29 thoughts on “Bobcats collapse in 51-50 loss to start SLC”

1. This is a tough way to start the season, for sure. With the best teams still ahead of us, I hope this meltdown lights a fire that will help us through those games.

2. This is not the way to go if “The Drive” to the FBS division is to be realized. It may be that the wrong coach is on the sidelines for Texas State.

3. Rene, you may be right.

   The reaction to disappointing seasons (from students and non-students) has been shoulder-shrugs for as long as I can remember.

   For the last 9 seasons, our record has been:

   00/01 7-4
   01/02 4-7
   02/03 4-7
   03/04 4-8
   04/05 5-6
   05/06 11-3
   06/07 5-6
   07/08 4-7
   08/09 8-5

   During that time, we have had 4 coaches, so I am inclined to look elsewhere for the cause. It could be the AD, but I think he took over in 04 and this pattern extends back for another decade.

   I’m not sure what is keeping us from being competitive at this level, but you can be sure that it will only get harder if we move up.

   The season is still young and hopefully we can finish strong. One thing is for sure, there aren’t any successful FBS programs where students, alumni and fans would allow a 9-year record of 52-53 to stand without making some serious noise.

4. Coach Bailiff had something going here in 2005, but we couldn’t keep him and though I think Coach Wright has done a decent job, there is no question that the momentum has been lost. We have had some success in “minor” sports, but let’s not fool ourselves – the athletic department will go as the football team goes.

   I think the blame for the problems with our athletic department have to fall squarely on the shoulders of our AD – remember “the buck stops here”? Teis is hugely unpopular with many potentially large donors, which limits the budget. The money that is received is spent in bewildering ways.

   Not to mention the fact that the current administration is dead-set against allowing independent fundraising groups (like the 12th Man Foundation) to supplement the athletic department’s general fund budget allotment. Big time programs (which is what I’m told we’re trying to become) receive only a small part of their budget from the University’s general fund. Here, it’s almost all we have.

   As a result, our football team can’t fly to many away games. Our baseball team had to have fundraisers a couple of years back to buy their own uniforms. Our recruiting budget is miniscule. And the list goes on.

   The new facilities are nice, but when the actual programs are operated in such a Mickey-Mouse fashion, it reflects on the on-field product and hurts recruiting efforts. Putting a poor product on the field in turn decreases fan support and down the road further damages potential giving.

   It’s a vicious cycle that has turned into a rut, and until the current administration either has an epipheny or is replaced, nothing will change that.

5. Ted,

   I get your point on the Athletic Director and maybe he needs to be tossed as well. However, letting the team relax so much as to lose at home is just plain crappy coaching.

6. Ted, These jobs are the affected individuals livelihood, and each coach in town has a family who depends on the job. Fans shouldn’t be so cavalier. It shouldn’t be all boiled down to record. Nonetheless, over the same time period the Aggies are 57-52 with a very similar distribution:
   2008 4-8
   2007 7-6
   2006 9-4
   2005 5-6
   2004 7-5
   2003 4-8
   2002 6-6
   2001 8-4
   2000 7-5
   The Aggie fans may complain, but they still fill the seats. The Bobcat fans, not so much. 10,000 won’t cut it and there is too much burnt orange gear among the student body.
   The coaches and athletic administration need to be judged on more than record alone. There is fundraising which seems improved and graduation rates (it is college football after all), among other things. There is also something to be said for continuity. Every time a superstar comes in, they quickly head for the next stop, whether it be a coach (Franchione, Bailiff, Miller) or AD (Alden).

7. Actually, I said that I suspected the problem runs deeper than the coaches or the AD.

   Speaking of attendance, most big-time programs fill the stands with many times the population of the student body. One (I) has to wonder if the stands in San Marcos wouldn’t have more people in them, if the university (admin, not students) did more to reach out to the community.

   It is sad to think about how many alumni I know, who want nothing to do with the school.

   While I agree that there is more to consider than the record, with respect to the football program in and of itself, the record is pretty high on the list and it was identified by the NCAA as a requirement to move up. So, either we get the record significantly weighted toward the “W” side, or we should stop pouring money into the program and put more into academics, where we are seeing some measurable results.

8. Also, the burnt orange among the student body is an interesting observation. I received an email today, offering to trade Texas State T-shirts for any other school’s shirts. It’s an interesting program to get people wearing Texas State colors, but I wonder if it is just treating the symptom.

   Why don’t more students take greater pride in their school? I don’t know, but that feeling probably carries over to many of the disinterested alumni that I see.

9. Ted, they have been doing that t-shirt swap thing for several years now. Obviously, it hasn’t quite caught on given the number of student you still see wearing other schools’ colors around campus. I will, however, say that since the name change I have seen more students wearing TxSt branded clothing than I used to, so that’s some progress.

