Stop the Insanity!

I stopped making sports posts for two reasons. One of them being because I don’t really want to limit this blog to stuff that is only relevant to people at FIU. I would prefer to have a broader reader base than that. Mainly I stopped posting about sports though because, like most sports fans, I am superstitious. About the same time I stopped posting sports related blog entries, the football team started winning. They got their same victory about the same time that the men’s soccer team got theirs and the volleyball team got their first conference win. Since that post the volleyball team continues to roll and both the soccer squads have notched a few victories. The football team went to Denton, Texas and put a whooping on UNT.
So I stopped posting about sports, not out of laziness or a lack of desire to post about sports, believe me. Besides the wins we’ve gotten, some of the stuff I’ve been reading on college football message boards has had me chomping at the bit to post. Let me get the basics out of the way first.
Is there anyone still questioning Paul McCall as the starting QB for this team? Paul has looked great now the he is getting more time to set up and check down to his second and third pass options. I would like to see fewer dropped passes from the receivers though.
Next, how fast is T.Y. Hilton? Damn! That guy can fly. I don’t know that “Goodbye” is an adequate nickname for him. Perhaps it should just be T.Y. “Damn that guy is fast” Hilton. He’s got good hands too. Normally it’s the sure handed receivers are the slow ones and the burners are the guys who couldn’t catch a cold.
Finally, the biggest difference I see between this team and the team that lost its first two games is confidence. This team knows that it has talent and can win games. Even when they went down 13-0 in the first quarter to Troy, they didn’t quit. Winning can do that to you. This team may only lose one more game the rest of this season.
Now that I’ve gotten that out, let me address you insane people. Once the Panthers won a couple of games I started reading message board posts with people talking about a conference championship and subsequent bowl game. Hold on a moment people. We beat three bad teams. Yes, I know that we beat Toledo and then Toledo beat Michigan but guess what? Michigan isn’t a good team either. Rich Rodriguez is installing an offensive system without the proper tools right now. UNT is in the same position FIU has been in for the past two seasons, only they aren’t in a talent hotbed like Miami and they don’t have a recruiter like MC there either. MTSU is the best of the three teams that we beat but they have personnel issues right now.
It is great to be winning and hopefully the stands will begin to fill a bit more with each win but don’t make those New Orleans reservations just yet. We still have two of the better teams in the conference remaining in Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette, not to mention FAU, who I still think is better than their 2-5 record indicates. Two losses in any of those three games leaves us at 6-6, providing we win the games we should win against Louisiana-Monroe and Western Kentucky. We don’t want to overlook those teams the way that Toledo obviously overlooked us.
If we win two of those three games and end up at 7-5, a bowl game is still a long shot. Yes, the Sun Belt conference does have more bowl tie-ins than just the New Orleans bowl but those aren’t guaranteed. The other bowls have other teams to choose from before falling back to the Sun Belt teams and FIU and its young tradition and poor attendance record isn’t likely to wow any bowl selection committees. Even if we win out, we need Troy to lose two conference games now that they have beaten us and that isn’t likely to happen. Winning out would put us at 8-4 though, making passing on FIU a difficult proposition for any lower tiered bowl game. I just don’t think that will happen. I think FIU wins three of its last five games, finishing 6-6 and staying home for the holidays. Considering that most in the sports media had FIU as the worst team in the country this year, a 6-6 season should be more than enough for its fans. Even I only had them 4-8.
Now before any of you FIU fans start bashing me or saying that I’m not a true fan, let me say that I will gladly print out these pages and eat my words if FIU ends up winning the conference or playing in a bowl game.