Rutgers 31 - Tulane 6

[jonathanjoseph]

I don't see that Rutgers has more talent than Tulane, if only that they have more seasoning/age on the OL and DL. /quote]

And that's why you're on a forum and not on the sidelines.

How pithy, yet sadly misguided.

Let's start at QB. Rutgers alums call Gary Nova "turn ova" and have been trying to replace him for years. We made him look like Joe Montana. I doubt there is a single coach in the country who believes Nova is more talented then Lee. Rutgers backup RBs (their starter tore his acl) are no better than Badie and Thompson. They were missing a number of other starters and when their backup safety (replacing the injured starter) went out with the targeting call, they were playing a walk on. I could go on.

Rutgers was better coached, period. As has been the case in every game this season.

By your own statement, "trying to replace him for years," you actually give credence to his talent. Yes, they looked so hard for a replacement that Nova became the Rutgers' career TD passing leader with 61. Just a miserable failure. Lee hasn't played. Nonsensical comparison.

We played a walk-on kicker who did a decent job with the kickoffs, so what? Walk-ons are part of the plan, with the schollie limits.

The coaching is what it is, but to think TU's talent level compares favorably to RU's...not by a longshot.

You are confusing playing well with being talented. Tanner Lee is one of the most talented QBs in D1A. That doesn't mean he's playing good football. Gary Nova will not play in the NFL. Tanner Lee will.

[dz1]

Marley plays out of control. On run blitz he goes around the lead blocker only to end up missing the tackle. He has to go through the lead blocker and at a minimum take him out of the play or bounce the runner outside. The defensive scheme is just terrible with players constantly getting out of position. This defense is poorly coached and change must be made across the board on that side of the ball.

[Fred Dowler]

RD is not going anywhere. He is doing victory laps with the new stadium.

The powers that be at Tulane clearly do not care about winning football.

Nailed it.

The stadium means that the TU powers-who-are won't be concerned with finances, which means that they won't be concerned with anything at all unless there happens to be some kind of embarrassing scandal.

If TU were still playing in the Superdome the lack of support (and heaven knows how many fans are going to be in that number for the rest of the season) would be painfully obvious and maybe TU would be feeling some real heat about making changes. If anyone thinks that Rick Dickson is feeling real heat right now about making substantive changes they're nuts imho.

[MicMan]

I don't see that Rutgers has more talent than Tulane, if only that they have more seasoning/age on the OL and DL. /quote]

And that's why you're on a forum and not on the sidelines.

How pithy, yet sadly misguided.

Let's start at QB. Rutgers alums call Gary Nova "turn ova" and have been trying to replace him for years. We made him look like Joe Montana. I doubt there is a single coach in the country who believes Nova is more talented then Lee. Rutgers backup RBs (their starter tore his acl) are no better than Badie and Thompson. They were missing a number of other starters and when their backup safety (replacing the injured starter) went out with the targeting call, they were playing a walk on. I could go on.

Rutgers was better coached, period. As has been the case in every game this season.

By your own statement, "trying to replace him for years," you actually give credence to his talent. Yes, they looked so hard for a replacement that Nova became the Rutgers' career TD passing leader with 61. Just a miserable failure. Lee hasn't played. Nonsensical comparison.

We played a walk-on kicker who did a decent job with the kickoffs, so what? Walk-ons are part of the plan, with the schollie limits.

The coaching is what it is, but to think TU's talent level compares favorably to RU's...not by a longshot.

You are confusing playing well with being talented. Tanner Lee is one of the most talented QBs in D1A. That doesn't mean he's playing good football. Gary Nova will not play in the NFL. Tanner Lee will.

As I said, that's why you're here and not on the sidelines. Any sidelines.

[jonathanjoseph]

You are confusing playing well with being talented. Tanner Lee is one of the most talented QBs in D1A. That doesn't mean he's playing good football. Gary Nova will not play in the NFL. Tanner Lee will.

As I said, that's why you're here and not on the sidelines. Any sidelines.

