At 1-3 the Aggies are an unkown

Calendar October 9, 2009 | Posted by AggieNoise

What do we know about the Aggies?

This seems to be a common question among Aggie fans with regardto their football team. Usually, after four games we would have a good grasp on where the team is in relation to our WAC counterparts. But this season is different. Take this quote, for example, from a USU fan who posted this in the Scout.com football forum under the handle ejmpalle:

I don’t think that many teams in the WAC could’ve finished with more than 1 win with our OOC schedule.  3 at most.  I also don’t think that any MWC teams below the MWC’s top three would’ve finished with more than 1 win. That puts Utah State somewhere in a group with about 11 teams.  Nobody knows exactly where.

 Nobody knows is exactly right. But that’s the great thing about sports, nobody ever really knows. As the old addage goes, “That’s why they play the game.”

But it’s also part of the intrigue. Utah State has only had one home football game this season and it was against a Football Champion Subdivision (FCS, formerly D1-AA) team, SUU. As an FCS team, SUU is limited to awarding 63 full scholarships to football players versus the 85 that USU is allowed. The fact that the Aggie’s only win on the season was at home and to a lower level school makes it hard to give a lot of praise. Obviously, a win is a win and Aggie fans and players will take them any way they get them, but it makes it difficult to judge where we are.

Flipping things around, and looking at the loss column, we find more clouded results. Each of these games were on the road. Each of these games were against programs that have seen more football success in recent years than Utah State has. Where USU had more resources to work with than SUU, all three of our losses were to teams with more resources than us. BYU has an annual athletic budget of about $30 million. UofU’s budget is a in the neighborhood of $27 million. The Texas A&M Aggies get a whopping $70 million annually. Compare that to the $12.8 million of USU and you can see there is some limitation on our ability to keep up with the bigger schools. Some will say that we did a better job of competing, but there is no real way to measure progress when you lose a game you were supposed to lose.

So what does this tell us about our football team? Well, not a whole lot. Matt Sonnenberg sums it up with this quote from his article in The Statesman:

The results: two road losses at Top 25 teams, a narrow defeat against one of the nation’s top offenses and a mildly unsatisfactory blowout of an FCS team at home. The Aggies’ record currently stands at 1-3, which at this point in the year is exactly where everybody expected them to be.

 We lost to the teams we were supposed to lose to and we beat the team we were supposed to beat. No upsets. No surprises. We haven’t had a chance to prove ourselves against comparable teams. This weekend we play NMSU on the road. They are a more comparable team to us than the others we’ve played, and winning this game will tell us a little more about where our team stands.

So what can we learn this weekend? First of all, anytime you win on the road you gain a little more respect. Secondly, NMSU has done what we have done and maybe a little more. They have beaten an FCS team. They have lost games that they were supposed to lose. They have also beaten their rivals, UNM, who look to be the cellar dwellers of the MWC. Beating these guys will give more credance to our ability than the other games we have played so far.

While we don’t know much about our team at this point, tomorrow’s game will shed a little more light on where this Aggie team is. If we blow the Red Aggies out, we can be confident against better teams in the WAC. If we lose, we might start to question our ability to compete in WAC play. If it’s a close victory, we will still be scratching our heads wondering what this team can do.

Now for some Noise:

Parsing the Wac : A Utah State Commit

Deseret News: Juco hoops standout commits to Utah St.

The Statesman: Aggies travel to take on Aggies

Salt Lake Tribune: USU Notes: Aggies focused on cleaning up mistakes

The Herald Journal: A reason to be grateful for NMSU

Cache Valley Daily: Former Aggie John Chick doing good things on and off the field

True Blue A Blog: USU vs. NMSU Prediction:EA Sports style

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