Well, here it is, the first–err, second–entry of the 2009 football season. While I considered getting an earlier jump on the festivities, various things (including a new computer purchase and other things I’ll mention later) got in the way, and let’s be honest: is the glorified scrimmage that will be Alcorn really worth a full “Know Thy Enemy” write-up?

For what it’s worth, FTF plans to take a new tact from here on out, adding more frequent, smaller updates and entries rather than saving up for sporadic, more long-winded entries—essentially taking a more traditional “blog” approach. (Having a computer that runs a little faster than molasses going uphill in wintertime will make executing this plan noticeably easier.)

An oldie but a goodie

Anyway, since there’s really not a whole lot to say about the game until after we see the 2009 Eagles in action, I’m going to take this time to espouse some of my own “undeniable truths” as they apply to Southern Miss football.

To borrow some old-school USM lingo, I believe:

…playing college football on any non-holiday Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday is just plain dumb no matter how you stack it. While the World Wide Leader ostensibly sells schools on “exposure,” they fail to take into account that high school recruits are–by definition–otherwise occupied on Friday nights and no one outside of the fan base you already have is going to tune in when the Cowboys and Steelers are playing on another channel. While the UABs of the world will never be able to turn down the cash, I fully expect to see more schools with potentially workable followings to take on USM’s current philosophy that you’re better off maximizing butts in the seats than giving some random guy in a bar 800 miles away who’ll never buy a ticket or join your booster club an opportunity to see you play.  On a related note,

…sellouts cause season ticket sales, they do not result from them. And speaking of tickets,

…the Southern Miss ticket office is an embarrassment. Rare is the fan who’s been around for any length of time who doesn’t have a unflattering story to tell. In my own case, I’m still waiting for a callback on upgrading my season tickets (no biggie, guys; I was just going to double what I have been paying, and we all know the athletic department is swimming in money anyway, right?) that I was told would come in early July. And that’s just my latest bad experience. Speaking of which, I also believe…

…yes, on average, Golden Eagle fans are, in fact, a mightily complaining bunch. However, the solution to that lies not in the fans being more forgiving, but in the department giving them fewer things about which to complain.

…paraphrasing EaglePost’s RockTheRock, when you win 12 games, you can get people in the stands to wave whatever you want them to wave.

…if you want major college football, but you want also want a placid fan base, cheap parking right next to the stadium, a roster full of guys who never get in trouble, and your children to be able to play tag on the playing surface…well, you just need to make up your mind.

…an organization having a “family” mentality has its strong points, but it also opens the door for a family’s less-desirable traits, such as bickering, rivalry, and gossip. Somewhat related,

…it’s improving, but Southern Miss still has a problem with supporters who care more about what the athletic programs can do for their egos than what they can do to improve the programs over the long haul.

…if that last one offended you, you’re probably one of those people.

… ”a penchant for finding diamonds in the rough” is a nice way of saying, “recruiting kinda sucks, but we get lucky every now and then.”

And last but not least, I honestly believe

…this team is going to have the best season the school has seen in an awfully long time, but it’s probably a year away from a BCS bowl run. We’re still a few big ol’ offensive lineman away (in terms of depth, not the quality of our starters) from running with the big dogs with any consistency.

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Also, a brief sad note as it somewhat relates to this blog. The two of you out there who have actually taken the time to read my bio have seen the crack in there about how “the cat run[s] the house.” I’m sad to say that said cat is no longer with us. After battling a neurological problem that slowly took away her mobility over the past year-plus and that we chose not to have diagnosed in detail due to the invasiveness of the applicable testing vs. the minuscule chance of anything being able to be done about it, she was gracefully put to rest this past Thursday after providing the wife and me (as well as many other relatives and friends) a half-decade of wonderful companionship as well as entertainment. Godspeed, little Cali, godspeed.

I’ve seen some grumbling in the past few days from people upset about the lack of a major boost in season ticket sales this season. A lot of it, to me anyway, is simply a continuation of the perpetual “blame those who aren’t fans” attitude that has infested the USM-verse for eons. Well, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and ask the question that—obvious as it may be—few want to ask:

Just what has Southern Miss done to expect otherwise?

Have our new, cutting-edge efforts to harvest first-time season-ticket buyers fallen on deaf ears? Oh, wait…there haven’t been any such efforts. Are people in South Mississippi and surrounding areas just not interested in an explosive team with a chip on its shoulder that’ll stand toe-to-toe with the nation’s best? Perhaps we could find out if we actually had a team like that.

While I’m as excited about the Fedora era as the next person, and he seems to be laying a great foundation, the fact of the matter is, he hasn’t coached a game yet. To expect one move (which I feel compelled to explore more in-depth in a future update), the results of which are probably a couple of years from materializing, to immediately increase season ticket commitments by two-fold or more is just unrealistic. “Larry Fedora facts” aside, he’s a football coach, not a miracle worker.

"Onward, To The Top!"

This whole discussion reminds me of a conversation I had with a buddy of mine after the Cal game in 2004. My friend, who lives on the East Coast, mentioned how horrible it was that despite USM hosting the #4 team in the country, attendance was still under 28,000.

I responded by telling him that I quit blaming the customer a long time ago. Earlier that same season, we hosted a game as a Top 25 team. Over 30,000 showed up. That Top 25 team then promptly laid one of the biggest eggs in recent memory in front of those 30,000+, looking completely clueless en route to a 52-24 pasting by a Cincinnati team that had just a couple of weeks earlier provided relief to the longest active losing streak in what was then I-A. By the time that Cal game came around, we’d lost two more conference games to put us out of the championship running, had once again barely sneaked by the powerhouse that is UAB, and pretty much already had the New Orleans Bowl trip booked. Why did people stay away? Because 1) truth be known, Texas had more riding on the game than Southern Miss did, and 2) those people knew that recent history dictated that versus a good team, Southern Miss will either get blown off the field or, at best, keep it close only to painfully lose at the end on something goofy like a blocked PAT returned for a defensive conversion (which, of course, is precisely what happened). What, exactly, does one miss out on by watching such a thing transpire from the comfort of their own living room as opposed to buying a ticket and making the trip to campus? Call me cynical, but I seriously doubt anyone who chose not to attend that night is kicking themselves today for not going.

The cold, hard reality here is that there’s a certain amount of..well, reality that has to be dealt with. Part of that reality is that we haven’t fielded a particularly good or otherwise compelling football team in a while, and you simply can’t erase years of frustration and apathy overnight. Some will say, “Well, golly, are you saying we can’t afford to lose at all?” No, but I am saying that when you’re within an easy day’s drive of three traditional national powers and share a state two other “power conference” also-rans, the bar is set high and there’s just not much of a market for what our program has been turning out lately. When presented with any opportunity–whether it be against a Top 25 team or a Sun Belt nobody–to make a statement about who Southern Miss is and what it’s about, that statement has to be made, and it has to be positive.

Sure, I’d love to see more people fired up about Southern Miss football to the point that they’ll commit to a full season’s worth of tickets sight unseen, but there’s a certain level of acceptance that has to come with where we’re at right now. Consider for a moment that ticket sales are a whisker away from a record as I type this–despite not an additional touchdown being scored, an additional game being won, an additional 3^rd-down stop being made, or any specific effort being made to target fresh buyers. That’s not bad. Now just imagine what might happen once we have something more tangible to sell than hope.