At no point did I claim to be a football coach. However, it does not require a football coach to see obvious talent, and my point about the NFL prospects for Gary Nova and Tanner Lee are absolutely accurate.

[nawlinspete]

It is amazing how everything RickyDick does turns to shit.

Let us hope he is terminated tomorrow !

[winwave]

If this is the second concussion for Lee, he could be lost for the season.

The first one they are claiming "heat"related. So if he had one it would be his first.

Whatever, he stinks right now, i guess the best pov is that we should waste this year developing a qb who leads the nation in ints. Great. Love the credibility. Don't care about talent reports, care about reusults. No idea how the old timers deal with this mess. We had zero chance of winning this game against the worst b10 team. Thats a fact.

He didn't throw one today and was 7 for 8 when he was pulled. Not making excuses, facts.

Moral victories. Yay. Folks now going to contend that lee getting hurt was the difference? This whole situation sucks. I won't accept a loser, ya'll can. Like i said, i respect the old timers who carry hope and come back year to year. I invest both finacially and season tics, but i expect results. We had one big play and a pile of crap. I apologize as i want the best, but this is not fun but in fact painful.

mba us old timers have invested a lot more time and money than you. I can assure you we have expectations. It is why in addition to all the time and money we have put into supporting and following Tulane athletics we also spend the additional time on these boards blasting the administration. Remember when you started posting you blasted us for complaining. You believed things that those incompetent lying assholes sold. So yes it is painful and embarrassing to be a Tulane fan.

[wavefan03]

You are confusing playing well with being talented. Tanner Lee is one of the most talented QBs in D1A. That doesn't mean he's playing good football. Gary Nova will not play in the NFL. Tanner Lee will.

As I said, that's why you're here and not on the sidelines. Any sidelines.

At no point did I claim to be a football coach. However, it does not require a football coach to see obvious talent, and my point about the NFL prospects for Gary Nova and Tanner Lee are absolutely accurate.

Your ego is bigger than Cowen's. The talk of Lee to the NFL during/after Tulsa was premature. There's a lot of talent out there...

[NOLABigSteve]

The coaching is garbage. This was another piss poor showing.

[mbawavefan12]

If this is the second concussion for Lee, he could be lost for the season.

The first one they are claiming "heat"related. So if he had one it would be his first.

Whatever, he stinks right now, i guess the best pov is that we should waste this year developing a qb who leads the nation in ints. Great. Love the credibility. Don't care about talent reports, care about reusults. No idea how the old timers deal with this mess. We had zero chance of winning this game against the worst b10 team. Thats a fact.

He didn't throw one today and was 7 for 8 when he was pulled. Not making excuses, facts.

Moral victories. Yay. Folks now going to contend that lee getting hurt was the difference? This whole situation sucks. I won't accept a loser, ya'll can. Like i said, i respect the old timers who carry hope and come back year to year. I invest both finacially and season tics, but i expect results. We had one big play and a pile of crap. I apologize as i want the best, but this is not fun but in fact painful.

mba us old timers have invested a lot more time and money than you. I can assure you we have expectations. It is why in addition to all the time and money we have put into supporting and following Tulane athletics we also spend the additional time on these boards blasting the administration. Remember when you started posting you blasted us for complaining. You believed things that those incompetent lying assholes sold. So yes it is painful and embarrassing to be a Tulane fan.

I "blasted" no one. I am speaking personally, this stinks.

[Mandeville Wave]

The coaching is garbage. This was another piss poor showing.

+1 I just watched the replay and I'm absolutely disgusted. The game was over before we came out the locker room. We came out lifeless with zero emotion. As a team we are 110% regressing! As much as I hate to say this CJ is just in over his head.

All we heard from the Defense in the preseason was how great they were going to be....well they are terrible. The offense has improved but the play calling has zero consistency and I just don't see this offense reaching its potential with EP at OC.

