MT's heartbreaking losses are like Lays Potato Chips...we can't stop at just one. It's too much embedded in our heritage.
Gloom, despair, and agony! Here's my list...
1984 - Louisiana Tech 13-21. Winning this game gets us into the National Championship of 1-AA. Never got any closer to a national title or national respect than this semi-final game.
1985 - Georgia Southern 21-28. MT closed regular season at #1 and had a perfect regular season at 11-0. Our last one. Loss was an upset and hurt dearly and GSU ended up building a powerhouse dynasty as their football program was about 4 years old at the time.
1987 - Youngstown State - Strange homecoming loss, 16-17. Nothing bad, but nothing great either other than we didn't lose many homecomings under Boot's reign once he built the program back.
1990 - Boise State 13-20. Loss was respectable, but we lost it on a fake punt with the game tied in the fourth quarter. Boise drove and scored the winning touchdown with about 6:00 left. We were playing with our #2 and #3 quarterback, IIRC.
1992 - Marshall 21-35. Second round of 1-AA playoffs. Lots of dropped passes and a backup quarterback was successful in beating us (Todd Donnan).
1997 - Tennessee Tech 20-30 in Cookeville. A dreary day under the flood lights in Tucker Stadium and we lost a halftime lead with a disastrous third quarter on defense that saw Jerome Tillman and Brent Billen run through our defense like a knife to hot butter. Tech milked the 4th quarter clock taking up over half the quarter in the process of scoring its final points.
1998 - EIU 32-35. Boots Donnelly's final home game as head coach. Had a chance for the OVC title that year. EIU was down 21-32 with 1:25 left and scored twice to win. Our first instance of gift wrapping a win to the other team. Our loss meant Tennessee State won the OVC title that year. This was the first season in our newly renovated Floyd Stadium.
2001 - North Texas in Denton 21-24. Mean Green ended up winning 26 straight Sun Belt games and four consecutive championships. Our miracle comeback later against NMSU and 54-6 win over Arkansas State counted for nothing in getting a bowl game with an 8-3 record.
2002 - Saw two heartbreaks Alabama 34-39 where we played an excellent game only to see slip away and the loss to Southeast Missouri State 14-24 where we played very uninspiring. This was really proved to be a turning point of Coach Andy McCollum's HC Career at MT. What might have been had we won in Alabama.
2003 - Another two heartbreaks. FAU (mentioned earlier) and Louisiana Lafayette. UL Lafayette was a 4 overtime disappointment and a 51-57 loss. Seemed like we did everything we could to lose that one.
2006 - Troy. 20-21 Couldn't stop 4th and 17 with around a half a minute left and a running clock. Gift wrapped championship #2 to the other team.
2007 Virginia.
2011 The entire season. Ten losses. Bad season coming after the New Orleans Bowl and Go Daddy Bowl. Led to the slow disengagement of the fan base, in my conjecture.
2012 Yet another two heartbreaks. Loss to 1-AA McNeese State and Loss to Arkansas State 0-45. Got STEAMROLLED in front of a packed stadium in Jonesboro. Just terrible. Had we won, we would have won the Sun Belt title, but instead we got shut out of the bowl season with an 8-4 record.
2014 UTEP 21-24. Nothing good about this game.
2016 Western Kentucky 43-44: came down to poor clock and game management. Pulled defeat in the jaws of victory at Homecoming. Also, don't forget the take down by UTSA 25-45 where nothing seemed to go right and it felt like a trip to the woodshed by a otherwise inferior team.
2018 UAB 25-27 on CBS Sports Network in a nearly empty stadium. 12 men on the field and a bad second quarter doomed our C-USA Championship bid. So many "what ifs", a tackle or a run here or there. Championship gift wrapping #3 to the other team. OH, SO VERY CLOSE!!!!
And, as an added bonus: an Appalachian State 13-45 loss. In fact most of our modern bowls could fit the bonus description whether it be Central Michigan or Miami of Ohio.
With all those painful games said, it takes a special type of fan to be a Blue Raider year in and year out...Chicago Bears have nothing on us in disappointments. But, let's end the 27 year streak of missing the outright championship and go grab us a C-USA trophy next year.
Looking forward to autumn and the gridiron of 2019!