Its only a few weeks until football starts and the Tulsa Rivals football board looks like its dying a death of thousand crickets. The silence is deafening! Haven't seen that board this dead so close to season opening in a long time. Imagine a lot of people are reading the preseason countdowns. Most of which are depressing at best. Guess everyone just finding other stuff to keep themselves busy. The problem with various count down articles is they are just guesses. After a number of the football gurus predicted Tulsa would finish 2013 at the top of C-USA, and are eating great heaping helping of crow. Those same sports gurus might be going too far in the other direction this season. See this as kind of a backlash! Tulsa was over hyped last year and probably under hyped this season as result. Going into the AAC is not a good time for that. It is what it is. At this point its a waiting game to see what path will taken this year.

I'd say thats pretty spot on. We're going to be better in every dept but the kick game imo. Injuries will play a key role. Last year we lost Nelson before the season and everything went down hill after that. But getting him back won't win games for us. I think losing Roberson is a bit of a game changer because he was the only underclass reciever we had that could make the critical catch. Now we're hearing a true freshman may start in his place which isn't a good sign for that position and may cause BB to become even more conservative in his choice of plays.

IMO a lot of TU fans from last year are waiting to see real changes in the offense before they will commit to coming to Chapman. I hope BB realizes this.

I think any prediction that we will have a winning season(before the Tulane game) is way over the top. I could see 2 wins(hopefully) unless there is a MAJOR change in our offense.....and I do mean Major!!!!! Our defense maybe OK.......and just OK.....but they aren't going to hold many teams under 21 points or more........so our offense better be able to score a whole bunch of points........if we don't average 35 points a game or more this season, 2 wins may be a very optimistic outlook. Now how many fans.....knowing BB......think we are going to average 35 points a game..........I for one do not!!!!! I think there is a chance that Tulane runs up the score on us.....by that I mean 30-10.......if that happens, I'm not even betting on 2 wins!!!!

(08-10-2014 10:40 AM)rabidTU2 Wrote:  I'd say thats pretty spot on. We're going to be better in every dept but the kick game imo. Injuries will play a key role. Last year we lost Nelson before the season and everything went down hill after that. But getting him back won't win games for us. I think losing Roberson is a bit of a game changer because he was the only underclass reciever we had that could make the critical catch. Now we're hearing a true freshman may start in his place which isn't a good sign for that position and may cause BB to become even more conservative in his choice of plays.

IMO a lot of TU fans from last year are waiting to see real changes in the offense before they will commit to coming to Chapman. I hope BB realizes this.

BB can't go too conservative. Tulsa has to be able to throw down field or else defenses will just stack the line as we saw last season. If the QB is just unable to throw the ball that means we won't be able to run it either.

(08-10-2014 07:35 AM)TulsaEye Wrote:  Its only a few weeks until football starts and the Tulsa Rivals football board looks like its dying a death of thousand crickets. The silence is deafening! Haven't seen that board this dead so close to season opening in a long time. Imagine a lot of people are reading the preseason countdowns. Most of which are depressing at best. Guess everyone just finding other stuff to keep themselves busy.

You are correct that ITS is a little slow right now, but I hope it picks up. The good folks that run that site do an excellent job and the information they give is priceless imo. The main problem on it is that there are a few posters that break the rules on profanity and attacking other loyal posters personally. If they disagree, they are very, very disagreeable. They look for confrontation and personalize every comment they don't agree with. That turns a lot of folks off and runs a lot of visitors away. I think they even have a little group that email each other and form a mini enemy hit list to attack. That really hurts their site if its occurring imo.

I post a lot on the Crossfire board - some of you might have noticed that. But ITS encourages it. I try to stay away from personalizing my comments although I decided quite some time ago to fight back IF personally attacked. By doing that, I'm telling them I won't be intimidated. But, yes, I think it hurts their board - something I hope we never do on this "little" one. We are all true TU fans here and share that. We don't have to act like a bunch of frat brats who think they already know what the world is all about, but really have no clue.

I think everyone is still a little bummed about last year and are trying not to get their hopes up early to be crushed. Just like attendance - if we start winning and winning big games, there will be plenty of old posters and new posters... Just like butts in seats at Chapman.

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I try to read between the lines of all the coaches statements about calling plays or the QBs progress etc. I'm not convinced that we have actually changed the offensive plan, scheme or plays that much. But I really don't think we can at this point. Now I think we have a slew of good TE's, but the fact that we recruit a TE in the first place shows me that we will not be much different in philosphy.

TBH, I don't particularly care what we run if we move the ball and don't needlessly turn it over.

