FirefightnRick

I have heard more from the Exes in the little time since Barbara Sanders has come aboard than I have since I graduated 15 years ago. She is doing a good job. Rick

Hard to believe, isn't it? Rick

bump. Stebo Rick

My question is:WHY TEXAS STATE? Uh, TCU, SMU....Texas Tech? Rick

Ok, so they didn't show it at 10. I appologize. Rick

NT's Trent Touchstone is interviewed during it. At least he was on the 5 o'clock hour show. Rick

I've got to get that guy's Autograph. Great job Rick bringing him back. Rick

Baby Arm, he completely destroyed his ankle last year. Shattered it to pieces. If I remember correctly it happened on a Sunday in the first day of full contact? Many who were there reported that it was a carreer ending injury. The fact that he walked again is amazing, even moreso that he tried to come back. He gave it a shot, he couldn't. That's enough for me to give him my respect. SilverEagle We know! Rick

Steve, we inspected the one on Lancaster two or three weeks back, and their tortilla machine is in the back down in the basement. A little ol lady was sitting right there running it while we walked through. I noticed how they are made with that thing and I was thinking, that once our new stadium is built, it would be quite easy to have whoever? make them smaller, in diameter that is, so that they don't travel as far and get onto the field disrupting the game. That is why Tech has been forced to stop I have been told? By the way, remember the TCU game a couple of years ago when they were intertaining the Fiesta Bowl officials trying to get their invite? A represenative from Tostitos was inside the stadium handing out bags of Tostitos and people were throwing them around all night long each time TCU scored. Also, one unique thing about our other traditions that we didn't start. Boomer is as far as I have been able to find out, the only full size muzzleloading gun used in college. And I haven't been able to find out completely, but I do not know of another 1500 lb, motorized bell used in college either. So there you are, two pretty unique traditions there. If the AD dept would promote this while also making some money off of it that in itself would be VERY UNIQUE, thus another opportunity to make headlines when the media talks about our program. Plus it shows our continued commitment to sell fun. Rick

bump Rick

Remember Trent Touchstone? He was one of our bad motor scooters on Corky's '88 and '89 teams. Today the U.S. Marshall service arrest 2500 suspects nationwide? and 160 murder suspects. At the end of the report they cut to an interview and there's Trent. I didn't know he went into law enforcement? Great player. I wouldn't want him coming after me. Rick

This deserves it's own thread. Here's a novel thought. Why not take something positive that has tradition behind it(17 years old now) like the War Trophy we brought back from Lubbotocks, and make some badly needed money with it benefitting the Mean Green Club. DING!!!!!, green light turns on like a beacon in the night! How difficult is it for our athletic department to see the opportunity that lies before them by selling packages of Green Tortilas at conessions? If your going to throw tortillas to celebrate our scores, your going to buy them from us. YOUR GOING TO TELL ME THAT WE COULD MAKE MONEY BY HAVING PEOPLE ACTUALLY PAY TO COME AND THROW BAKED PIECES OF BREAD? BRILLIANT!!!! Just makes too much damn sense doesn't it? Rick

Here's a novel thought. Why not take something positive that has tradition behind it(17 years old now) like the War Trophy we brought back from Lubbotocks, and make some badly needed money with it benefitting the Mean Green Club. DING!!!!!, green light turns on like a beacon in the night! How difficult is it for our athletic department to see the opportunity that lies before them by selling packages of Green Tortilas at conessions? If your going to throw tortillas to celebrate our scores, your going to buy them from us. YOUR GOING TO TELL ME THAT WE COULD MAKE MONEY BY HAVING PEOPLE ACTUALLY PAY TO COME AND THROW BAKED PIECES OF BREAD? BRILLIANT!!!! Just makes too much damn sense doesn't it? Rick

Maybe he suffered from Terets Syndrome and couldn't take it anymore. While standing on the sidelines and thinking(very outloud) to himself and blurting out such statement like: "Why the @#$# are we getting penalties for delay of game after calling a time out", "Everyone knows who is getting the ball, why are we continueing to hand off to him 4 yards deep?", "There's 9 men standing within 3 yards of the line, don't hand off aga.....ARGH!!!!". "Damnit to hell, is that the only mother @#$# pass we have in the playbook, a jump ball to Quinn?!". "That's 6 times now we have thrown a flair to the back for a loss, I think they have that one figured out!" "Jeezus H....who's calling these plays!?" "NO @*#&damn it! A drink of your @#$# Diet Coke WON'T help me calm down!" ...etc..... Rick Rick

