MTFAN61 said:

From a commissioners perspective the 2 best things we have to offer is the large infrastructure $$ investment the athletic department has made and the continued growth in the women's basketball program. The women's basketball program offers the greatest opportunity of NCAA post season basketball success compared to any other Sunbelt or CUSA school. Be it either in men's or women's basketball. On a 3rd, but smaller note would be the current tennis facility & its recent accomplishments.
However, I acknowledge the number 1 thing any athletic commissioner is looking for is a sound football program with strong community support.

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To be objective, we have a lot going for us. We're a good school in a good growing demographic desirable area. A lot of our smaller/olympic sports are doing well.

But football is the 90% driver of this, with men's bball 5% maybe. The rest of everything falls in that remaining 5%.

Went back and watched highlights. Can we just talk about the God-awful uniform we had going the other night? That has to be the worst look we have ever put on. First, I'm not sure why we would have went grey when it's one of Memphis' colors.

But more importantly, the color of those pants with no markings with the rest of the uni being white were just awful. Look like we had laundry wash malfunction and were wearing discolored britches. If we're going to wear this color please bring back the silverish tone instead of that dirty grey. Classic MT look to follow (and works with white jersey)...

From a commissioners perspective the 2 best things we have to offer is the large infrastructure $$ investment the athletic department has made and the continued growth in the women's basketball program. The women's basketball program offers the greatest opportunity of NCAA post season basketball success compared to any other Sunbelt or CUSA school. Be it either in men's or women's basketball. On a 3rd, but smaller note would be the current tennis facility & its recent accomplishments.
However, I acknowledge the number 1 thing any athletic commissioner is looking for is a sound football program with strong community support.

Just checked available season tickets map. If my count is correct appears sections C-J are down to only 159 available seats. Everything else looks sold out for season availability in lower bowl.
That's excellent work by the Lady Raider faithful.
PS- Men's sales looks excellent as well.
Appears a lot of people are ready for basketball season!

BlueRaiderFan said:

Stewart is overpaid

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Big time

Sommy said:

Texas State expected to go to the MWC. Is MT even on the phone trying to better the program and move to a better conference?

I get we don’t have a lot to offer, except for the market potential, but are we even trying? CUSA is a bottom feeder and we seem content with being there.

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I'd be surprised if they weren't working the phones. The bigger question is why the SBC or anyone wouldn't look at the caller ID and burst out laughing.

We have nothing to offer right now. But maybe in a year or two if we can get off the ground with football and get basketball back on track.

Sommy said:

Texas State expected to go to the MWC. Is MT even on the phone trying to better the program and move to a better conference?

I get we don’t have a lot to offer, except for the market potential, but are we even trying? CUSA is a bottom feeder and we seem content with being there.

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What exactly is it you think MT deserves? SBC/AAC is going to take La Tech, WKU, maybe Liberty, maybe even steal a few MAC programs before they look our way.

I think we are right where we belong personally. When you take everything for granted and settle for 6-6 seasons for two decades and invest nothing...well...you deserve to be with other programs doing those same things. CUSA is perfect for MT.

Sommy said:

Texas State expected to go to the MWC. Is MT even on the phone trying to better the program and move to a better conference?

I get we don’t have a lot to offer, except for the market potential, but are we even trying? CUSA is a bottom feeder and we seem content with being there.

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Given that smith and 7 wood are bottom feeders, they're happy to have the school at the bottom.

MT got all these new players and transfers this year and the results have not been very good. At what point do we put that on coaching? I expect the good pieces we have to transfer out next year.

Texas State expected to go to the MWC. Is MT even on the phone trying to better the program and move to a better conference?

I get we don’t have a lot to offer, except for the market potential, but are we even trying? CUSA is a bottom feeder and we seem content with being there.

At least last night I saw a less talented team show some self respect & fought the best they could for now, & that's all I ever really wanted.
And I'll give that a 👍

RaiderDoug said:

This is the reality about a total tear down and rebuild.

I thought the defense played well - they held Memphis to 413 yrds - only FSU held them to less. That's a prolific offense and it wouldn't surprise me if theres 3-4 NFL players on that offense (Taylor, Anderson, Hennigan looks like one of those guys that is like a 10 year backup in the NFL)

Our offense - it works but you can't shoot yourself in the foot over and over again. That Kelly fumble was a killer - you can't be too hard on the kid, that was just a flat out effort play that went awry, but it shows you that against these superior teams, the margin for error is so slim that one play like that can just kill your chances.

ESPN had the injury graphic - we lost 3 DBs (2 for the year) and 2 starting OL already. We've got to get the program infrastructure built so that we have a chance of avoiding the chronic yearly injury bug.

It's just not going to happen overnight.

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We’ve lost 2 starters on the OL and 2 starters in the backfield for the season. Those areas are where we are seeing most of our issues. CDM hasn’t had the time (recruiting classes) to develop depth and that’s what is killing us right now. Shayne and I are both high on our incoming recruiting class. I think pairing that with what I am sure will be a VERY active portal haul for us, we should be in a better spot next year. I’m not sold on CDM but I’m going to give him a while to get this figured out.

Blue2323 said:

I thought our guys did a lot better tonight. I’ll be interested to see how we actually play in CUSA games. Western Kentucky looks pretty good so I don’t think anything is that surprising as to where we sit record wise. I could be wrong but I feel like a lot of people on here haven’t let that first game against TN Tech go. Maybe people would have excepted where we are at if we had blown them out but I feel like we look better than we did in that first game.

