The Good , The Bad, and The Ugly-Time For Reflection

Tru has had his say on the events from yesterday, and has made it pretty clear that we have a ways to go before we are ready for teams like Florida. I am going to take this opportunity to add some things to what he said and offer some additional analysis that I hope will be helpful, or will at least give us all some food for thought as we try to process that debacle. And in the spirit of making this as Tru-like as possible, more after the jump.

Following my headline, I really did see some of each of those things on the field yesterday. We held on to the football. There's the Good. We can not find a way to stop the Gators, that's the bad. And whatever it was we thought we were doing while the clock was running yesterday, that was the ugly.

Yesterday was something that I was under the impression that we had moved beyond, gotten past, and had made obsolete in the annals of UK Football. Blowouts had become less and less commonplace under Coach Brooks, and I honestly thought we would begin to see the kind of progress we so desperately wanted to see. Well, in the immortal words of one of my favorite historical lines, "Fat Chance".

We looked like a Jr. Pro team against the New England Patriots yesterday for the first 15 minutes, then we simply played bad the rest of the time.Trying to single out individuals for their effort yesterday is a waste of research and typing. If I played on that team and anyone singled me out for something I did well yesterday, I would probably puke. The mistakes were too numerous to count, and the amount of sheer ignorance I saw on my TV yesterday, made me glad I was not sitting there watching it in person. Penalties, ineffective tackling, lousy blocking, poor preparation, mental mistakes, miscues on routes, and not to mention a complete lack of a sense of urgency on the part of a team when they were down by a couple of touchdowns after only 7 minutes of the first quarter just completely amazed me.

I have heard a lot of talk on here about skill level of recruits, and tradition, and how we are never going to spend money on football, etc.  None of those things had anything to do with what happened at Commonwealth Stadium yesterday. To quote Strother Martin from Cool Hand Luke, "What we got here is, a failure to communicate"

Either no one was talking to anyone, or no one was listening. If you play football in the NCAA  BCS Bowl Subdivision (did I get that right?), you are going to have bad days. But it is how you handle those bad days that sets you apart. We saw cracks in the armor with UL, and the coaches I believe, tried to make adjustments this last week. Or at least I thought they did. I must have been mistaken. The same ugly mistakes reared their head this week (except for the clock operator, who is now keeping time for the Garda Belts of the Minnesota Rollergirls Roller Derby League I believe).

I am not going to sit here and call for someone's head ( although I hear the list is long ), but what I am going to do is this. I am calling on every player, coach, AND fan to put this behind us, do WHATEVER it takes to perpare ourselves for next Saturday, and show the SEC and everyone else that we are NOT the same old doormat we have been taken for. 

As a fan it is beyond frustrating to get excited for a game and then lose, but it is a part of it, I accept that. But we can no longer allow ourselves to be the joke that everyone gets.

We need to get tough, get energized and get on with trying to turn this program around. No more feeling sorry for ourselves, or whining about how the other teams have better players, bigger traditions, bigger budgets or fancier facilities, or how they have sunshine, beaches and bikinis.....

Its time to man up Wildcats, play like you have a pair, and a brain that knows what to to with them.