Sadly, a MACC won't satisfy anyone, at least, not for long. When a school wins a national championship, it satisfies their fans...for about a month, but then they want another. Ohio is no longer any different than other places, so the things that are true elsewhere will be true here, too.

Over the years I have supported teams in various sports that were national champions, and teams that were simply really bad, and teams that were OK, but not likely to ever win championships. I've discovered that it's the journey that is fun, not the destination.

Monroe is right about one thing, though. There was one definite and significant change that happened at exactly the point in time that he begins as his time period for the slump. If you go back and browse BA during that time period, which I did this evening, it stands out as clear as day. Prior to that time, the fans on BA were universally supportive of the players, though thick and thin. Even in bad years like 2005 and 2008 the fans were behind the players. Even after all the arrests back in 2006 the fans never deserted the players.

In 2012, however, that changed. After the Miami loss, the fans turned on the players, and bitterly attacked them. I was shocked at the time, and going back and re-reading the threads from that time, I'm still shocked, because it was so different from they 7 years before it. Obviously the players should not be reading BA, and if they do, they should not be influenced by it. We all know, though, that some players do read it, and that players are people, and are affected by what other say about them.

When the fans turned on the players after that Miami loss, there is no doubt that it did affect them, and affect their morale. I think they took it for granted that they would always have fan support, and it took some air out when they found that they no longer did, and the attitude of those particular players was never the same again, and I don't find that surprising.

The good news is that we now have a new group of players. They know they don't have support here, and they take that for granted, and stay far away from BA. They expect people here to behave just like fans of the big football powerhouses. Therefore BA has become irrelevant, and Social media has replaced it. The players can communicate that way, and they can and do just ignore BA. Therefore, I think this group of players will be unaffected, regardless of what goes on here. It's better this way, with them building a web of support that doesn't include BA.

Former players and parents seem to be gone or very reserved too. I get it if their stomachs sour from BA.

I find that repugnant and silly--the thought that fans here turned abhorrent or had any effect on performance. Hey, we'd've been ranked...or at least broken into the top 100--if you BA'ers hadn't turned sour.

Fantasy.




There must be all of 50 or so regulars here. What a huge, demonic throng we are.

If we've become so horrid, I'm surprised the coach and players at UCLA hoops, for example, can even step on the court if they don't make it to the Final Four.

Hey, Monroe, we were in the top 25 just before the bottom fell out after the Brain Fart At Miami (BFAM, for those of you scoring at home).
http://www.ohiobobcats.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/10141...

I agree generally with what L.C. says here. I think part of what happened was the huge disappointment that occurred at the point of the BFAM. We were looking for a possible BCS Bowl game. We had beaten Penn State, had a seven game winning streak. The program looked to be on the verge of returning to the glory days of the late 1960s and exceeding the accomplishments of those prior golden years. It all came crashing down so suddenly that it was heart wrenching. In those circumstances it's natural to ask why -- and sometimes that resulted in find scapegoats. Some blamed TT. Others blamed Solich. Others blamed one assistant coach or another. One way, as I recall, even blamed Halloween. It was a pretty ugly scene, in which I must admit that I participated. Then this was immediately followed by the locker-room-revolt season of 2013, which made the on-the-field situation look even more in disarray. Then, this was followed by the rebuilding year of 2014. Some of us fans just couldn't take this all in stride and began lashing out in the most outlandish ways. We didn't make a dispassionate analysis, we ATTACKED whatever we thought was the root cause of the problem. Well, it's clear now that while we we bitching, those in charge of the program were doubling down and doing the hard work to put a better product on the field. I'm very confident we are going to see that product next fall.

LC, your observations are that of someone that arrived to the dinner party quite late. When you started paying attention (2005) we were at the bottom rung of CFB. Frank's arrival brought hope and every step we took out of the gutter was exciting and rejuvenating.

Before you arrived, Ohio football from 2001-2005 was a disaster and I'm quite sure the tone of BA during that period was not kind to the program. And should it have been? I mean the whole thing was a mess.

The second half of 2012 and all of 2013 were a mess. The play on national television against BG/Buffalo and others was as bad as anything I saw during the Knorr years. And at times, our play last year had a certain Knorr quality to it.

The University and donors have spent lots of money in recent years on the athletic department. In fact, one could argue that no previous Ohio president has invested more into athletics than Rod. With that increased investment and visibility (nationally televised games several times per year) comes increased scrutiny.

A 6-6 team that only beats the worst teams in CFB is not going to cut it any more. In today's awful MAC East, Knorr could have gotten close to that. If Frank wants a program that has no accountability, where he can start walk-ons and get crushed by Central Michigan...he should either take a pay cut or take a job at a lower division school.

If I remember correctly, Frank mentioned about the team basically giving up in 2013, or just that there were lots of different agendas, or which you could read into that he was feeling he had lost the team.

As a fan, it's hard to cheer for a group that gives up. I may not call them out, but my support certainly wanes. It seemed to happen some this basketball season with a number of the OHIO fans. If the effort isn't there, that's the frustration. It's less the product.