Yeah, Troy Redwine and John Love having to downfield block all the time. Can you imagine that? Well, yes, I can since that is JQ's main job description. What a waste. Rick

Still with the inexperience excuse again? BEFORE THIS SEASON STARTED OUR OFFENSIVE EXPERIENCE WAS: Jeremy Brown, OL: Started 4 games last year, played 9. Joel Foster OL: Started in all 12 games last year. Dylan Linebarry OL: Started in all 12 games last year. Jason MayOL: Started in 9 games in '03 and played in 12. Beau Davidson, TE: Started all 12 games last year. Known as the best blocking TE on the team. That's five O linemen with 49 starts combined. Every one of them has paved the way for a national rushing champion. If we cannot replenish the cupboard after only losing one TE(Blount), one O Lineman(Brewster) and the QB(Hall) after winning 4 conference championships and not do any better than average 188 yards a game, including 129 against Tulsa, then the problem goes much further than the O line. By the way, the rest of this youthfull bunch includes: Johnny Quinn, WR: Started 25 games. Led team in yards and receptions two years running, 4th leading WR in the conference last year Zach Muzzy, WR: Started 16 in games going back to '03 and played in 25. Joel Niwigwe, WR: Has 13 starts and has played in 26 games total. James Mitchell, FB: has 12 starts and has played in 25 total. Patrick Cobbs, RB: Has 18 starts and has played in 42 games total including a national rushing title. Jamario Thomas, RB: Has 10 starts and a national rushing title to go with it. Combined, this offensive team has players with 143 starts and well over 150 games of playing experience under their belts against some of the best teams in the nation. Other than we are just not playing well at all, there are no other excuses as far as I'm concerned. I do think we will see a different team against Troy. We always do. Rick

You can't beat anyone turning the ball over that much to start the game. And in the passing game that attempts to stretch a defense you would tend to turn it over more often, I would think. I would much rather diminish our chances to turn the ball over by going three and out between the tackles, punting all night long and get blown out at home. Rick

I couldn't figure out how to Edit my mistakes on the Belt board. My response. Smith's car wreck is taking it's toll no doubt, but this by far is not a young offense. We return 9 players from last season from a team that was led by the nations leading rusher. Plus, we get him and the guy before him, back. What Offensive Coordinator would NOT like to have that problem? Everyone who attended Two a day's knew this defense was going to be hurting. They are very young, third or fourth youngest nation wide. We all knew we were going to give up points. But offensively no one saw this coming. From a year ago's offense, we replaced a center with a redshirt freshman, a QB with a redshirt freshman, and a tight end with a junior who played in all 12 games the year before. There are guys playing new positions, but that is nothing new for us. Matt Turney as a sophomore DT in '00 was moved to OT during the second week of two a days. He started by the third week of the season on and graded out very high several times that season, enroute to help build the O line that started all this rushing hoo ha. So guys moving around has been nothing new to expectations, until this year I suppose. This offense returns 11 players who have 9 starts or more under their belts going back to '01, which is when Cobbs came onto the scene. Among the 11 players, they have 151 starts among them. I new we had some new people moving a bit, but other than the QB position I didn't worry going into this season. TCU's Patterson has lost his defense from that dominating season they had back in '00,'01 or '02, can't remember the year? He lost his DC to Texas State last year and their defense ranked 99th overall in '04. But instead of trying to continue to rely on their defense, he made the transition to utilize what he had and decided the frogs would go out and OUTSCORE people. And that's exactly what he's done, all with a different QB nearly every year due to the injuries Gunn has sustained each year of his career. I know we are not at TCU's level on many counts. But with defenses keying on the RB position at NT, you would think we could come up with something better that produces more than 129 yards against Tulsa? And of course your enjoying the bickering, you've had nothing else to be excited about the past 4 years and the fact that NT fans are dissapointed because we expected more shows we realize now how very vulnerable we are, thus opening up that long awaited chance for ASU to get that first Belt win over us. Did you expect college football fans to be happy getting 50+ hung on us two weeks in a row? Not all NT fans are calling for DD's head and I would bet there are many more who support him than not. Most are just dissapointed to expect that we would see more with our two backs than what we have seen. DD said in this weeks press conference that, "in our system we do not solely rely on our QB play in order for us to succeed". We know this, as was the result from our conference championship with Smith, a redshirt freshman QB back in '02. Most fans thought we would see some new stuff with PC and SPJMo including having them in the backfield together, misdirections, counters, any type of different schemes from previous year to keep the defenses guessing which would take the heat off of Meager. Instead we get the same boring draws, handing off to PC 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage into an 8 or 9 man box. The same back out screen into a wall, the same streak to JQ for a jump ball. The same, taking a time out to get a play in, then getting a delay of game call immediately afterwards. It's like we didn't have August practice at all? Again, coach Dickey stated this week we are not playing very well in any aspect of the game. Fans are dissapointed. If they weren't they wouldn't be fans. And I can understand others in the Belt are going to get their feelings hurt when the NT bickering includes statements that appear to diminish the Belt. But that is where we are at. You damn sure would be saying some of the same things if you were in our situation if you expected your program to take the next step. No one expects NT to go out and beat a K State. But we have competed against previous 4-7 Big 12 teams before and not get routed. We did expect to beat Tulsa, and we surely expected to produce more offense against the middle. Instead, with our two greatest backs we have had since the late 50's sharing the same offense, we get the same conservative offense we have seen for years that has averaged 188 yards a game so far, including a beautiful 129 yards in an ass whipping against Tulsa in front of a very good home crowd. Most NT fans love the Belt. I certainly do at least and most appreciate WW and all that the conference has done for us. Many take it personally, and I'm sure our team does as well, that due to our pitiful OOC record we are hurting it more than we are building it. But don't get your dander up if we expect more. Rick