   As to the support of the athletic program, it’s long been a problem with the “campus culture” at this school that the students here generally don’t get involved with or support **anything**.

   –Support for our athletic programs is pathetic, given our relative size and success of those programs

   –Participation in Greek organizations is among the lowest in the nation, percentage-wise

   –Civic service groups like Circle K couldn’t even survive at the University because they couldn’t get 20 paying members to meet the club’s minimum size

   It seems that if there isn’t a keg involved, you can’t get many of the students around here to participate in anything. I don’t know if it’s an inherent lack of pride in the University or more a sign of the times, but it’s disturbing nonetheless.

10. I’d say that it is a problem with the University, not the students. We pull our students from the same pool as everyone else, but I see a lot more Texas Tech gear than I do Texas State. It goes without saying that the same is true of UT and A&M.

    While UT and A&M are much larger schools, I would say their level of support is disproportionately larger, by several times. Much of that can be attributed to their histories, I am sure, but I suspect there is more to it than that.

11. I agree with that, Ted. Our University administration can’t simply say “here we are – get excited about us!”. They have to be giving students a reason to be excited about the University. There *is* a culture of non-participation around this campus and it’s the job of University leaders to force a change.

    As much as I hate to admit it, a prominent athletic department would go a long way toward generating excitement for the University. Using you Tech example, how much more prominent have they become since Leach made the football team a national power?

12. As someone who was intimately involved with the FBS campaign a few years ago, I can say that getting the higher administration to cooperate was like puling teeth. We in ASG at the time wanted three simple things from the administration before we asked for a referendum to increase the athletic fee, or collect one cent from the students. We wanted a public statement of support (i.e – public event/press conference), a written, actionable plan with specific benchmarks and a signed statement of support. We never got those in the past. So, we passed legislation to that effect. (S.R.F. 2007-2008/12 – “Where’s the Beef?”)

    We did this because Dr. Trauth, at the time, was asking for a lot of money with no guarantees on where it would be spent. So we decided to hold our ground, and we won that round solely because we were the only ones who could make that referendum possible, and the referendum passed with what, at the time (I believe), was the highest voter turnout in school history, taking over 60 percent of the vote.

    ASG, and the student body, had been down the Division I/FBS road so many different times, we started to feel more than a little misled. I’m glad there’s more student support, but I wonder, given that Trauth and Teis are still there, how much of the culture has changed? If anything, we forced FBS on them. They never seriously wanted it, and if they’re dragging feet, I wouldn’t be surprised.

    We also tried to do tent sales with the University Bookstore, thinking that if merchandise was offered at a lower price, more people would come out and buy Tx State gear, Negotiating with them was unreal. I ran one of the meetings, and was told by a staffer that students wore UT and A&M shirts because they were “better schools.” Way to self-promote.

    So. yeah, I completely agree that if school spirit is on low gear, part of it is because the administration has never made a serious commitment to building campus culture and tradition, beyond slogans and marketing. The students will always be responsible for their part, but they can see when the higher-ups take things seriously or not, and act accordingly.

13. That would also explain a lot of the indifference from the alumni. You’ll never (rarely) be more excited about the school than when you are a student. How much it drops off from there will vary, but if spirit isn’t all that high to begin with, it’s not going to magically get better as you put years and miles between yourself and the school.

    Ditto for the local residents who didn’t attend Texas State. It is hard to imagine them being more excited than the students and alumni.

    Sadly, it takes students, alumni and locals to fill those seats and if there is a plan for getting all of those groups on board, I haven’t seen it.

14. Part of the problem is that Texas State will always sit in the shadow of U.T. ( by the way, I am a U.T. alumni) Having gone to U.T., I can say that athletics, particularly football, was the one thing that the whole student body united behind. I am sure the same is true for a Ohio St., or a Florada, or any other big time program. The one thing that would get me excited would be putting a good team on the field. The only Texas State game I have ever attended was one of the playoff games a few years back.

15. There was a time when “sitting in the shadow of UT” was a uniting force for students here. Maybe that has changed. Not for me.

    Personally, I think UT is about the most un-Texas university we’ve got in this state. That’s one thing that stuck with me from my early days as a Bobcat and the more Austin and UT move toward becoming like USC-East, the more pride I have in being a Bobcat and living in San Marcos.

    Austin lives in the shadow of its own generic growth and in the shadow of its much cooler past; a shadow that thankfully, we are outside of, in the beautiful Hill Country sun.

