The road to 6

[jesterondirt]

So we have had a few road closures, but the GPS has rerouted. We may need to put it in 4WD as its bumpy and uphill the whole way.

Memphis: Currently sitting at 6-1, they have a win against ol Miss and have handed Navy (who manhandled us at home) their only loss.

@Tulane: Currently sitting at 5-2, only losses to Auburn (will be top 10 next week) and Memphis (see above) Tulane is a good team this year, but this is a must win to get to 6.

UCF: sitting at 5-2 with losses to Cincy and Pitt, explosive team, but vulnerable. We've played close to better, but close doesnt count without the win. If they start connecting on big pass plays, it could ugly quick.

Houston: 3-4 with some key players sitting out since the Tulane loss. They didnt steamroll UCONN so theres that.

@ECU: 3-4 with wins over William and Mary, Gardner Webb and Old Dominion. The game is on the road, but I like our chances here.

The good news, our toughest games left are at home, bad news is we will more than likely be dogs in the next 4 games (exception maybe Houston)

Disclaimer ~ Look, im usually the last person to want to look past the next game on our schedule, but im pretty bummed out right now and this is about the only thing keeping me going. I know it doesnt look good, but theres still that chance, and I'm gonna milk it dry until we hit 7 losses.

 

[maverickfp]

7? Try 10.

 

['Cane-man]

I'm taking the rest of the season one beer at a time.

 

[alchemy]

I'm afraid the game at ECU is going to be the "We Give Up" bowl, and the win goes to the team with a new coach and the home field.

 

[TU 1978]

I think the road has been named ‘Highway to Hell’.

 

[Hurricane Drummer]

I have a feeling about this Memphis game. It's homecoming against another top 25 team. This may be our time. I hope it is.

 

[TU_BLA]

I have a feeling about this Memphis game. It's homecoming against another top 25 team. This may be our time. I hope it is.

Again, we can win out. Someone will need to kidnap Monty and tie him up for the remainder of the season though. This would be a great Homecoming prank for the Pike's or Sigma Chi's to engage in.

 

[JesseTU]

If we win 4, we can claim improvement. Slow and steady boys: 13-0 in 2028.

 

[TU_BLA]

If we win 4, we can claim improvement. Slow and steady boys: 13-0 in 2028.

If we only get to 4, Monty needs to be fired. There is good talent on this team and he's wasting it with his game mismanagement week in and week out.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

If we only get to 4, Monty needs to be fired. There is good talent on this team and he's wasting it with his game mismanagement week in and week out.

Let's not forget that combined with his tentative, timid, unimaginative play calling.

 

[TU_BLA]

Let's not forget that combined with his tentative, timid, unimaginative play calling.

I was including that in the general "game mismanagement" caption. There are so many things I could list. I am just pissed that we have a team who should be contending for an AAC division/conference title and the HC is just doing everything wrong. The defense is phenomenal and the offense can make plays but the coach 2nd guesses himself, shows little to no confidence in the players he picked, and gives the defense a chance to catch their breath and get set.

 

[TU Man]

It is believed the University of Tulsa would support Montgomery in the hiring of a coordinator, if the head coach chooses to go that route.

“Have I thought about it? Yes,” Montgomery said. “Do I really want to do that? Not really. We’ve had (offensive) struggles the last two years. I don’t think we are struggling as bad right now. The tough part is, when you hire somebody, you’ve got to trust them to do it. Right now, all of this is on my plate. Who am I going to trust more than me?

“There are some guys out there who I trust, but can I pay them enough? Probably not. Would they want to come here right now, under these circumstances: ‘How much security do you have left, Coach?’ ”

 

[alchemy]

If we only get to 4, Monty needs to be fired. There is good talent on this team and he's wasting it with his game mismanagement week in and week out.

It really does seem that at a minimum this team should be 4 and 3, but it could just as easily be 1 and 6. What a waste!

 

[TU_BLA]

Just heard Bruce on The Animal. He mentioned that teams know what type of count or set verbal commands on offense and are intentionally using similar signals to call out their defensive stunts and shifts presnap. Apparently we use a "ready set" type of verbal before the hand clap...and he said TU players were saying Navy was using a "Ready, shift" call to get the DL to shift and hence all of the false starts. Still on the coaches. And we should have anticipated that since all of that stuff was given to Ken N by Norwood himself.

 

[TulsaAM]

I'm afraid the game at ECU is going to be the "We Give Up" bowl, and the win goes to the team with a new coach and the home field.

