The Book: 2007 Football

[srevere51]

_ Hope this helps.

In '99, McNeese had Troy State @ home. McNeese was 4 - 5. Troy, I believe, was undefeated and ranked in the top 5 (m/b even no. 1) in the D1AA polls.

McNeese won that game and the next week to keep its string of consecutive winning seasons going. Troy State didn't win another game (including a first round playoff loss) that year.

So, the outlook may not be as positive for the Cajuns going into this game as it was, say, after each team played its first game. If the Cajuns are the team hoped for prior to the beginning of the season, and boosted follwing the SC game, then this is the perfect stage to get it going. The Cajuns have the chance to place the league favorite in a tie-breaker disadvantage. Anything is possible because the game hasn't been played yet.

This McNeese fan wishes the best of luck to the Cajuns Sat. It's going to be difficult, especially w/ the key injuries, but it isn't impossible. _

Thanks Chris, We are going to pull something out, I can feel it. Good Luck to the cowboys as well!

[cajunfan96]

_ It's like listening to nails on a chalk board but I agree. You have to develop relationships in your own backyard. Show the kids some attention even if you can't get them to sign. Devin Figaro is being recruited by McNeese but not by UL can someone tell me why not? _

(SARCASM ON) Because UL coach in charge of recruiting area is currently recruiting a simular kid in Egypt, so we are unable to recruit a local kid that can PLAY at this time.
(SARCASM OFF) Man i am ____ed about football. I spend too much money for this kind of crap

[Zeebart21]

Hope this helps.

In '99, McNeese had Troy State @ home. McNeese was 4 - 5. Troy, I believe, was undefeated and ranked in the top 5 (m/b even no. 1) in the D1AA polls.

McNeese won that game and the next week to keep its string of consecutive winning seasons going. Troy State didn't win another game (including a first round playoff loss) that year.

So, the outlook may not be as positive for the Cajuns going into this game as it was, say, after each team played its first game. If the Cajuns are the team hoped for prior to the beginning of the season, and boosted follwing the SC game, then this is the perfect stage to get it going. The Cajuns have the chance to place the league favorite in a tie-breaker disadvantage. Anything is possible because the game hasn't been played yet.

This McNeese fan wishes the best of luck to the Cajuns Sat. It's going to be difficult, especially w/ the key injuries, but it isn't impossible.

Who will step up this week?

Thanks, Chris V.

Z

[CrazyCajun]

_ Who will step up this week?

Thanks, Chris V.

Z _

i think the defense as a whole is going to step up and play lights out for the 1st time this year. on the defense i think grant fleming will have a huge week getting his 1st start. i also look for D-MO to bounce back and have a huge week. obviously we need abdul levier to step up and have a good week but i think Matt Dupre is going to have a breakout game. He looked pretty good in the spring and fall drills.

[AstroCajun]

_ an offensive scheme is not a set of batteries that you can just change in and out at anytime. They have been installing these schemes for months and we are still struggling to get them. How in the world is an oc going to just change his offense in the middle of a game. make adjustments is what maybe your thinking of but when you hire an OC you hire him b/c of the offense he runs. I know everyone is ____ed about what happened saturday and i'm not saying hundley should not have a gotten a chance b/c we had nothing going at that point. But i don't think people understand the time and prepartion it takes to install an offense, and a gameplan. You can't just totally change evrything in the middle of a game b/c it is not working. Now if we were running our offense correctly and we were just getting stopped thats a problem. But when a team is not executing their offense it does not matter what you do its not going to work. _

Props for that.

Thanks for saying what needed to be said.

I've had about enough of these "fans" who are in the single digits in post counts with their "cure alls."

As for Hundley, he's a student and a young man, and his decision to leave is just that, HIS. Whatever his motivation, if he was not happy, I respect his decision and wish him well.

[KingFish]

Well I for one thought the atmosphere was great... In case you didnt notice we got our $#$'s handed to us by a 1-AA team... You know it is very easy to have an "Atmosphere" like you describe when your team is in the mix and the game is on the line.. Believe me there were 34,000 people, 25,000 of them Cajun fans, wanting to get excited....

IHate,

I'm pretty sure that I said the crowd was out of it even before the outcome of the game was evident. Admittedly, that became evident very early, but I disagree that atmosphere has to wait until the game is on the line.