Special Teams is literally a joke! Enough said

The sad thing is we had a ton of momentum going into the season....its all gone. I'm going to have a hard time dragging my family to watch UConn but I will be there. My 6 year old son told me after the Rutgers game he did not want to watch anymore Tulane games because its just no fun and they always lose.... He hit the nail on the head.

As a TAF donor, season ticket holder, and Tulane fan I want some accountability for once out of Tulane.....the sad thing is just won't happen once again. Disgusting!!! I have already sent RD a handwritten note that I know he will probably throw in the trash and think to himself that I can just go across the street.

[TURVS71]

These types of performances make it extremely difficult to remain optimistic about this team. Speaking for myself here, I show up at every football coaches show. I show up at the post game shows. I attend most every public function that Tulane offers. I am a TAF contributor. I increased my football season tickets from 4 to 6 and not to mention all of the a Tulane merchandise I buy. (Let's don't forget the 2 premium basket ball season tickets and the 3 baseball season tickets.)

What do we get? An AD that disciplines and threatens to fire the play by play guy because he befriends myself and my son, a former player. An AD that has virtually run off all of the "regular" fans. If you are not a big contributor, he will have nothing to say or even acknowledge you. In his tenure he has continually failed miserably at hiring coaches of all sports, berating the fan base and souring many former athletes with his crass attitude.

So, the point I am trying to make is not a new one. Poor management and poor operations flows downhill. What we are seeing is a direct result of the top management of Tulane performing so inadequately that they cannot plan, foresee or even oversee a decent athletic program that would greatly benefit the university and provide dollars at an enormous rate. Their management is the reason that no self-respecting, decent head coach would place his career under their watch. Therefore we get a coach that took the job because he caught a break due to his Saints connection and fell ass backwards into a $1mm plus salary.

It doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to get a stadium built. It takes savvy, smarts and guts to make the right athletic decision, ON A CONSISTENT BASIS, to have a successful athletic program.

Dickson possesses NONE of these qualities and that translates into a poor program that no decent, upcoming coach wants to be a part of, not to mention getting a top recruit to buy into it either.

The Curtis Johnson experiment, again in my opinion, ain't working. 2-8 in your last 10 games isn't progress....it's REGRESSION......

[AugWave]

Our OC is horrible. We get no pressure on the QB, so he sits back there and picks apart our DB's. You could have Deion back there and we'd still be getting torched. Our linebackers need to grow up. No discipline. Oh, our OC (playcalling) is horrible.

[JerseyWave]

Coach CJ is not a leader or a motivator. He is a recruiter and a players coach. There's a reason he was a career long position coach. He fell into the Tulane job after Rick Dickson was rejected by 5 or 6 other coaches after a fruitless 6 week search for Toledo's successor. It's really distressing when you listen to CJ in his press conferences and read his quotes. He's always referring to all the first and second year players that are playing and how Tulane has more freshman and sophmores on the depth chart than any other program in the country. This could be true, but when you see the same mistakes over and over, the excessive penalties, the head sratching play calling, and the most incompetent special teams. Tulane can barely convert an extra point! I was at the Rutgers game and I saw a lifeless team before the game ever started! I want CJ to succeed and it will only be possible if he remakes his coaching staff. As many of us have said repeatedly, The problem begins with Rick Dickson. If we ever want to save our Football Program, it can't happen until the Dickson Virus is Destroyed!!!!!

[winwave]

Many teams are playing as many if not more freshman and redshirt freshman than Tulane does. It's just another in a long line of piss poor excuses. He keeps referring to Monroe as a young player. He's a junior who has started all three years.

[TU Green]

Our DB's aren't looking so good this year because we really miss Davenport and Warmsly. No pressure at all on the QB. Defensive line play is lacking.

[Fred Dowler]

These types of performances make it extremely difficult to remain optimistic about this team. Speaking for myself here, I show up at every football coaches show. I show up at the post game shows. I attend most every public function that Tulane offers. I am a TAF contributor. I increased my football season tickets from 4 to 6 and not to mention all of the a Tulane merchandise I buy. (Let's don't forget the 2 premium basket ball season tickets and the 3 baseball season tickets.)

