I think we might have had the kind of game we expected if that hadn't happened. It was the turning point in the game.
We beat ASU in my opinion because we got the jump on them and held on in the end.
What I'm not sure of after watching UL football for close to 40 years is if we are capable of anything beyond the 5-7 win season on average. I have seen Russ Faulkinberry, Augie Tammariello, Sam Robertson, and Nelson Stokley get us pointed in the right direction and then level off when it appeared that we are on the cusp of taking the program to the next level.
It just might be that we have to take the private funding to another level before we can expect to do better on a consistent basis. I don't think it's an accident that no UL head football coach in over 100 years has ever been a head coach again after leaving. If the funding is not improved and we fire the coach I think we'll repeat the same tired old pattern: a grace period, followed by improvement, then a leveling off.
I want us to be disappointed when we lose an important game, but I also want us to be realistic so that we'll do what's needed to get better. It doesn't make sense to replace a $200,000 coach with a $600,000 coach and find ourselves back where we started in a few years.