16. Watch it, you cut me I bleed burnt orange! The point is, this program has to compete with a much better, and granted much more expensive show just up the road (non-student tickets for a U.T game start at $85). Media coverage, I’m talking radio, television, the Austin A-S, and even the San Antonio E-N, is dominated by coverage of U.T., with Texas State a distant second. The only way Texas State athletics can build a good following is by puting a quality team on the field or court.

17. But, why do you “bleed burnt orange?” What is it about UT and A&M (among many others, large and small) that fosters this sort of loyalty (even decades after graduation)? Why don’t we see the same at Texas State?

    Is it only the quality of the sports teams? If so, then we certainly do need to measure people by their records. I suspect there is more to it, though.

    You are saying that people don’t care, because university doesn’t reliably field competitive teams. My original point was that the teams are not reliably competitive because nobody cares; nobody is passionate about the teams; nobody is demanding results. Probably the two feed off one another.

    One way or another, the university needs to get the alumni back into the fold and to find a way to get locals with no university affiliation involved. Texas State needs passionate supporters anywhere they can be found.

    Without those supporters, you’ll always be looking at empty seats and there will be even more of them, as the stadium expansion continues. There just aren’t enough students to fill the stadium on their own and student fees alone can’t cover the cost of a competitive FBS program.

    Not only would those supporters help to build the athletic program, they would help to lift the university as a whole. Do you think that football fans and potential players are the only ones who notice Longhorn t-shirts and Texas Ex stickers everywhere? It is hard to put a price on that sort of PR, particularly when trying to attract students and faculty.

18. Sean’s story is, sadly, all too familiar.

    I was with a group that once tried to establish a non-profit foundation (like the 12th man) to do fundraising to benefit the University’s athletic program. We were told by the University that our group would not be allowed to contribute to the athletic department because of “concerns over insitutional control”. This was in spite of the fact that we had offered the Provost of the school a spot on our board to ensure compliance. Apparently, the way most successful fundraising Universities do it isn’t good enough for our little school!

    We also received the same song and dance about them not being able to “guarantee” where any funds would be spent too. Basically, they just didn’t want to deal with it so they shot it down. Never mind that it could have quadrupled the school’s operating budget for athletics.

    During these meetings, Teis stood in Trauth’s office and loudly proclaimed that it was the City of San Marcos that was holding the University back. His view was that TxSt would never be able to meet its full potential unless it left San Marcos(!!!!!)

    Trauth is over her head and Teis doesn’t care who knows that he considers this job a stepping stone (unfortunately no one else will take him). Until they’re gone, we’re not going to see any improvement in the mood around our school.

19. A football game is a show. People will go to a show when they can see stars. Who do they see at the Texas State football show? Texas Southern? Central Arkansas? Northwestern State?

    Why doesn’t Texas State live in the same orbit as UT, A&M and Tech as far as school spirit? Because Texas State isn’t in the same orbit competitively. As long as Texas State isn’t in the mix where we might play A&M, Tech and UT, then we don’t get into the contest for bragging rights. Remember back in the semifinal year when State hung in there with A&M?

    Being in I-AA just isn’t going to create the kind of stakes that the other guys play for. Texas State is in the minor leagues. What’s weird about it is that if Texas State were in the higher level, maybe in Conference-USA or the WAC, the football program would probably be as competitive, if not moreso, than it is in the Southland Conference, where State’s entrance requirements are so much tougher than the Louisiana schools that they’re not even on a level playing field.

    If State is competing for players against UTEP, U of H or some of the others, well, San Marcos is an attractive place for a kid to spend his college years. Combine that with a higher level of competition, and the schools they’re recruiting against having some kind of serious entrance requirements, then the quality of recruit here would soar, and so would interest in the football team.

    But we have to get there first.

20. That’s not entirely true. While a competitive FBS program would draw more, there are plenty of FCS (or lower) schools with more spirit among students and alumni.

    When I visit New England, it is not at all uncommon to see URI, UMASS, Colgate, Hofstra, Trinity, Wesleyan and Holy Cross alumni stickers, among others. To say nothing of the schools with basketball notoriety, like UCONN (who decided to move to FBS around the same time we started talking about it and appears to have gotten it right), Georgetown, Villanova, etc, as well as all of the Ivy League schools.

    A strong FBS football team is not a prerequisite for general school spirit, a strong affiliation with alumni, etc. Without that passion for the school, an FBS program will just mean a larger stadium with more (and more expensive) empty seats.

21. I am a proud graduate of Texas A&M. When I began my collegiate career in College Station, all the traditions, including the now defunct Bonfire, were the norm. One thing does come to mind is that the majority of the students lived in the Bryan-College Station area. In San Marcos, there is a good percentage of commuters from the Austin and San Antonio areas. It is pretty tough to get traditions instilled in students that work and live in Austin and San Antonio. UT has the distinction of being the only sports entertainment Austin has to offer. With 50k students and a city population inching toward 1 million, San Marcos can’t compete with that. Like in Los Angeles, since there is no NFL team, USC is the ticket for their football fix. I guess it is cosmopolitan to be a UT fan.