I've said this before: it's about the fans being proactive, not reactive. Why wait for something good to happen?

And, I might add, my opinion is based on more than just the McNeese, or similar, fiascoes. Its' based on most games--wins, losses, blowouts, nailbiters--I've been to over the past few years.

I just think, and apparently some agree with me, that there is a culture of passivity among the fans.

Is it wrong to expect more? Why? Why settle for a Curley-Hallman-era Tiger Stadium?

[cypremort]

Via preferences menu, you can tell your browser to "disallow sites to move or resize windows". That's what I did and this site became lot more pleasant to visit.

[AboveAverage]

I always come here first so the rest of my internet day is seen full screen.

[AboveAverage]

KingFish you are right on man we might need a written script to get this atmosphere thing off the ground.

[spearchucker]

Lessons Ragin' Cajuns should have learned long ago (9/17)
Multimedia

By GARY LANEY
AMERICAN PRESS

Back in the old days, Ernie Duplechin used to motivate his McNeese State troops during the week of the Louisiana-Lafayette game by telling them how the Cajuns coaches didn't think the Cowboys players were good enough to play for the Cajuns.

That was a genius motivation tactic and it's no wonder the Cowboys were 3-0 against their hated rival.

The old tactic still works.

"All week, the coaches were telling us this is the school that passed us up," said Cowboys linebacker Allen Nelson after Saturday's 38-17 win over ULL at Cajun field in the first meeting between the two teams in 21 years. "We weren't good enough to play for them. They still don't think we are good enough to play for them."

And so, like the old days, McNeese was the more inspired team this season and it showed, especially in the second half.

If the McNeese players weren't feeling slighted, at the very least they were feeling a sense of relief about the decision they made after high school.

"I made the right choice," said Cowboys quarterback Derrick Fourroux, who was recruited by both McNeese and ULL while he was at Erath High School. "I'm glad I made the decision I made."

That sentiment shows why McNeese is a dominant program in the championship subdivision of Division I football and why ULL has been languishing for more than 30 years playing at the game's highest level.

Look at the postseason record of the two programs if you don't believe it.

McNeese played in three bowl games after it moved up from the college division in the mid 1970s. Since it moved to the championship subdivision in 1982, the Cowboys have been in the postseason 12 times, including two trips to the division's championship game.

That's 15 postseason appearances.

ULL? Try zero postseason appearances as a member of Division I.

And the words of Nelson and Fourroux are all you need to know as to why it's been that way.

McNeese is a model for how to run a football program at a smaller, regional university. And for that matter, how to win at a larger level. And it boils down to this:

Own your backyard.

Long before I ever started watching McNeese football in the mid-80s, the Cowboys coaching staff had established truPleasel relationships with high school coaches throughout Louisiana and Southeast Texas.

Ever since, McNeese coaches have carefully cared for, expanded on and nurtured those relationships. Whether the coach was Bobby Keasler, Kirby Bruchhaus, Tommy Tate or, now, Matt Viator, McNeese has always had a head coach acutely aware of where McNeese's bread is buttered.

You build trust in the area you recruit the most and those folks will be good to you in return. When you walk into a high school field house and everyone knows you, respects you and has had good dealings working with you, that goes a long way.

You wonder how McNeese can win despite a shoestring budget? That's how. You wonder how it wins with a second-rate, but soon to be replaced, field house? That's how.

McNeese is a local team. Most of its players come from the Interstate-10/12 corridor from New Orleans to the west Houston suburbs, with some coming from central and north Louisiana and a rare smattering from anywhere else.

Very rarely do talented football players in that I-10 corridor escape the Cowboys' radar and McNeese coaches, because of their relationship with high school coaches, are more likely to get an accurate assessment of a prospect, both the strengths and weaknesses.

If you don't believe that is the best formula for success, look at what Nick Saban did at LSU. As slick and big-time as Nick "Satan" (as he may be called now in Louisiana) was, he understood that to become a national program, LSU must first win the state of Louisiana.

And that's why LSU won a national championship and has remained a power since. Few Louisiana players escape the LSU net. The days of New Orleans metro players getting away to the Miamis and the Ohio States are, with the rare Joe McKnight exceptions, over.

ULL should look at these examples.

