aik
Well-Known Member
For fun, let's look at some hypothetical wins since the Big 12 Championship season.
2001: I'm always more afraid of the first game of the season regardless of matchup than playing whoever our highest ranked opponent is that year. New team, untested in actual competition and lots can go wrong when they're playing for the first time. Proven to us with costly turnovers and general drive futility. What if we had gone with Pesavento since camp? Team lost 3 fumbles and Ochs threw 2 picks in the 4th in the comeback effort. Plus Pat Brougham should make some kicks and we're in a much better position to take this one at home. Could have finished 11-1 regular season with a much more likely BCS championship appearance.
2002: Another first game slip up. A CSU loss with the team we had is inexcusable, though they did also begin the season ranked and had BVP, while we were in another trial-and-error QB situation (pointing to possibly my biggest Barnett gripe, his inability to recruit a prep QB of the future who we could develop 4-5 years and could start for us 2-3 of those. Got lucky with the Klatt experiment). Ochs struggles again plus Shortbus playcalling. Chris Brown, for all of his production, really couldn't hold on to the ball in these openers could he? Waiting until the 4th to score on their defense. Come on now. This wasn't Dan Hawkins' 2009 team. Regular season could have been 10-2 though the Big 12 outcome likely wouldn't have been any different.
2003: Honestly this is tough because we were so close to being bowl eligible but most of our losses were humiliating. A post-Price, post-Gesser Wazzu at home? Baylor was too much of an embarrassment for a road game we really should have won. I'll say Tech on the road could have been a win, plus Nebraska at home almost bridged what could have been a 4-year streak for us over them. Their offense was simply more effective than ours, and then Klatt got picked twice late to seal it. Hypothetically let's take half of our 2 "maybe" losses and you've got a team that finishes 6-6 with a bowl opportunity. What could have been if Klatt wasn't concussed so often...
2004: Close loss to Mizzou. OT loss to A&M. Take one of those going differently and the squad finishes the regular season with an 8-win team. No shame in losing bad to Oklahoma, even twice in the season, from 2000-2004. There's a reason they humiliated good Texas teams every year in that span. Worldbeaters.
2005: Collapse down the stretch for an embattled team whose coach had been weathered by accusations of lack of control in the scandal years and whose only coaching cred in the conference after 2001 came from backing into several North division titles because as a whole everyone else was down. Huge level of returning talent that year and we actually dominated teams we were supposed to beat instead of playing them close. The road woes all too familiar now began with a choke at Iowa State then completely lost it at home versus Nebraska two weeks after. The one season I can't see going any differently in terms of W-L. Just the most baffling thing to see the regular season close with those two bad losses after the convincing wins of the 7-2 start.
2006: Montana State, CSU, Georgia, Baylor (3OT), Kansas. Though we had major attrition to the team before and during the season, with a capable coach to breathe new life into the program we could have won at least 3 of those. And we'd all take 5-7 as a huge success for that first year, wouldn't we?
2007: Another close loss to Kansas and a team that disintegrated against Arizona State in a lackluster game that saw CU with every opportunity to take it if only they could move the ball in the red zone. Nice of ASU to respond to CU's 14-0 start with 5 unanswered scores. Getting just one of those games would have pushed us to a 7-5 regular season with a better bowl invite and a loss in that would have still reflected a final winning record.
2008: Very promising start with excitement that faded quickly once Big 12 play got underway in October. A&M the day after Halloween was a tough pill to swallow as we crumbled and lost Speedy for the year. Alex Henery's two 4th quarter kicks and our complete non-response needs no further explanation. Another "close, but sorry you fail" season where we got halfway to bowl eligibility early but couldn't show up in our own conference.
2009: We were not prepared for CSU. 100% on our coaches for not teaching anything close to moving the ball on the ground. I put that squarely on Hawk's leadership and new OL coach Denver Johnson. I'm still debating whether we had a chance at Toledo. I was teased with early excitement and in attendance for the road game at Texas when the Longhorns killed our momentum before the half and beat us entirely with their defense and special teams. Then there was that little matter of the Thursday game at Oklahoma State where we were given an opportunity to take the win and just kept failing. Another year that could have been 5-7 or better even when coaching was at its worst.
2010: Baylor, Tech and Kansas of course. Though there's no indication the team would have won the last two with Hawk at the helm, rather Cabral gave them the fire they had lacked for so long.
Of course this is all for fun and what-if purposes because there are plenty of games that just as easily couldn't have gone our way. 2007 OU, 2008 West Virginia, 2001 CCG thanks to Robert Hodge and Major Applewhite. Hell, with all things considered we could have had a winless 2006.
The pattern here since the scandal and the twilight of the Barnett years are mediocre teams that at worst should have finished with 5 wins. Take half of every season's hypothetical losses that should have gone in CU's favor had they "cleaned up a few things" (penalties, fumbles lost, special teams) and you've got a team that's bowl eligible for 7 or 8 of the last 10 seasons instead of 5. We've fallen somewhere above the Washington schools when we could have been somewhere above Illinois and Kentucky, which is still well below our program's standard but it's a level of mediocrity rather than atrocity that keeps us from being a national joke and still gets us winning recruiting battles annually with other FBS-level competitors. We need a complete overhaul in program perception because the coaches consistently failed to get our athletes ready to play, and because of it we lost many games to inferior opponents in blowout fashion and just as often in late, epic fail fashion. The chicken-and-egg cycle continues then because as our record and national TV embarrassments pile up we get fewer high-major recruits to sign, and then we have not only bad coaching but far inferior talent.
So to answer your thread, Leash, no. Perception versus reality. But the last half decade put the wheels in motion for our reality to view our perception as a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's morning in the People's Republic. Time for a culture change.
