When the Cougarella coach turned back into a pumpkin at midnight, the team slide off the road and into the patch with all the others who have no invitation to the big round of balls coming up. "I told you Cougarella didn't belong," cried the town wags. "The poor kid was nothing more than a step-child and galley-slave in the larger scheme of things."
As a lifelong Cougar by chance of neighborhood connection from childhood when they started playing football back in 1946, and by choice in terms of what was open and available to me as an entering college student in 1956, yesterday’s loss to Southern Miss in the C-USA championship game was not my first dance with disappointment. It was simply the inexorably loaded deflation of hope on several levels that led me into the little exercise in self-purgation that the attached Cougarella cartoon embodies. It was a Cinderella season – and the Cougars blew it – big time.
Let me count the ways:
(1) True or not, “The Loss” was a confirmation of UH’s perceived mediocrity. All season long, the rap on UH’s unbeaten Cougars has been that they were piling up wins against weak teams. Yesterday’s 49-28 collapse to Southern Miss before a national television audience at ABC will simply convince one and all that – “See there. We told you they weren’t any good.” Even thought that really was not the UH Cougars of 2011 that showed up in red yesterday, we are stuck with the egg they laid as performers with the same names as the great players who normally wear those jerseys.
(2) “The Loss” blew a big BCS payday. UH lost the BCS invitation to the Sugar Bowl that would have netted them $16 million dollars more in income than they will now receive from the not-so-illustrious Ticket City Bowl in Dallas, according to today’s Sunday Houston Chronicle. At no extra charge, even a super victory in the minor bowl will do nothing to reverse the damage done by “The Loss.”
(3) Terrible Execution by UH. For whatever reason, the Cougar players didn’t show up yesterday. They got the national attention and immediately responded with dropped passes, slips on runs, poor blocking, no tackling, missing pass defense, and horrendous special teams play, complete with sorry punting and one blocked kick for a USM TD. In spite of his 373 yards passing and two TD throws, QB Case Keenum even kicked in a rare double interception contribution to the mess with one that went straight back as a USM TD return and another on a short toss into the end zone that prevented a Cougar TD.
(4) The A&M Coach-Sniffing Intrusion. Why were the Cougars so off their game on Saturday? They had been the personification of “Cool Hand Luke” all season – until now. The only difference that I, and all the other home-grown Sigmund Freud fans who similarly commented could see on the field was the fact that the Coogs had to play this game in the glare of Texas A&M’s threat to take their coach away as soon as possible. Friday’s Chronicle headlines read something like “A&M Dumps Sherman, Sets Sights on Sumlin.” – What a crum-bum move that was! If you’re A&M, sew the poison thought of abandonment into the team’s mind. Then, if you don’t get their coach, you may at least mess up their season and their recruiting for next year. – Thanks a lot, Aggies. We know you had a right to do what you did when you did it. I couldn’t blame a pig that suddenly bolted into my house and started eating whatever he found either. It’s just in his nature to do things like that, but that doesn’t mean I have to relish the company of pigs. Tell us what you mean by “oink-oink” and then get the hell out-of-the-way. If Kevin Sumlin allows money alone to be the thing that attracts him into your land of the lost, so be it. If that turns out to be the man he is, we didn’t need him anyway. I just hope that he’s paying attention to the sorry way Texas A&M is handling the dismissal of a fine man like Mike Sherman.
Here I will have to draw from my fifty year career day job as a therapist and counselor to offer that the timing on the A&M coaching opening and interest in Sumlin most likely did play a part in the Cougars’ lack of focus on the game, regardless of what they or anyone else says in denial. The threat of abandonment is right behind the fear of the unknown as the greatest threat we all face as human beings. In fact, you could even make the case that both fears wrap around each other as one and the same, most often. As small children, we fear abandonment because of our fear of the unknown. So, once activated, you may be able to put the fear out of sight in external ways, but you will not be able to put it out of mind. It will rattle around in your pre-conscious and sub-consconscious minds until it gets settled. Until then, it will find its ways to effect your normal levels of behavior.