This made me laugh

 

[TUMe]

Rats overtime for Navy and Tulane.

Er sorry. Navy knows how to use the clock. Navy field goal with .01 left on the clock.

 

[TulsaAM]

Nope, Navy kicked a last second field goal

 

[TUMe]

Nope, Navy kicked a last second field goal

Wish we had their coach.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

Wish we had their coach.

Either of their coaches!

 

[TulsaGrad07]

Tulane got screwed on a few calls. Seems like the American only wants Navy to win no matter who they play.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

The road to 6 wins lies at the intersection of fire Monty, 2020 and holding tryouts for a kicker.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

Dead.

 

[TulsaAM]

And we have just become a liability to the conference... still, we have one of the toughest schedules... I guess there is that

 

[TU_BLA]

And we have just become a liability to the conference... still, we have one of the toughest schedules... I guess there is that

For a liability we’re giving them some great entertainment and drama.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

And we have just become a liability to the conference... still, we have one of the toughest schedules... I guess there is that

We're actually pretty competitive in other sports; we're just rather pedestrian at football and basketball. I would think our academic standing helps bring a modicum of prestige to a conference that has some commuter colleges in it like Houston, USF and UCF. I think we'll be safe. I can't recall an instance where a conference punted a member because they sucked at football. Look how long Kansas hung around in the Big 12 with their football program.

 

[lawpoke87]

USF is ranked 17 spots ahead of us in the latest academic rankings

 

[Gmoney4WW]

USF is ranked 17 spots ahead of us in the latest academic rankings

Love the present admin.

 

[TU_BLA]

USF is ranked 17 spots ahead of us in the latest academic rankings

Are you sure that’s South Florida and not San Francisco, which is a pretty reputable private Jesuit school

 

[lawpoke87]

Are you sure that’s South Florida and not San Francisco, which is a pretty reputable private Jesuit school

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-south-florida-1537

 

[TUMe]

Tulsa continues to fall and is at 121 having been in the 80s not many years ago.

 

[jerandlaur]

We're actually pretty competitive in other sports; we're just rather pedestrian at football and basketball. I would think our academic standing helps bring a modicum of prestige to a conference that has some commuter colleges in it like Houston, USF and UCF. I think we'll be safe. I can't recall an instance where a conference punted a member because they sucked at football. Look how long Kansas hung around in the Big 12 with their football program.

Our academic prestige? We are becoming a tech school.

 

[TulsaGrad07]

Our academic prestige? We are becoming a tech school.

It was prestigious from 05 to 07 when I was a grad student there.
If we're becoming a crappy academic institution, then we should find players with high football IQ. At this point, I wanna see Tulsa win in football more than I care about spending $$$ on research, the curation of Bob Dylan's music catalog and where we fall on the 100 top private universities.

 

[rusty-c]

USF is ranked 17 spots ahead of us in the latest academic rankings

How frigin’ hell damn does that happen. Got to be some flawed criteria

 

[HuffyCane]

How frigin’ hell damn does that happen. Got to be some flawed criteria

They changed the criteria to substantially improve the rankings of the elite 30 schools and insulate them from lower schools) from gaming their data to insert themselves into the Top 50. It also benefits larger state universities like USF who are located in large metro areas with large numbers of first in family college attendees. The US News ranking are less about academic quality as they are social engineering for everyone except Harvard and its 29 friends

 

[HuffyCane]

USF is ranked 17 spots ahead of us in the latest academic rankings

Our academic APR is one of the worst in the conference, which is more relevant. We went too long with nobody watching the store in women’s basketball and a couple of other sports.

 

[lawpoke87]

Tulane #40 and SMU #64 seem to be hanging in there with the despite the new criteria. Why are we different ?

 

[HuffyCane]

Tulane #40 and SMU #64 seem to be hanging in there with the despite the new criteria. Why are we different ?

I’m told the biggest driver is our lack of raw number of Pell Grant students (which favors big schools in big cities obvi) and we are in the bottom 5 percentile out of several thousand colleges in graduation of Pell Grant students in six years. In the past we took a bunch of full pay Chinese students to pay for the education of local smart kids who we competed for with good aid packages to OU. And the Pell Grant kids we did take almost all failed out. The freshman class is the largest ever. One third of it is Pell Grant kids, done in part to respond to the change in the rankings. We are going to have to expand to 5300 undergrads over 5 years to make up for the lost revenue — assuming we can find academically appropriate Pell Grants kids willing to move to Oklahoma. Everyone wants them for the reason cited above. You can call it TU Commitment but some, not all, of the changes in the Commitment align directly with changes in US News. A cynic would argue the rest is just cover and hippie nonsense. I would expect our ACT average to drop dramatically over the next five years while we bottom out in the rankings around 150 or so (below OSU) until this whole “help poor kids” craze blows over.

