Britney Spears Naked

What can I say about the Marshall game? They have really, really, really, really, really good kickers.

I am upset about the loss, but at the same time I'm trying not to be too upset because perhaps what's wrong with this program isn't the football team but the fans. Yeah, us. Maybe we should re-examine why we expected what we expected from the team this season. If we thought they might go 7-5 or 6-6, we wouldn't really be that pissed would we? OK, yeah, we'd still be pissed, but you see my point.

Sure, we could still get into a bowl. ... Yay ... But almost every year, ECU lets us down, regardless of coaches or players. The common denominator seems to be our own misguided expectations, fueled by the hype machines that surround the program (including this very blog).

The only time the Pirates have ever exceeded my expectations to any significant degree was 1991, my first drunken year at ECU. Every year after that I have endured hearing about the latest hot high school prospect who turned down Florida State and Southern Cal to come play for us, the mighty Pirates! Yay! And that dude would almost always end up sucking. So I remind myself that that type of hype is just Sports (Mis)Information Department bullshit. We have to stop buying into.

I am not advocating passively accepting crap seasons from the program. I think we should expect to field a team capable of cracking the polls and winning bowl games every year. There is no reason for this to be otherwise. As fans, we should demand it.

But we also need to realistically evaluate where we are as a team before each season, not just cross our fingers and pray for the best possible outcome every game -- which was what happened in 1991. We got very lucky.

Yes, we should have beaten the 1-8 Thundering Herd this year regardless of how good we may or may not be. I won't argue that. But we lost to N.C. State, too. And Southern Miss (as always) and they're not even that good this year. Why? The answer, sadly, might just be that we aren't really as good as we thought.

And that is unacceptable. We can and should do better. But once we identify the real problem -- ability -- then we can act to correct it. If it's "just another letdown" how do you fix that? Fire everybody and kick all the players off the team and start over?

I still have faith in Skip Holtz. I'm on board with him for at least another season. But if we don't make progress in 2008, I'm going to raise the "No Quarter" flag.