "this will be where we turn things around for these reasons". Mostly that is all wishful thinking and after the fact, when the wheels have come off, nobody who was hopeful is defending any of the players/coaches they previously had hope for.

Anybody who thinks Burman has made the right call in making Sawful the head coach is free to chime in here and tell me I'm crazy.

The crazy thing about Sawvel is how quickly it became obvious we had made the wrong hire...literally game number one.

I have seen some bad Wyoming football teams in my time, but I can't say I've ever felt more like we were underperforming our potential than I did last year. That ASU game last year was so pathetic, impotent, and embarrassing that I quit wearing my Poke gear for a while. I was so embarrassed for the University, the State, and the team after that game. It looked like we were trying to learn the game of football in real time during the game. Sawvel looked completely befuddled by what was going on. That game still makes me cringe to this day.

Then came the mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that Sawvel had maybe figured it out. We finished with 3 wins last year and had somehow convinced ourselves that we were on the up and up because we managed to beat WSU on the road to close out the season. Then we won another road game (barely) against one of the worst college football teams in the nation but justified it with "a road win is always a good win". Is there anyone left who believes Sawvel is the right guy? I would love to hear your reasons as to why.

 

[ragtimejoe1]

Whatever you are talking about upset's nobody. What people are upset about is a crappy team.

What little cautious optimism (and the even lessor in-cautious optimism) there was around the time of Sawful's hiring is long gone. I don't share your belief that a committee has some inherent ability to not f-up something. The specific twists and turns that led to hiring Sawful have no bearing on his inability to lead a team (as a HC) to victory.

All fan bases are guilty of trying to read the tea-leaves positively when looking ahead...saying things like "this will be where we turn things around for these reasons". Mostly that is all wishful thinking and after the fact, when the wheels have come off, nobody who was hopeful is defending any of the players/coaches they previously had hope for.

Anybody who thinks Burman has made the right call in making Sawful the head coach is free to chime in here and tell me I'm crazy.

You're wrong on this one. There's 2 "failure buckets" so to speak. 1) well qualified candidate with strong skill set for the job but just doesn't translate to the position for a variety of reasons and 2) under qualified and skill set obviously deficient for success at the position.

Committees are actually pretty decent at picking the latter (especially with a year's worth of data in this case). They obviously misfire (sometimes too frequently) with the former.

If you think PBJ is in bucket 1, then we just disagree. Based on what we've seen, I can't imagine how.

If you think PBJ is in bucket 2, then, well there's a rabbit hole, isn't there?