Penn St. Rolls Beavers

Well, I was afraid that this would happen. The Beavers go back east again and play the part. It doesn't matter if its an up and coming team like Boise St, Fresno St, or Cincinnati (maybe Utah?) or an established power like LSU or Penn St. The Beavers have only played competitively in maybe 2 games on the road against decent out of conference teams in the last decade.

I'm beginning to think this early season slow start thing is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If people (press, fans) are always asking about how you're going to start fast and why do you start slow, then you start to believe it. And it becomes a wall for the players and maybe worse, the coaches.

Conservative game planning may not be the way to break the cycle. Perhaps we need to shake things up a bit. Throw the ball down field. Have a drive where all you do is fly sweep and run sweep. Go for it on 4th down. Fake punt. Blitz like crazy.

Or maybe the anwser is to just schedule weaker. Only get teams you can go home at home. Kansas went to a BCS game with a weak schedule. We went in 2001 with a weak OOC schedule. When you play all 9 other Pac-10 teams, do we really need to schedule another BCS opponent? Why not get Minnesota or Vandy to play us?

No matter what the Beavers come home this weekend. Let's make sure they get this win because we need some momentum to pull off our game 5 upset that we always seem to do. Be loud and ready to cheer on a win. Its early. The good thing about our self-fulfilling prophesy is that every also tells us we finish strong. The players and coaches believe it and they can do it with the schedule that we have.

Time to start the strong finish. Go Beavs!