It was way back in the mid-70s when you first started hearing about McNeese coaches using the "they passed you over" line with its players and 30-something years later, it's still relevant.

It's not like ULL ignores Louisiana. Certainly, the Cajuns have had some great homegrown talent like Brian Mitchell, Jake Delhomme and Brandon Stokley.

But the bottom line is it appears that in all those years, ULL has never been consistent in securing the backyard and it's no coincidence that the Cowboys have thrived during the same period.

I was shocked this week when Kyle Link and David Ballard, two talented offensive tackles for McNeese who are from Lake Charles and whose fathers played at ULL, both told me they were never seriously recruited by ULL.

Maybe they came out of high school in a year when ULL was already loaded with offensive linemen and tight ends (Link was a prep tight end who started at that position last year). Maybe there were better players in the area ULL was eyeing.

I can't say.

But what I can say is these two guys whose fathers once wore the vermilion and white were blowing gaping holes in the ULL line, parting the red sea for Jamie Leonard and Kris Bush as McNeese piled up 276 rushing yards.

I don't know why ULL never seems to recruit its home area consistently well. Maybe it's because there's a Virginia Tech guy coaching the team who did not have the pre-existing relationships in the state McNeese has. Maybe it's because the university is so caught up on being bigger and better, it's forgetting the basics.

What I do know is McNeese showed Saturday that, regardless of the subdivision label, that it has a better football team.

And may the Cowboys never forget why.

[shof]

Well since this is a game thread, I'll make my prediction: Cajuns 27, Troy 24.
Now, I have no valid reason whatsoever to predict such a score. I don't know how we hold them to only 24 without some "help", i.e. turnovers. I did see on their site where Cattouse (sp?) might be out. Regardless, that's my call.
Shof
P.S. I have not started drinking (yet) today. I wanted to ; but it will just have to wait until I get home!

[CrazyCajun]

_ Crazycajun you are rediculous! Do you really think Hundley did not want to be on this team.. he would not have chosen UL over numerous other offers and stuck with it until now if he did not want to be on the team. It is obvious that he is just frustrated with the coaching situation and believes he should be starting, now I don't condone quitting, but give Hundley the benefit of the doubt. Now hear this, it's good to have faith in your head coach, but only for so long. Just because you are the head coach of a football team does not mean you know all. It merely means you have the power to "know all". How about an example with the New Orleans Saints some years back. When Mike Ditka was head coach and he was starting people like Billy Joe Tolliver and others over Jake Delhomme all those years when everyone was screaming that Delhomme was clearly the better QB. Everytime he would get playing time, whether it be preseason games or not, he performed and you had New Orleans fans in the dome chanting his name during some points of the season to put him in. This has happened numerous teams in all sports with all teams. Why must you think that RICKEY BUSTLE of all people is the God of football and knows who the best qb is. Maybe, just maybe, John Hundley WAS and IS a better qb than mike. We will never know now, because our head coach did not do what he was supposed to do. Mike is not getting paid, he is not a pro athlete that can cry when he gets pulled out. If he was not performing against a DII school, you yank him and give your backup a try... simple as that.

Good luck Hundley, I watched you at STM and you had a bright future, hopefully you choose to come back to UL or transfer somewhere that a coach will see your talent.

Crazycajun, quit wining about quitters, the cajuns just blew there chance at holding a crowd the rest of the season.

Bustle has to go. _

obviously he really didn't want to be on this team. And players don't dictate what happens on a football team the coaches do. It is not just bustles decision. Obviously bustle and blake anderson agree that mike is the best QB we have. You don't think bustle would have put john in if he thought it would save him the all this trouble he is in. And your right he is not the god of football but right he is our football god.i'm not whining about quitters. He is gone move on. And if he was the better QB he has had the last 2 years to prove it and he didn't. iF JOHN REALLY WANTED A CHANCE TO START I THINK THE WEEK AFTER A BAD GAME FOR MIKE WOULD HAVE BEEN THE PERFECT TIME TO TRY BUT NO HE QUIT. there is a huge difference between thinking your the best QB and proving it. I wish the kid all the luck in the world with whatever he does but he quit on his teammates at the toughest time. i just don't have any respect for that. so you stop being rediculous! i geuss your not being biassed at all since you watched john in high scool?