Official Fran Vendetta: Day 3

It's hard to root against a coach of the team you're rooting for. On the one hand, of course you want your team to win. What kind of monster would you be if you didn't? On the other hand, the more your coach loses, the more quickly he'll be fired, which will be better for your team in the long run. But, back on the first hand, if your coach is winning, then why does he need to be fired at all? So it's a dilemma, especially when your coach isn't ludicrously, jaw-droppingly awful, but just bad enough to keep your team mired in mediocrity. Beating the little teams and losing ridiculously to the big teams (maybe only allowing an upset as often as he actually pulls an upset) isn't bad enough to get dumped immediately, but it's not good enough to be, you know, good.

What I'm getting at is that I don't know how I want my Ags to perform this season. Obviously, I should be really happy if they somehow, say, run the table in the Big XII and get to a good bowl game and somehow not BOMB in it. But I just don't think that's possible. I might be able to squeeze a bit of malicious glee out of it, and look forward to the relief that the Canning of Fran would bring, if we drop every (or almost every) game in conference and fail to reach bowl eligibility for the third time in five years. But I neither want that to nor think that will happen, either.

How will we do? Here are my not-particularly-educated guesses:

Baylor: win, although I'm not going to bet the farm on it. Maybe a small chicken, though. But it could be close, as our last three matchups with Baylor have been.

Oke State: win. I'm more ambivalent here, because it's hard to know how those krazy kowboys will do one week to the next. They're an up-and-down team, and since they're up now, my guess is they'll be down at Kyle Field.

Stupid Texas Tech: Forget everything I said in the first few paragraphs; no consideration on this earth will ever, ever, make me think that losing to Tech is ok. That said . . . we'll probably lose. It's in Lubbock and we can't defend the pass. And we can't pass. It would be a shootout, if only we could shoot. Dangit.

Nebraska: lose again, unless Nebraska proves to be a house of cards. At this point, it looks possible. However, it's in Lincoln, and not being able to hang with USC doesn't mean they can't beat us. (That near loss to Ball State, though . . . .) On th other hand, because the Big XII North is terrible (seriously, you guys, what's your problem?!) and because Fran has to give us a glimmer of false hope (I think it's in his contract), maybe we will win.

Kansas: I don't think anybody has the information to predict the outcome of Kansas' conference schedule. They've been murdering cupcakes (in the grand snacktime tradition of Mark Mangino, I'm sure). What does that mean? Who knows? It's at home, but that didn't always work in our advantage last year. So I'm going to say: if we beat Nebraska the week before, we come in this game on a high and crash. Lose. If we lose to Nebraska the week before, we'll be desperate for a win and get it. Win.

So, with NU and KU combined, 1-1.

Oklahoma: The only question is going to be how bad we lose.

Missouri: Again, the north is bad. As usual, I think Mizzou will collapse, defying high expectations yet again. Still, it's at their place, and they may be mad about us beating them last year. Lose.

t.u.: They're not that good--by their standards. We're at Kyle--but they won't be happy about last year in Austin. Even the Fran-wants-to-make-my-head-explode-by-evading-firing-by-beating-texas mojo won't pull it out this year, and we will lose.

So, I see the Ags going 3-5 in conference, for a 6-6 record overall. Depending on how the rest of the conference does, maybe good enough for the My Mom Said I Could Have Some People Over So I Invited a Couple Teams to Play in My Backyard Bowl.

Good enough for Fran to keep his job? I hope not.