2001: I'm always more afraid of the first game of the season regardless of matchup than playing whoever our highest ranked opponent is that year. New team, untested in actual competition and lots can go wrong when they're playing for the first time. Proven to us with costly turnovers and general drive futility. What if we had gone with Pesavento since camp? Team lost 3 fumbles and Ochs threw 2 picks in the 4th in the comeback effort. Plus Pat Brougham should make some kicks and we're in a much better position to take this one at home. Could have finished 11-1 regular season with a much more likely BCS championship appearance.
2002: Another first game slip up. A CSU loss with the team we had is inexcusable, though they did also begin the season ranked and had BVP, while we were in another trial-and-error QB situation (pointing to possibly my biggest Barnett gripe, his inability to recruit a prep QB of the future who we could develop 4-5 years and could start for us 2-3 of those. Got lucky with the Klatt experiment). Ochs struggles again plus Shortbus playcalling. Chris Brown, for all of his production, really couldn't hold on to the ball in these openers could he? Waiting until the 4th to score on their defense. Come on now. This wasn't Dan Hawkins' 2009 team. Regular season could have been 10-2 though the Big 12 outcome likely wouldn't have been any different.
2003: Honestly this is tough because we were so close to being bowl eligible but most of our losses were humiliating. A post-Price, post-Gesser Wazzu at home? Baylor was too much of an embarrassment for a road game we really should have won. I'll say Tech on the road could have been a win, plus Nebraska at home almost bridged what could have been a 4-year streak for us over them. Their offense was simply more effective than ours, and then Klatt got picked twice late to seal it. Hypothetically let's take half of our 2 "maybe" losses and you've got a team that finishes 6-6 with a bowl opportunity. What could have been if Klatt wasn't concussed so often...
2004: Close loss to Mizzou. OT loss to A&M. Take one of those going differently and the squad finishes the regular season with an 8-win team. No shame in losing bad to Oklahoma, even twice in the season, from 2000-2004. There's a reason they humiliated good Texas teams every year in that span. Worldbeaters.
2005: Collapse down the stretch for an embattled team whose coach had been weathered by accusations of lack of control in the scandal years and whose only coaching cred in the conference after 2001 came from backing into several North division titles because as a whole everyone else was down. Huge level of returning talent that year and we actually dominated teams we were supposed to beat instead of playing them close. The road woes all too familiar now began with a choke at Iowa State then completely lost it at home versus Nebraska two weeks after. The one season I can't see going any differently in terms of W-L. Just the most baffling thing to see the regular season close with those two bad losses after the convincing wins of the 7-2 start.
2006: Montana State, CSU, Georgia, Baylor (3OT), Kansas. Though we had major attrition to the team before and during the season, with a capable coach to breathe new life into the program we could have won at least 3 of those. And we'd all take 5-7 as a huge success for that first year, wouldn't we?
2007: Another close loss to Kansas and a team that disintegrated against Arizona State in a lackluster game that saw CU with every opportunity to take it if only they could move the ball in the red zone. Nice of ASU to respond to CU's 14-0 start with 5 unanswered scores. Getting just one of those games would have pushed us to a 7-5 regular season with a better bowl invite and a loss in that would have still reflected a final winning record.
2008: Very promising start with excitement that faded quickly once Big 12 play got underway in October. A&M the day after Halloween was a tough pill to swallow as we crumbled and lost Speedy for the year. Alex Henery's two 4th quarter kicks and our complete non-response needs no further explanation. Another "close, but sorry you fail" season where we got halfway to bowl eligibility early but couldn't show up in our own conference.
2009: We were not prepared for CSU. 100% on our coaches for not teaching anything close to moving the ball on the ground. I put that squarely on Hawk's leadership and new OL coach Denver Johnson. I'm still debating whether we had a chance at Toledo. I was teased with early excitement and in attendance for the road game at Texas when the Longhorns killed our momentum before the half and beat us entirely with their defense and special teams. Then there was that little matter of the Thursday game at Oklahoma State where we were given an opportunity to take the win and just kept failing. Another year that could have been 5-7 or better even when coaching was at its worst.
2010: Baylor, Tech and Kansas of course. Though there's no indication the team would have won the last two with Hawk at the helm, rather Cabral gave them the fire they had lacked for so long.
Of course this is all for fun and what-if purposes because there are plenty of games that just as easily couldn't have gone our way. 2007 OU, 2008 West Virginia, 2001 CCG thanks to Robert Hodge and Major Applewhite. Hell, with all things considered we could have had a winless 2006.
The pattern here since the scandal and the twilight of the Barnett years are mediocre teams that at worst should have finished with 5 wins. Take half of every season's hypothetical losses that should have gone in CU's favor had they "cleaned up a few things" (penalties, fumbles lost, special teams) and you've got a team that's bowl eligible for 7 or 8 of the last 10 seasons instead of 5. We've fallen somewhere above the Washington schools when we could have been somewhere above Illinois and Kentucky, which is still well below our program's standard but it's a level of mediocrity rather than atrocity that keeps us from being a national joke and still gets us winning recruiting battles annually with other FBS-level competitors. We need a complete overhaul in program perception because the coaches consistently failed to get our athletes ready to play, and because of it we lost many games to inferior opponents in blowout fashion and just as often in late, epic fail fashion. The chicken-and-egg cycle continues then because as our record and national TV embarrassments pile up we get fewer high-major recruits to sign, and then we have not only bad coaching but far inferior talent.
So to answer your thread, Leash, no. Perception versus reality. But the last half decade put the wheels in motion for our reality to view our perception as a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's morning in the People's Republic. Time for a culture change.
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