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TN Tech might be a pretty good FCS team. They won yesterday 52-21 over Gardner Webb. That’s the same GWU team that gave JMU and Charlotte all they could handle losing 13-7 and 27-26 respectively. TN Tech moved to 2-2 with their losses being MT and Georgia.

sWiley said:

I said many times McPhee, Steve Smith, and Massaro were more deserving to be fired. Stockstill didn't do himself any favors with poor community out reach, terrible in-state recruiting, and the most mediocre of mediocre results. Maybe if his bosses (and contract) demanded more we would have gotten more.

Our problems start at the top folks. Stockstill deserved to be fired, but it was a terrible decision to give him 5 million to walk away and then let the bigger problems decide on his hire. We would have been much better off keeping Stockstill and replacing McPhee, Steve Smith, and maybe Massaro and going from there.

We made our problems worse going the route we went. The head of the snake is still intact and thriving.

It doesn't even matter anymore though. We missed our chance

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I don’t disagree but I’m happy that at least something changed.

Brew_Raider said:

I was encouraged by the effort and adjustments on both sides of the ball. The lack of talent and depth are the glaring issues. Add self-inflicted mistakes and it’s a recipe for disaster, no matter the play call.

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This is the reality about a total tear down and rebuild.

I thought the defense played well - they held Memphis to 413 yrds - only FSU held them to less. That's a prolific offense and it wouldn't surprise me if theres 3-4 NFL players on that offense (Taylor, Anderson, Hennigan looks like one of those guys that is like a 10 year backup in the NFL)

Our offense - it works but you can't shoot yourself in the foot over and over again. That Kelly fumble was a killer - you can't be too hard on the kid, that was just a flat out effort play that went awry, but it shows you that against these superior teams, the margin for error is so slim that one play like that can just kill your chances.

ESPN had the injury graphic - we lost 3 DBs (2 for the year) and 2 starting OL already. We've got to get the program infrastructure built so that we have a chance of avoiding the chronic yearly injury bug.

It's just not going to happen overnight.

Shayne_Pickering said:

To the point of the offensive line though, I definitely agree that they need to air it out more though. With three rain games behind MTSU, it needs to trend towards more of a pass-first attack. I get wanting to establish the run and you do need to but right now those lanes are coming off the pass and you need to take advantage of that as a coach

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Hey guys. So what did I miss? Zero regrets skipping this one even with a closer score than expected. From stats looks like Hennigan had one of the worst games of his career. Yay for moral victories since I guess that’s what middle-TSU football has been relegated to.

To this post Shayne, which is similar to the one I made a couple of weeks ago, Mason was going to have to decide whether he wants to install culture and maybe not win another game or try to win games now and worry about culture later. Seems like he has decided given the shift in playcalling. It’s been clear our OL can’t run block or pass block. But maybe slightly better at pass blocking. Somebody told me our real schedule starts now.

I saw an OC that was learning and shifting away from run first last night.

On the opening drive, 3 of our first 4 plays were pass plays.

After the fumble punted, we ran for 4 yards, then missed on 2 passes.

The third drive opened with a pass and the 4th play (on first down) was the bomb to Kelly that he fumbled out the endzone.

I’m not seeing run first. In our scripted plays, we were definitely pass first. We were pass first the entire game.

Our pass:run ratio play calls were similar to air raids.

Last night the problem was not play calling. The problem were mistakes (turnovers, penalized, missed assignments), lack of talent & the Tigers’ ability to control time of possession and field position. Play calls don’t matter if your OL can’t consistently block and you are asking them to drive the length of the field over and over.

I was encouraged by the effort and adjustments on both sides of the ball. The lack of talent and depth are the glaring issues. Add self-inflicted mistakes and it’s a recipe for disaster, no matter the play call.

CUSA now sitting at 17-28 overall. Out of conference results:

Vs P4 0-9
Vs G5 7-11
Vs FCS 5-3

Liberty on the hunt for one more to replace App.

sWiley said:

Still being built but the last video I saw was impressive. Looks very professional

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It's insane how fast they've done work on that. They've gotten the walls up at least on the side facing the Greenland parking lot by the end of this week

To the point of the offensive line though, I definitely agree that they need to air it out more though. With three rain games behind MTSU, it needs to trend towards more of a pass-first attack. I get wanting to establish the run and you do need to but right now those lanes are coming off the pass and you need to take advantage of that as a coach

TrueBlueFB_23 said:

I’m not sure what you watched. Defensively much improvement. Offensively the handcuffs need to come off. Y’all are too accepting of mediocre & that was offensively embarassing. They do not know how to start a game using what they have. Nick had a terrible game, but he’s still getting too much pressure. His OC isnt helping him out at all.

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It was also pouring rain for a lot of the game and in the second half you had like four backups in on the OL including a freshman and redshirt freshman taking up one side. I would say things definitely need to improve but comparing a makeshift year one team for Mason to a year-18 Stock team on an even platform is not the fairest of judgements though. Need to cut down on the turnovers for sure, but this team just simply does not have trench talent to not have started 1-4 at the end of the day and that's not a staff problem with the situation they were thrown into. I tend not to be the optimist but this team can definitely win a significant amount of conference games still in my opinion, if they don't crap the bed in the turnover margin

and 7 is very underpaid