What do we get? An AD that disciplines and threatens to fire the play by play guy because he befriends myself and my son, a former player. An AD that has virtually run off all of the "regular" fans. If you are not a big contributor, he will have nothing to say or even acknowledge you. In his tenure he has continually failed miserably at hiring coaches of all sports, berating the fan base and souring many former athletes with his crass attitude.

So, the point I am trying to make is not a new one. Poor management and poor operations flows downhill. What we are seeing is a direct result of the top management of Tulane performing so inadequately that they cannot plan, foresee or even oversee a decent athletic program that would greatly benefit the university and provide dollars at an enormous rate. Their management is the reason that no self-respecting, decent head coach would place his career under their watch. Therefore we get a coach that took the job because he caught a break due to his Saints connection and fell ass backwards into a $1mm plus salary.

It doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to get a stadium built. It takes savvy, smarts and guts to make the right athletic decision, ON A CONSISTENT BASIS, to have a successful athletic program.

Dickson possesses NONE of these qualities and that translates into a poor program that no decent, upcoming coach wants to be a part of, not to mention getting a top recruit to buy into it either.

The Curtis Johnson experiment, again in my opinion, ain't working. 2-8 in your last 10 games isn't progress....it's REGRESSION......

Quite right on that hiring Curtis Johnson, a longtime position coach who's never served in a higher capacity than that, was/is an experiment.

I can't help but recall how certain people whose close connections with the school administration as well as with Rick Dickson were going around in 2011 touting that highly-qualified people were chomping at the bit to take the position and that TU had had the $$ ready to offer to bring in just the right person, which, if it had really been the truth, would have meant no experiments, no fooling around and so on.

And all of this shows that Rick Dickson et al. are not merely less than competent, they're concerned first and foremost with protecting and promoting their image (and thereby keep the donations rolling in) above all, as opposed to letting people see the whole situation for what it is, but certainly not above spreading falsehoods and so on to suit their ends.

Remember how Buddy D. used to refer to Billy Kuharich et al. as "the Good Ship Lollipop?"

The really sad part is that if you're someone who as an average fan feels like the same-old same-old as regards TU sports is just not worth their time and money TU does not observe such a response as motivation for them to do something meaningful to change the on-field/on-court part to win fans over, but instead just opts to castigate people for not being loyal enough.

Regardless of new stadiums (and tailgating) and new conferences, TU sports is still well less than relevant at any level, local, regional or national, which has everything to do with fans and alums reacting very naturally to non-success on the field and on the court (but in Rick Dickson's eyes it's called "not being loyal"). And there is no route to obtaining real relevance that does not heavily emphasize strong production on the field and court in the two major sports programs and completely leveling with the fans that that's what you're all about.

[Fred Dowler]

Coach CJ is not a leader or a motivator. He is a recruiter and a players coach. There's a reason he was a career long position coach. He fell into the Tulane job after Rick Dickson was rejected by 5 or 6 other coaches after a fruitless 6 week search for Toledo's successor. It's really distressing when you listen to CJ in his press conferences and read his quotes. He's always referring to all the first and second year players that are playing and how Tulane has more freshman and sophmores on the depth chart than any other program in the country. This could be true, but when you see the same mistakes over and over, the excessive penalties, the head sratching play calling, and the most incompetent special teams. Tulane can barely convert an extra point! I was at the Rutgers game and I saw a lifeless team before the game ever started! I want CJ to succeed and it will only be possible if he remakes his coaching staff. As many of us have said repeatedly, The problem begins with Rick Dickson. If we ever want to save our Football Program, it can't happen until the Dickson Virus is Destroyed!!!!!

And don't forget that they let Bob Toledo go halfway through the season in order to get a jump on other programs looking for coaches.

[Mandeville Wave]

The Anger needs to be put on RD. RD needs to feel some heat. WHERE IS THE ACCOUNTABILITY!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DrBox]

And don't forget that they let Bob Toledo go halfway through the season in order to get a jump on other programs looking for coaches.

