Disappointment!

That is the word I use to describe the Cougars defense on Saturday. Plainly put, disappointing. They just aren't as good as we thought and the Florida State Seminoles deserved to beat us. They were faster and had more talent. Hats off to FSU! Good game. Cougars, back to the drawing board PLEASE before we see TCU and Utah! We want to go undefeated the rest of the season and we do believe that is possible!! Let's rise up again Cougars and get it done! Yeah ... then we can go to the Vegas Bowl AGAIN and play the #5 team in the PAC AGAIN. Excuse the sarcasm and disappointment at that thought! Steve and I were kind of hoping for a trip to New Orleans, Miami or even LA this year and with USC losing yesterday, that was looking even more hopeful, until we looked back down on the field and watched our own game! Mountain West Champs again Cougs. You can do it! (Just don't count on me to go to Vegas for the 4th year in a row - we're bored with Vegas!)

Steve and I discussed how frustrating being a Cougar fan can be. We love our BYU Cougars and we are BLUE! But sometimes, it gets discouraging cheering for a team that is always GOOD, but never GREAT. You take the team to the north of us (U of U) and they have MEDIOCRE years that I wouldn't even call GOOD but then they manage to pull off GREAT years. So much excitment and fun to watch that! Why can't the Cougars do the same? I've come to the conclusion that our team is too mature and split-focused for it. We have a mature team, many return missionaries and married guys - which means they are older and smarter than many teams which makes them consistently GOOD from season to season. And sometimes we catch a glimpse of greatness from them (like in Dallas against OU). But we have a team who has a lot of other priorities (school, church, wives even kids - and even coach admits those priorities are more important) but it means they aren't eating, breathing and sleeping football. They understand that football isn't the only important thing in life and that for most of them, it isn't the end-all. Most of them aren't at BYU JUST to play football. Many of them are there for their educations first and to play football too. Most of them will go on to have very successful careers in fields other than football and their above average GPAs show that. I think that for them as individuals, that's a good thing. However, I think that for the team it is their downfall ... because of all those other priorities and having a bigger understanding of their futures they are distracted and they continually lack the intensity, passion and fire to be GREAT. If they lose, its a bummer, but it doesn't change their futures. We need more players with big talent, more players whose entire future depends on getting drafted, more players whose ONLY focus is football, more players who have passion and fire to play the game GREAT. With players like that combined with our mature, smart players, the Cougars would EXCEL and be GREAT! Just my 2 cents worth!

But I still bleed BLUE and I'll still be at every game with the same expectation.... that we CAN win, if we have the passion today to do it!

Off my soapbox now!