22. Rene, interesting point about the commuters. I hadn’t thought of that.

    UT puts 100,000 people in the stands. Filling our stadium and competing with UT are not the same thing and getting our students and alumni to show a little more school pride shouldn’t have anything to do with the size of the school, or the size of the city.

    It has to do with the relationship between the university and the people in and around it.

23. But, Ted, you can’t deny that there’s a huge regional difference between the northeastern states and Texas, especially regarding college football culture. Up until fairly recently, your northeastern choices for big-time college football were Boston College, Syracuse (upstate New York), Penn State (a stretch from central Pennsylvania) and Pitt (a bigger stretch from western Pennsylvania. From that group, only Penn State could be considered a perennial national power. Otherwise, you had Army (which hasn’t won anything since World War II) and Rutgers (the University of New Jersey, which is almost never very good).

    University prestige just isn’t attached to football in the northeast the same way it’s attached to football in Texas, where football is a state religion. Texas doesn’t have anything like the Ivy League, or the small college culture you’d find in a place like Ohio or Minnesota. I mean, I love what they do at Mary Hardin Baylor, but that’s not an easy conversation to find around here.

    Small colleges in the Northeast and the Midwest are viewed much more affectionately through generations during which they are where the action is. Schools in those regions also have an advantage within I-AA for recruiting because it’s a buyers market for the few big-time programs in those regions. We’ve got 10 or 12 DI football programs in Texas alone.

24. Dano, I remember the organization that you’re talking about, and it went down exactly as you said. I suspect we have some of the same friends on the “inside.” They want this to die, so they’ll make a head-fake towards support, but back away ASAP.

    Their concern over financial control means they’re concerned that they can’t absolutely control it. Teis knows he can’t handle an FBS program and the reason Trauth loves him is because he has the letters Ph.D after his name. Her concern with him pretty much begins and ends there.

    Case in point: Trauth/Teis passed on Jerry Glanville as head football coach, who, while not the best NFL coach ever, was at least in the bigs, and not just a high school coach.

    Also, and this isn’t advertised but I have it on excellent, qualified and knowledgeable authority, Texas State owns the rights to the Southwest Conference name. Tech has the archives, but Tx State owns the name. What have we done with that? Squat. That’s what.

    And while those two are stil running things, that’s exactly what will continue to happen with the FBS drive. They’ll invest in infrastructure, like the stadium expansion, because that gives the appearance of progress, but when it really matters, they still just want it to go away.

25. Sam, good points, although I still think the university could do more to generate support and school spirit.

    Dano and Sean, discouraging stories, to be sure.

26. In an attempt to add to the comments here, I believe that part of the problem lies in the collegiate sports schedule. How many students and alumni can name all of the schools in the Southland Conference let alone where they are located? Alumni from dozens and dozens of Texas high schools attend Texas State. Students have friends that attend other universities all over the state. Rivalries with conference foes located in Louisiana just doesn’t resonate among the student body. The old Lone Star Conference established much better interest and rivalries than the Southland Conference and its Louisiana dominated membership.

    I don’t have a solution to this problem but a collegiate schedule pitting the Bobcats against schools like UTEP, UNT, Sam Houston, SFA, UTA, UTEP, SMU, TCU, Rice, Houston and UTSA would seem to generate much more interest. When I return to my old hometown of Abilene, I am reminded that Abilene Christian upset the Bobcats in the fall of 2008. I don’t think remaining in the Louisiana dominated Southland Conference is any benefit to collegiate sports at the university.

27. I just can’t wrap my head around the need to pursue a sports program that frankly, people seem uninterested in. We have some excellent academics at Texas State – namely our geography, music, and education programs, just to name a few. Our business school is improving every year and we are finally making much needed improvements to our campus facilities. I don’t know why we feel the need to keep up with the more established football universities in such a crowded market here in Texas.

    If the money used to fund the so called “Drive to FBS” was actually from private booster organizations, well, more power to them. I think we need to stop playing the “meeee too!” game with other schools and spend more time and resources on the reason the University exists in the first place – academics!

    For your football fix, go check out a game of Unicycle Football. Now THAT is entertainment.

28. Pingback: NFL: Indianapolis Colts vs Jacksonville Jaguars Live stream … | Indianapolis Colts NFL Announcer

29. Pingback: NFL: Indianapolis Colts vs Jacksonville Jaguars Live stream … | Jacksonville Jaguars NFL Announcer