But going back to the rivals board, I think a lot of them aren't ready to jump back on the BB bandwagon just yet. This IS the pivotal season for he and his staff. If they start winning again, their board will pick up.

We'll see in a couple of weeks - I think we'll see everything we need to know in the Tulane game.

If we come out and crush them, we may win 6-7 games this year.

If they come out and crush us, Bill will be fired before the season is over.

If it's a close win or close loss, we're in for a long painful season that we'll have to ride all the way out.

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(08-13-2014 06:41 PM)goldenhurricane2 Wrote:  We'll see in a couple of weeks - I think we'll see everything we need to know in the Tulane game.

If we come out and crush them, we may win 6-7 games this year.

If they come out and crush us, Bill will be fired before the season is over.

If it's a close win or close loss, we're in for a long painful season that we'll have to ride all the way out.

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I completely agree with that assessment. If we aren't winning in the beginning of the year (with the exception of OU), then BB will have lost the player's undivided attention. But I don't know if BB is the kind of coach that has the killer instinct like TG was. What all teams need is to win going away and making it look easy, but I haven't seen BB coach that way - he may just be too nice which in FB at this level can work against him unless he has a huge talent advantage. I doubt he has that in the AAC.

Poor Tulsa has sunk to a new low.....a majority of the fans on the AAC board are predicting a Tulane victory in our opening game.....that's scary when you look back over the last 5 or 6 years of scores versus Tulane.......Tulane is one of those teams that was always marked down at the beginning of the season in the win column!!! I think we have the talent to win, although some of it is pretty young, but do we have the coach to win.........we couldn't lose to Tulane........could we???????

Maybe we'll have a prediction thread coming for that game?

IMO we should be favored in that game. I also think we'll be better than last year because we will have a more polished QB - with more of a QBs body instead of that of a TE.

But thats for later on.

I think this season will also show us what type of support we'll see from the administration in regards to a commitment standpoint.

With all that's changing in the world of college football, there will have to be a lot more resources tapped to keep up with our friends in the AAC. Either TU needs to allocate more money or some donors need to step up.

It's a critical time for TU. We got a life boat out of the dumpster fire we were in, but we have to put our money where our mouth is.

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Yes, winning is everything, but support is also everything else (does that make any sense Ha!)?

The resources are actually out there if we can be relevant in the region athletically. But I think my original concern was in the AD's office after the new MBB coach was hired. We are paying a lot of money for an unknown quanitity imo. I'd also rather see a lot of our resources go toward FB facilities instead of millions of $ to MBB coaches that come and go when the grass looks greener. Our facilitiy needs will cost millions with the first being an IPF and the second a string of boxes/suites on the east side that will "balance" Chapman and create long term revenue as well as a way of equalizing the playing field with not only the P5 (if the future allows us the opportunity to get them here), but the AAC which will keep building their facilitiies in an attempt to impress the P5.

This is why we need the assistance of a friendly media that pretty much gives us equal footing with the regional schools (OU/OSU/Ark). Keeping our name in the sports section, radio and TV channels is very important.

(08-15-2014 08:33 AM)goldenhurricane2 Wrote:  I think this season will also show us what type of support we'll see from the administration in regards to a commitment standpoint.

With all that's changing in the world of college football, there will have to be a lot more resources tapped to keep up with our friends in the AAC. Either TU needs to allocate more money or some donors need to step up.

It's a critical time for TU. We got a life boat out of the dumpster fire we were in, but we have to put our money where our mouth is.

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In this day for college sports programs, you must take a step up in financial commitment. Or find yourself having to take a step back permanently.

(08-18-2014 12:11 AM)TulsaEye Wrote:  

(08-15-2014 08:33 AM)goldenhurricane2 Wrote:  I think this season will also show us what type of support we'll see from the administration in regards to a commitment standpoint.

With all that's changing in the world of college football, there will have to be a lot more resources tapped to keep up with our friends in the AAC. Either TU needs to allocate more money or some donors need to step up.

It's a critical time for TU. We got a life boat out of the dumpster fire we were in, but we have to put our money where our mouth is.

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In this day for college sports programs, you must take a step up in financial commitment. Or find yourself having to take a step back permanently.

100% true - it's funny how much athletics play a role in the academic functions of a university. I know for a fact that when a school's athletic teams (those visible via espn etc) are doing well, applications go up significantly.

This is very much the case at TU. I know that after the 2007 and 2008 seasons there was much more interest in TU in regards to potential students applying for entry.

So with all that said, the bottom line is visible sports are important in more ways than those that are just seen on the surface.

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You forgot to mention not only are more potential students interested when your name is in the news all the time but donors have a few more dollars for athletics when the sports teams are doing well.