That is not why he was let go.
He was let go because he embarrassed the school in the Syracuse game (he essentially conceded a tie game to Syracuse) and the no-show against UTEP. Cowen had enough.
They didn't get much of a jump. They did nothing for about 3 weeks.
They wanted RR or Leach. Leach wasn't interested; they made an offer to RR who did listen.
After that, Dickson didn't know what to do, so he listened to Sean Payton. This coordinator love-affair could have gotten us Garrick McGee.
Johnson needs to hire a better offensive staff.

Frankly, I don't think CJ has recruited as well as I expect when you hire a recruiter as head coach.

[golfnut69]

NO !!!!!....say it ain't so... Mack Brown for Headcoach and AD..... just a nightmare.... almost as bad as the one about dating Debbie the friendly Flite attendant again !!...Glad I woke up ...now for a cup of head clearing CDM coffee and re watching the US get it's azz kicked by some Euros who all live in America

[Fred Dowler]

The Anger needs to be put on RD. RD needs to feel some heat. WHERE IS THE ACCOUNTABILITY!!!!!!!!!!!!

What anger?

A few people are displeased and saying so. But where's the huge boatload of traffic of hundreds of people having things to say (as there would be if, say, LSU were having a similarly rough season)?

Where are the alums? Most have tuned out, don't care. Where are the local fans? Same story.

[jonathanjoseph]

mba us old timers have invested a lot more time and money than you. I can assure you we have expectations. It is why in addition to all the time and money we have put into supporting and following Tulane athletics we also spend the additional time on these boards blasting the administration. Remember when you started posting you blasted us for complaining. You believed things that those incompetent lying assholes sold. So yes it is painful and embarrassing to be a Tulane fan.

+1

[TURVS71]

One more thought. I keep hearing that the recruiting is better and team speed has greatly improved. If that is the case then the coaching is NOT improved.

For once, I would like to hear Curtis Johnson get mad, angry and motivated. I'm tired of quotes from the players saying that "we will fix things, we're better, we're not the same old Tulane." Well , week 6 is upon us. With the right coaching and motivation and ass kicking, there is no doubt in my mind that we could be 4-1.

Coach Johnson, please get animated and stop trying to be the players friends....get a little fire in your soul and do what you are being handsomely paid to do...

[Fred Dowler]

And don't forget that they let Bob Toledo go halfway through the season in order to get a jump on other programs looking for coaches.

That is not why he was let go.
He was let go because he embarrassed the school in the Syracuse game (he essentially conceded a tie game to Syracuse) and the no-show against UTEP. Cowen had enough.
They didn't get much of a jump. They did nothing for about 3 weeks.
They wanted RR or Leach. Leach wasn't interested; they made an offer to RR who did listen.
After that, Dickson didn't know what to do, so he listened to Sean Payton. This coordinator love-affair could have gotten us Garrick McGee.
Johnson needs to hire a better offensive staff.

Frankly, I don't think CJ has recruited as well as I expect when you hire a recruiter as head coach.

They still could have made use of the time, which obviously it seems like they did not.

Rodriguez wasn't coming -- don't be naive -- unless maybe there was just absolutely no other program anywhere where he could have gone, which, as we know, was not the case. Certainly if there was a state school that was part of a legit major conference that was interested in him, which there was, TU was not about to be his destination.

The question is why did TU limit its options, if, as the talk was going around, the big-money people were stepping up and ready to see to it that a highly-qualified person was brought in (and then supposedly, as again the talk was going around, numerous such people were interested in the position)?

I didn't buy into it then and then it certainly seems like everything that's happened since has served to confirm that what was being said was pure (pro-Rick Dickson) spin while the actual fact was that none of that was happening. TU wasn't about to spend serious money to bring in someone except for the one person that everyone could see wasn't coming -- but instead went the cheap route and undertook an experiment. And then turned around and gave a raise to the experiment after a so-so success of a season (as sort of a Rick Dickson congratulating himself on the success of his experiment gesture?).