Thanks to everyone for being patient. I think everyone will realize it was well worth the wait. I picked them up this evening at a junior high football game and I have to say, they are just as sweet as the green ones. I'm very mad at myself for not ordering one this year, considering this will be a special addition jersey because it has the Sun Belt Conference 30th anniversery logo over the left shoulder. We are so very fortunate that our program allows us to do this, very few, if any others offer this to their fanbase. I had the green ones at the tailgate party at MTSU and many of the Blue Raider fans were wanting to know "where did you get those?" I'll have the three who wanted shipment in the mail ASAP in the morning. I'll be on duty in Ft Worth Thursday if anyone wants to drive up to the firehall and pick theirs up. Otherwise I'll have the rest at the Troy game. Rick

What's Hawkins' salary? Didn't the Boise community/university give him a very large increase to stay last season? Rick

Everyone just bring torts, they can't arrest everyone. I'd like to see them hauling little kids off on ESPN. Now that's the way to market your program! Rick

Beau Davidson, our TE and Deep Snapper graduates after this year. And your counting Lineberry to graduate on time, which would means he had to of doubled up on credit hours since last Fall. So we lose three including our leading offensive producer to date, just to be conservative. Then what? Rick

By the way, is it me or am I the only one who see's the funny-as-hell irony that we are taking time to honor a team that won a game against a team it had no reason for even being in the same stadium with much less beating them, 30 years ago. All in front of a home crowd that has been sold OVER AND OVER AND OVER on the story that we can't compete against those same teams today because.... well, you can pick your own excuse. Rick

It should be a better game considering Troy will be our weakest opponent yet. If it's not, if we have another subpar yardage game and 7 points in a loss, are we to be dissapointed? Will it then, be appropiriate to start asking questions about our offense? Rick

LOL, just more enabling. We are young on Defense. We are going to give up points. No one denied that in August. We are NOT young on offense. In fact, this may be one of our deepest offenses yet. We replaced one O line veteran with a rookie. ONE. We have 4 linemen who have 40 starts among them. That's not a young O line. We replaced our QB with a rookie and replaced a tightend with a veteran. But we gained our most experienced weapon, our most top running back in history. That gives us two at that position and we have done nothing but muck it up. We basically lost in experience, 3 people on offense. I'll ask again, if we are going to suck on offense so bad every year when we have to replace 3, 4, 5 like most offenses, then something is wrong with the system in it's ability to move the ball and needs to change. And we know that isn't going to happen, which is the most frustrating thing about it. As several of our fans and Lettermen have stated to me personally and on this board. We expect progress. An offense returning this many starters averaging less than 135 yards a game is NOT PROGRESS. Rick