Commentary: Staying true to the Gray and Blue this weekend

By Casey Michel     9/24/09 7:00pm

The last time we saw the football team, they were hoisting a glistening Texas Bowl trophy to the sky, the crowning spectacle to an unforgettable season in which Rice grabbed its first bowl win in 58 years. The stars that night were big and bright, deep in the heart of Reliant Stadium.My, how time flies.

The NFL draft whisked away Jarett Dillard and shuttled James Casey three miles down the road, and a new life outside of football awaited the well-coiffed gunslinger Chase Clement. Our coaching staff took a hit, with former offensive coordinator Tom Herman hitching a ride to Iowa State, and our defense parted with three starters, disrupting a scheme that was just getting a handle on how exactly to stymie opposing offenses.

The offense was gutted. The defense was left teetering. The coaching staff was infused with new, foreign blood. Head Coach David Bailiff is good, but he's no David Blaine.

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College athletics easily lends itself to rebuilding schema, and this year's team fits the mold better than a Notre Dame fan and alcoholism. The quarterback situation has had fans in the dark for months, with Nick Fanuzzi and John Thomas Shepherd connecting, it seems, only when tossing the starting role to the other. The defense, the presumptive stalwarts of the team with their eight returning starters, have bungled and bobbled their way to allowing the third-highest points-against average in Division I football, giving up 46.7 points in the team's three losses. Last week's loss was an improvement, gifting Oklahoma State University only (gulp) 41 points.

Our receivers are proving capable - Toren Dixon and Taylor Wardlow already have double-digit receptions, with the former already on pace for the first 800-yard season from someone not named Dillard in decades. But if we have a rushing game, I've yet to see it - of course, that may be because our games haven't been televised, yet another reason adding to the misery the 2009 season has thus far produced.

This season has hurt, but not nearly as much, I'm sure, as the egos of the batch of the seniors. Dixon, Shepherd and defensive back Andrew Sendejo are leading the only crop of Owls who have visited two bowls since Marilyn Monroe broke Joe DiMaggio's heart. To see their team falter like this, a mighty descent from the Texas Bowl triumph, must hit them in the gut in a way they couldn't have imagined.

Which is why the season ain't over yet.

These guys have been there. Twice. They have seen the top, tasted the trophies and know what a return to the postseason will require. They know their conference is as wide open as it's ever been, doubling the pleasure they must have taken in seeing former coach Todd Graham lead his University of Tulsa on a 45-0 choke-job against the University of Oklahoma last week. They know the Conference USA crown, long entrenched in the Golden Hurricane's grasp, is ripe for the taking.

And they know their history. In 2006, the Owls, then under Graham, found themselves flattened in four straight games, allowing an average of 41 points and staring at an oh-fer on the record books. And what happened? In seven of their next eight games, the Owls bullied, bashed and blitzed their way to seven wins and an appearance in the nationally-televised R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, a feat one could argue was the greatest achievement in the program's history.

So don't let that bagel in the win column fool you. Our winlessness hasn't turned the postseason into a pipe dream.

Not with Vanderbilt University, without a victory in Football Bowl Subdivision play, coming to town tomorrow. Not with the rest of the home stands taken up by reeling Tulsa and floundering Navy, whose only victory came against a pitiable Louisiana Tech University squad. Not when you peel back the stats in the Oklahoma State game and find that we had more total offensive yards than the Pokies.

Not when you remember that those three losses have all been backwater road games, a brutal stretch under which even the strongest of teams would have broken. The most cynical among us joke that we returned home last week, finding ourselves once again in ESPN's Bottom 10. But our place there, straddled by Temple and UCLA, will soon be vacated.

I'll be at the game tomorrow, caked in paint and hoarse in voice, cheering on the defending Texas Bowl champs. The trophy is still ours. The postseason still awaits. If they want to go 1-0 every week, tomorrow would be a good place to start.

Casey Michel is a Brown College senior and Thresher editor in chief.

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