You say it's the journey, not the destination. That I do agree wholeheartedly with. The thing is that from 2005-2010, it felt like we were overperforming. We were getting the most out of everything we had. The first bowl game in Mobile, I made that an appointment to get down there because it felt so special, so awesome, so unexpected. 2006 was something magical, even though I felt like we were overmatched in talent almost every week. Austin and Kalvin made so much happen with so little. Our defense was opportunistic. The wins against Northern Illinois and Illinois were games of passion. They fought for everything. It was a team to love.

I think that unwavering support dilutes your support. If I'm going to love every Bobcats team equally, the team doesn't really have to do anything other than win to appease me. But as a fan of sports, I like to cheer for the team, what they represent. I think Wisconsin fans probably felt a closer connection to the TEAM that took the court on Monday than the Duke fans did to theirs due to the relationships they'd felt to the players on the court over an extended time. I loved cheering for that 2006 football team. I loved cheering for the 2012 basketball team. They fought through every game, especially late in the year. I'm a fan of teams first, but then the players. It's impossible for me to separate.

Blaming BA seems like a real stretch. I doubt the players or coaches are thinking about us during practice or games.

Injuries > Poor QB play > a few mediocre recruiting classes > unimaginative play calling > bobcatattack posters

Obviously there are lots of related factors. The team that Ohio had pre-season in 2012 was the best one yet under Solich, and the players and fans had high expectations. That team looked pretty good against Penn State, but then the player losses began to mount. Even by the Marshall game they were still pretty good. With, I think, 19 players lost for the season to injury by the UMass game, depth became a factor, and the recruiting issues in 2010 made it worse. The team still played with pride, though, and managed pull out close, hard fought wins against UMass, Buffalo, and Akron, and nearly pulled out one against Miami.

The team that won those games during that stretch was in a lot of ways similar to the 2006 team. Thanks to injuries depleting them, they couldn't win on talent, and had to win on heart, and each game was a war. The fans, however, reacted much differently to the 2012 team than they did to the 2006 team. Why? Probably due to the preseason expectations, expectations that were in fact for an entirely different group of players than the ones playing.

What keeps a battling team battling? What powers their psyche from week to week? What things can wound that psyche? Remember, these are not machines. They are not professional athletes. These are simply real, live, young men, mostly teenagers, people with feelings and emotions. The fans can and do affect them. Fans can encourage a player to keep going, when the tank is starting to run dry. I'm not saying something now that I didn't say at the time. I think I have a pretty good sense for how people are feeling, emotionally, and it was my opinion at the time that the team was balanced on a precarious emotional edge. I believe that this is the only thread of it's kind that I have ever posted:
http://tinyurl.com/nezkj79

Did the fans rally to support them? They did get a few threads like this:
http://tinyurl.com/olalbbc
But they also got (and I suspect they got the same reaction in real life from people them met on campus - it isn't just a BA thing):
http://tinyurl.com/p4crqlr
http://tinyurl.com/p45l7mq
http://tinyurl.com/p39fblq

And then, when they pounded EMU 45-14 the following week, did the fans get back behind them? Or did they blast them again?
http://tinyurl.com/l4yypn3

I think we all agree that the team emotionally ran dry at that point, and was not the same for the final three games of 2012. What caused that team to emotionally run dry at that point? What kept the 2006 team going? Partly, no doubt, it is the players involved. As for the rest, there are always going to be points we don't agree on, and this one is one. It was my opinion at the time, and it will remain my opinion, that if the fans had supported the 2012 team the way that they supported the 2006 team, the season would have ended differently. They might or might not have won more games, as their talent was severely depleted from the injuries, but I believe that the games would have had a different atmosphere to them.

In any case, this is water under the bridge. Those seven years were a special period, and no longer apply. This board is now like other boards, and the parents and players don't get involved here anymore. They use social media instead.

Something I have seen is that losses are "totally" the fault of the Ohio coaches/players. There never seems to be the slightest credit to the opponent for their effort. No matter the level of the opponent Ohio should have won and won big. Am I making this up?

Thanks, for a while I thought I might be imagining things, now I can be satisfied I am a presenter of "unambiguous fact."

Jordan Thompson going down with career ending injury on homecoming was the beginning of the slide. I always remember Ted Thompson saying he was pissed when that happened and he was right. From there on out Ohio could only beat schools it was over matched with on the field talent-wise. For whatever reason the program lost something when that happened.

That Pitt win in 2005 a miracle with Brian Knorr's recruits. 2006 was an over performance all the way with great senior leadership. The team had to run through brick walls for Frank to obtain those achievements. There was a big change in 2007-2008. The records were not good in those seasons but the losses we did have were close. For the first time Ohio was running a conventional offense that could challenge a MAC defense with athletes. Ohio suddenly started cranking out quality WRs in mass quantity. Receivers that could catch balls in traffic and YAC. The kind of receivers you would see on national TV on Saturday that Ohio could only dream about having before. By 2009-2010 Ohio had more talent than most MAC teams and was legit MAC Championship contender. The second MAC title game against CMU was more closely fought than the first back in 2006 where it was almost a foregone conclusion that it would go down as a loss. The program has slipped for the last couple of years and L.C. says its partially the fault of the 2010 recruiting class being a bust. Ohio finished November decently in 2014 with Buffalo and Miami wins and only a 7 point loss to MAC Champ NIU. 2015 Spring camp picked up where 2014 November left off so it looks like the team may be back to title contender form.