As for SMU and Tulane, if you believe the current Provost, we were never peers or colleagues of those institutions, so we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to them. Or even trying to compete with them.

These are my words, but the thrust of her argument is that Stead was running a confidence game where we were beguiled with the borrowed building on campus to make us look like SMU, but we’ve really only been competing with OU and to a much lesser extent with KU for students. And we were doing that by largely giving away our product to anyone who met certain qualifications and wasn’t attracted to TU for geographic or legacy reasons. There’s a lot of direct evidence to refute that claim, but she’s said in several forums that SMU and Tulane aren’t peers and we cannot and should not try to compete with them or Rice. She’s also fund of reminding friends and donors that we are just a Research II institution and not a I like SMU and Tulane. Her vision, which apparently isn’t fully embraced by the Board or the President is to turn TU into something like Rensselaer Tech as an after thought to students who can’t get into more prestigious schools close by but is strong in STEM.

 

[TU1NNJ]

I still don’t understand the either or with the foreign (Chinese) students. Why not both - expand other areas and still recruit the full price tuition students? I have heard the argument regarding their English skills are lacking but for full price bring them in 3 months early and have a three month english immersion period.

 

[HuffyCane]

I still don’t understand the either or with the foreign (Chinese) students. Why not both - expand other areas and still recruit the full price tuition students? I have heard the argument regarding their English skills are lacking but for full price bring them in 3 months early and have a three month english immersion period.

They only come to Top 100 schools and they only came to TU when we were in the Top 100 because we dramatically lowered our required the English test score to far below the industry standard. Many were spoiled rich kids and showed little interest in completing the immersion classes that you mention.

Even if we were in the Top 100, there’s been too many documented cases of actual IP theft and intellectual espionage, so the ability to admit students from China is severely curtailed right now. They just can’t get into the country much less TU. But when you are trying to build a reputation in Cybersecurity, maybe that’s a good thing.

 

[Gmoney4WW]

I’m told the biggest driver is our lack of raw number of Pell Grant students (which favors big schools in big cities obvi) and we are in the bottom 5 percentile out of several thousand colleges in graduation of Pell Grant students in six years. In the past we took a bunch of full pay Chinese students to pay for the education of local smart kids who we competed for with good aid packages to OU. And the Pell Grant kids we did take almost all failed out. The freshman class is the largest ever. One third of it is Pell Grant kids, done in part to respond to the change in the rankings. We are going to have to expand to 5300 undergrads over 5 years to make up for the lost revenue — assuming we can find academically appropriate Pell Grants kids willing to move to Oklahoma. Everyone wants them for the reason cited above. You can call it TU Commitment but some, not all, of the changes in the Commitment align directly with changes in US News. A cynic would argue the rest is just cover and hippie nonsense. I would expect our ACT average to drop dramatically over the next five years while we bottom out in the rankings around 150 or so (below OSU) until this whole “help poor kids” craze blows over.

As for SMU and Tulane, if you believe the current Provost, we were never peers or colleagues of those institutions, so we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to them. Or even trying to compete with them.

These are my words, but the thrust of her argument is that Stead was running a confidence game where we were beguiled with the borrowed building on campus to make us look like SMU, but we’ve really only been competing with OU and to a much lesser extent with KU for students. And we were doing that by largely giving away our product to anyone who met certain qualifications and wasn’t attracted to TU for geographic or legacy reasons. There’s a lot of direct evidence to refute that claim, but she’s said in several forums that SMU and Tulane aren’t peers and we cannot and should not try to compete with them or Rice. She’s also fund of reminding friends and donors that we are just a Research II institution and not a I like SMU and Tulane. Her vision, which apparently isn’t fully embraced by the Board or the President is to turn TU into something like Rensselaer Tech as an after thought to students who can’t get into more prestigious schools close by but is strong in STEM.

So she is getting a small amount of resistance from the President and the board? I thought those entities were lock step with her on everything. So they are still holding on to some vestiges of the Universities past rep, while she trashes it all. Saying we were never peers is BS. She needs to be hung from the highest tree.