A better question may be: How empty does the stadium have to be for our leadership to search for (admit) the reason(s)?
I will say that our new AD is reaching out to the students. Let's see if they get rid of the stupid 8:00AM tailgating rule and allow the long time fans to tailgate like they did pre-TMac.
DITTO.
A poor bowl appearance --like last years embarrassment on national TV against some school named Georgia Southern-- is MUCH WORSE than not appearing in a bowl at all. I'd rather see my team stay home in bowl season if all they are going to do is embarrass me on national TV.
Make no mistake.....that was a low point for this football program. Holtz should not get a free pass.
(Just so I'm clear, I'm not talking about losing a bowl game to a good team in exciting fashion, e.g., our loss to TCU in the 2011 Poinsettia Bowl. Despite the loss to TCU, I was very proud of the 2011 Dogs' performance in that game against a high quality opponent, and throughout that entire year. But, our 2021 appearance in the New Orleans Bowl just looked like a team that had already quit before the kickoff.)
I wonder how many of the 6 wins predicted for Rice this season by ESPN staff is directly put on Luke McCaffrey transferring there? If they really pay any attention to C-USA football lately then he should be worth 2-3 wins alone. Even though there really wasn't any way to go but up, Rice is trending in the right direction. They finished their 2019 season at 3-9 with all the wins coming in the final three games. Then in their limited 2020 season (2-3), they spanked Marshall and S. Miss. I am also very hesitant to put Rice in a sure-win column for us. I am hoping we can pull off 7 wins this season, but that would require quite a few of unexpected surprises for offense.
Pleasant surprise -- 10+ wins
Better than expected/good -- 8-9 wins
Expected -- 7 wins
Disappointing -- =<6 wins
7 wins is with this schedule is the minimum acceptable, so I guess that would satisfy me. SMU, North Texas, UTEP, ODU, Charlotte, USM and Rice are my picks for wins. We follow this up with another bowl loss to the Sun Belt to finish 7-6. Skip keeps his job, but the automatic extension does not kick in.
What record gets Skip fired? I would say a normally criminal record with a murder or attempted murder conviction, but since our new AD actually fired a poor performing coach recently maybe it is possible Skip one day gets fired. For that to happen this year I say 2-10, maybe 3-9.