The Monday After: Wake up, it's another win!

So, I have a confession to make.

Watching the game from the comfort of my couch … cozied up under a blanket … a couple of beers deep … and with WSU leading 21-3 …… 

I fell asleep.

(I can almost feel Jimmy Rogers’ eyes burning a hole through my soul for this.)

It obviously says something about me and my age that the tail end of a 7 p.m. kick is pushing the limits of my attention, but it also says a heck of a lot about just how thoroughly WSU dominated Louisiana Tech in what would become a 28-3 victory. The effort it took for the Bulldogs to move the ball even just a little bit clearly indicated that the game was all but over at that point, so it’s ok if I close my eyes … just a little bit … just for a minute …

OH HEY THERE GOES KIRBY VOORHEES! Huh. I wonder how long I was out? (I did watch the whole thing again yesterday morning, and it turned out that I missed an interception!)

Anyway, I think there’s also a little something to unpack here about the kind of football the Cougars are playing under Rogers. I closed my eyes thinking it was pretty darn unlikely that either team score for the remainder of the game, and while the Cougars did score on that long Voorhees run, it came on the 12th play of a drive where the first 11 plays covered 51 yards. That handoff into the middle of the line could have just as easily been another three-yard run, followed by a field goal attempt, or a seven-yard run followed by kneel downs.

To put it plainly, that’s not the kind of stuff that makes me want to find a way to fight the heavy eyelids. Put another way, the … uh … “entertainment value” of this team is maybe not what we’ve grown accustomed to over the decades with WSU’s offense-forward program.

[SOUL BURNING INTENSIFIES]

Unfortunately, there’s not really any way for me to talk about this without sounding like I’m whining about wins. I love the wins. I promise I do. And I know that Oregon State fans, for example, would walk over glass to win some games where the offense scores a couple of TDs then dorks around for a couple of quarters while the defense chokes the life out of the opponent.

This is just taking a little getting used to. 

I’m sure Rogers himself would be incredulous at any suggestion that what they are doing isn’t measuring up to some arbitrary standard of “entertainment.” He was brought here to do one thing, and that’s win games. And he’s doing that a heck of a lot better than I thought he would this year.