Tulane Plays Best Game of Season

One of my favorite bloggers is Dr. Saturday. Today, his blog devolved a series of light chastisements (perhaps like a father) to a series of other blogs wrestling with their teams machinations within the BCS. As I read the gentle corrections, I was struck how utterly ungrateful they all are. I'd love to tie a "successful" 4-8 season on USC- do you know how much suffering goes into deeming 4-8 successful? Along those lines, Tulane played its best game of the season, picking up a spirited and entertaining overtime win, and you will not catch me kvetching- particularly after being chastised for over analysis in lieu of joy this week on nola.com.

Still, while I must admit I am surprised at how well Ryan Griffin played, I still thought it felt like a game the Wave could win. As I pithily wrote in the comments after the game, when UTEP is bad, they are bad. And, this Wave team, even pre-season, just does not feel like a 2009 style 2-win bad outfit. Mind you, they don't feel five-win good either. But having stuck with a 4-8 pick through the bad beatings, I believe the core belief- that Tulane is better than 2009- will be vindicated in the end. It just doesn't take much to win four games- and the Wave simply was too soon labeled by many as again horrid.

A lot of the chats and forums featured repetitive posts and strings the past few weeks about both “whom to blame” and “how to fix” Tulane football: the evil Cowen, incompetent Toledo, the lacking facilities, lack of institution commitment. There are perhaps parts of truth is such ruminations.

But you could do all those things- clean house and spend a zillion dollars- and still be a mess.

I don’t really obsess about such wholesale changes because I have always believed the quickest, sanest, rock-solid way to back-to-back seven, eight win campaigns is not a new coach, or new President, or new facilities.

Instead, find just one young man who can play quarterback at the level Ryan played at Saturday for 20 out of 24 starts in 2010 and 2011. It is also a lot more sane and do-able plan. It isn’t even particularly nuanced- and evidence of success is everywhere: Rice recently, Houston, etc.