North Dakota State Rewind

Well, that didn't exactly go as planned.

After taking a day off work and driving until 1:00 am to arrive in Kansas for a bright and early start on the 2013 season, my worst case scenario for the day was not hitting the pillow until midnight with three tired kids in tow.  

And maybe a sunburn.  The thought of losing this game really never crossed my mind.  

Actually, that's not entirely true. I was very nervous about this game, primarily because of one phone interview --

The Salute podcast does a great job every week of preparing the KSU faithful for games, and this week, they did a special interview with NDSU's John Neis of BisoNation.com.  

Mr. Neis (starting at the 24:40 mark) gave me everything I needed to know about this game when he said NDSU will remind Kansas State fans of ... Kansas State.  He was ecstatic about their chances, ecstatic about their team, ecstatic about their fans ... ecstatic about the opportunity.  All in all, he sounded very confident they would probably be a pretty good test for the Cats and of course, he turned out to be right.

And all of their fans were resonating that same confidence before the game, in Aggieville, at the stadium, at the tailgate, and well, during the game.  It was unsettling to say the least.  I was hoping more for a fanbase just sort of happy to be in town and on TV scoring a $400k payout like our usual OOC fare.  

Here are some biyzon overtaking the best seats in the house @ Kites before the game.  Our waitress was overwhelmed with biyzon.  The biyzon also took our seats when we left and while waiting, chatted our ears off.  The biyzon were in an entirely too good of a mood before the game -- not a good sign.

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I attended the WSC Dedication ceremony so you didn't have to.  On the hot West Side concrete in the full sun, my kids and wife lastly approx. 90 seconds before heading back to the car.  I stayed and listened and drank warm water they were handing out, hoping to find something worth sharing.

Because of the premium content you all demand, I was able to shoot a couple videos that didn't turn out that great because as you probably know, videoing a video screen (especially a large one), doesn't really work. 

However, I did happen to get there just in time to shoot Eric Stonestreet's video sent to KSU from the cast of Modern Family.

You will also get mooned by my daughter.  

I wish I could say the rest of my videos are worth watching but they aren't.  

The quality probably isn't good enough but in summary:  Snyder spoke a long time about his family, mentioning each by name, the first donors to the new WSC spoke, Currie and Schultz both spoke, an intern for the construction team and a KSU basketball player spoke a bit, Brownback spoke. Standard KSU fair to be sure but it was a great event and it's incredible the expansion was built in 16 months.

Hey look it's the photo the guy used to do Snyder's statue.  Except, there's no headset which we can all agree is a key prop for any true authentic Snyder statue.

I couldn't get any closer than this as my press pass has expired.

When I asked Willie to do something "funny" for this shot this is what he did.  My kids were none too happy they missed this but then again they got to sit in the car for an hour.

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I know, I know.  You came here for the GAME breakdown.

Unfortunately, I don't have the stomach for it.  

I had the chance to rewatch the game and didn't.  I've had the chance to read up on the message boards and haven't.  I barely could bring myself to get this post out but decided the readers deserve my best effort and this is it.  

All my "10-wins!" and "our OLINE cannot be stopped!" and "we won't need a defense, we have Snyder!" bravado to start the season is now precariously in jeopardy.  

We probably won't get to 10 wins (but we might), our OLINE actually looked worse than last year on Friday (how is that possible), and we will actually need a D despite having Snyder (A Brown was probably going be more missed than we ever thought).

The good news, historically we jump light years ahead from Week 1 to Week 2, and let's not forget -- it took a Michael Bishop miracle to beat Ohio in 1997 (at the 1:40 mark of this clip) ...

and Collin Klein basically last minute heroics to beat Eastern Kentucky in 2011.

The point is, we need to all breathe and take heart knowing that two of our greatest QB's in history both had their moments that could of ended in disaster in early games to start their record breaking seasons.  

Also, let's also not forget in 2003, our history making, record breaking squad lost to Marshall (at home), OSU, and Texas on the road  ... then went on to destroy the North, win the division, and win the conference title over the BEST TEAM of ALL TIME in the Oklahoma Sooners.  Ironically, we open up on the road @ OSU and @ UT -- could we be in for a repeat?  (hopefully not because losing to those two will effectively eliminate us from any possible contention in this new format, but you never know.)

Now, I'm not comparing Jake Waters to Bishop or Klein or Roberson, but after all of those games we had our doubts, just like we do in 2013.  And seriously, NDSU is probably the most talented, well coached team to come to Manhattan in the OOC in a long, long time - probably since USC in 2002.

If we make one defensive stop we are looking at this thing in an ENTIRELY different way this week and yes, even though our lines were dominated for a lot of the game, we still had a chance to win and probably SHOULD have won. 

It isn't as if we lost by 4 TD's ... it was a last minute win and unfortunately we aren't use to that sort of a loss (not since OSU 2011).  And definitely not before the conference season start.

So, to that end, let's see how we do with another over athletic, well coached, disciplined, fast, team coming in here on Saturday and we can dive into this a little further.

As of right now, I'm assuming we are still on track for the Cotton Bowl.

And in the mean time, no more Green and Gold teams, please. I've had all I can stand.