Let me make this statement as clearly as possible. I’m saying: It was no accident that just about every Cougar player had their worst games of the season yesterday. It was because they were effected by the game eve threat from Texas A&M that they might be on their collective way to losing the coach they all respected and held so dearly important to their success.
It was not the kind of threat that would be assuaged by Sumlin’s (paraphrased here) statements that “I have talked to no one at Texas A&M, or at any other school, about coaching opportunities elsewhere. Right now we have a game to prepare for.”
All that kind of talk says to the players is: “I haven’t done anything about leaving UH yet, but wait until we get past Saturday and let’s see what happens.”
That leaves the players feeling: (1) We are going to lose our guy; and (2) because he must think that things are better elsewhere.
If Kevin Sumlin could have made a public statement Friday along the following lines, yesterday might have turned out quite differently in the Cougars favor: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am well well aware of the interest now shown in me by the fine people of Texas A&M, but I feel the need to let you all know who I am. – I am Kevin Sumlin, the head football coach at the University of Houston, I am under contract for this year and for several years henceforth. And I will be the Cougar head football guy for as long as I have a contract and the university wants to keep making new ones with me as the old ones expire. There are just some things that cannot be bought for a few dollars more and I like being part of the Cougar family that is building Tier One thinking into all we do.”
I look forward to the day when UH plays in a BCS conference and has the facilities and money that will allow one of their head coaches to push away the vultures with the big check books and not let these pillagers effect big games and recruiting at the climax of a Cinderella season.
Cougarella shall return. We just don’t know when. But you never know. Maybe next year.
Tags: UH LOSS TO USM
The Pecan Park Eagle 
December 4, 2011 at 6:05 pm |
And I hope they do return but will be tough with their conference very much in disarray. I bet you’re more blue than red today. Some observations: I think A&M makes a big mistake by going after Sumlin instead of Briles. Sumlin has yet to show what he can do with his own recruits. Keenum was a Briles recruit. But the Aggies are clearly not familiar with football so no telling what they’ll do, other than fire whoever they hire in two years and add another to their long list of payoff employees. Sumlin’s star dimmed yesterday so you may get to keep him. You were probably at the game and didn’t hear the announcers begin gently trash talking the Coogs in the third quarter and then began piling on in the fourth. That more than the mediocre performance probably kept Keenum from getting an invitation to NYC next week. Real shame. My Longhorns got hammered yesterday but I expected it so I don’t feel so bad. I enjoyed seeing OU get whalloped by a superior Okie State team. I hope OSU can jump ‘Bama in the standings but doubt if they do. Iowa State was a pretty shoddy loss for them, even if it’s the best Iowa State team in decades.
December 4, 2011 at 6:17 pm |
A very tough loss indeed, Bill. But the Cougars have definitely made their presence known this season, and that might help down the road when the dust settles from all of the conference shake-ups.
December 5, 2011 at 2:38 pm |
Bill,
Watched Coogs and was hopeful they would silence the large group of detractors that have been out there for many years, but it didn’t happen. Nuts!
You are right outside distractions can make a big difference. I think the death of those coaches at OSU the nite before that played awful at Iowa State made a big difference. No way they would have lost to that team.
Anyway real happys they whipped OU. I knew also it would not make any difference with pollsters and media as they are hung up on the SEC. We beat 7 teams with winning records and 5 top 25 teams which was best in country.
Coogs had a great year no question about it.
Mike.
December 5, 2011 at 10:19 pm |
U of H — H is for heartbreak, of course. This game goes down in history with the ’83 loss for the national championship in basketball and the Cotton Bowl loss to Notre Dame. It’s one thing to lose, another to lose games you think you should win. But I think that was a big part of Saturday: they were too sure of winning to a 2-loss team. But I have to say that Robertson Stadium sure looked great full and all decked out in red. This team really brought out some fans. I only hope that trend continues, even if it means a ‘tough’ ticket until some venue changes occur.