Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Happier Football Times

You may have noticed I haven't blogged about KU football much lately, and if you've been following college football at all you probably understand why. This season has been so incredibly disappointing for all of us who love our Jayhawks. At the beginning of the year, our offense looked unstoppable. We were predicted to be at the top of the Big 12 north. Our defense was definitely struggling, but overall we were looking pretty good before conference play started. The defense finally started to show improvement, but when they did, the wheels came off the offense--completely. Our quarterback, who has been the super-accurate spark to our offense for four years, suddenly can't hit the broad side of a barn. No one really knows what the problem is, but something (either psychological or physical) is very wrong with Todd. The lack of a passing game has definitely affected our running game as well, and the result has been a very unproductive and depressing offense. Although our defense has had a few moments of near brilliance, they haven't exactly been consistent, and our special teams have been pretty darn awful. The combined result of these factors has been our 5 straight losses.

Obviously KU fans are not happy, and many people are grumbling that Mangino should be fired. Personally, I'm really torn about this. I mean, there certainly have been a LOT of questionable coaching decisions this year, and there are definitely serious issues when a team who was supposed to be so good falls completely off the radar like this, but Mangino obviously got us where we are--he has done so much to turn our program around. I can definitely see both sides, and I wouldn't really be surprised either way. If Mangino doesn't get fired, he most definitely needs to fire some of his assistants/coordinators!

To top off all the speculation about coach getting fired, today there was all sorts of media craziness about some sort of complaint against him by one of the players that's being investigated. The football program is a flippin' train wreck these days!

Don't get me wrong, I am still a loyal fan and I will still cheer for my boys in blue until the final quarter of the season, but wow, the second half of the season has made me sad! As an ode to our happier football times, here are the pictures from one of our last good football games this year--the one where our nephews joined us!



Obviously, if you stuck around for the entire slideshow, you noticed that it wasn't just football--that was their entire visit! I've just been meaning to share those pics forever so I thought this was a good time to do it!

2 comments:

cw said...

The pics of everyone wearing t-shirts makes me wish spring was here already.

I'm torn on Mangino as well, but leaning toward his dismissal. I'm not concerned with him yelling at football players, but he is not representing KU very well away from the field - parking ticket incident, high school football game incident, as well as info from a friend that used to work in athletic department. It appears that he is a jerk to a lot of people. Maybe he needs time away from the game to get his head (and body) back into shape.

rick said...

i agree with rick's last perspective...some time away might do mangino good. the challenge is finding a coach as good or better that wants to come to ku.