I Am Depressed

What can I say. Last night was miserably depressing. Our beloved Jayhawks' amazing run came to an end. First, let me just say that I'm still so proud of their storybook season. I'm just so depressed it didn't have a storybook ending!

The bottom line is that we played a Missouri team who I think was more talented and more experienced (by way of a more challenging schedule) than we were, so we needed to play a solid game with no mistakes in order to beat them. We'd gotten off to a slow started in many of our other games this year, but since we were just a better team than most of our opponents, were able to take the extra "warm up" time to get settled down without too much backlash. Not so with the Missouri Tigers. We managed to drive down the field several times in the first half, but with two very costly interceptions in the red zone and two missed field goals, we were lucky to only be down 14-0 at halftime.

I can't help but think that the pressure of this huge game, the unusually large venue and the national TV audience were all contributing factors to the nerves that were likely behind these unusual errors by our offense. Reesing has been interception free for so many games, and Webb had only one other game this year where he wasn't totally reliable on field goals. I just can't imagine how nervous they must have been playing in such a huge game with their whole season on the line. Once they got settled down and synced up in the second half, the offense was very productive, like the offense we'd been seeing all year. Todd made some amazing throws, and Meier and Briscoe both had amazing receptions for huge gains at critical moments. Our defense gave up a lot of short passes which added up to a lot of yards throughout the whole game, but we still managed to hold the Mizzou offense to under their 42 points per game scoring average on the season. To me, that was kind of a moral victory, and the fact that we came back from a 21 point deficit and made it a very interesting and exciting game at the end was definitely something of which our boys should be proud. Our Jayhawks played hard and never gave up even when it looked like it might be a blowout.

Really, I have to say that the most frustrating thing about the game was the fact that we played it at Arrowhead stadium. I certainly can't say for sure that we would have won at Memorial Stadium, but I do know that we would have had a much better chance with the home field advantage. The game last night was not even remotely close to a home game. KU had been issued more tickets, but then a huge chunk of the tickets were given to Chiefs ticket holders, a lot of whom likely sold theirs to the highest bidder. The pre-game estimate was that the attendance would be 60-70% KU fans with the rest being Missouri people. This wasn't even close to the case. The breakdown looked to be more like 50/50, and it sounded more like 70/30 in favor of the Tigers. It was so frustrating to be surrounded by so many Missouri fans in what was supposed to be a home game for us! Not only that, but the Missouri fans are just more knowledgeable when it comes to football than KU fans, presumably because they've been better at football for several years, and because they have only one cheer to learn--M-I-Z-(pause)-Z-O-U--which just about drove me crazy last night! I'm sure that not all of the KU season ticket holders from Lawrence game to the game (because of the cold temperature and late hour), which means that there were tens of thousands of KU "fans" there who probably hadn't been to a KU game in years! For example, although the people behind us had their faces painted in crimson and blue, they would not stop their deafening screams every time we were on offense!!! Really? You don't know any better than to be quiet when our quarterback is trying to bark out the plays to his teammates? Really. I can't even tell you how much their football incompetence annoyed me. The Missouri fans were so loud when they were on defense, which made calling audibles very difficult for our quarterback. It certainly didn't help that there were KU morons sitting behind us screaming "Go Jayhawks" and helping the Mizzou efforts, which I'm pretty sure wouldn't have happened had we been at Memorial Stadium. I hope our evil Orc of an A.D. is happy with his greed. Maybe he thinks the cool million our athletics department received to move the game to Arrowhead (in addition to the millions he's already milked from donors through the points system) was worth risking our shot at the Big 12 North title. I, however, do not.

Although we were freezing the entire evening and we were very sad about the outcome of the game, we at least had fun tailgating with some friends beforehand. And just because our Jayhawks are no longer undefeated, that doesn't mean Chad and and I won't be there to support them in whatever bowl game they play at the end of the season. We're in. Who's coming with us? :)