It would be huge to get a weapon like Stewart back next year.

Try Brownwood's 94.3FM online. I'm able to catch some plays off and on when the broadcast isn't cutting out.

Quote from: crufootball on November 13, 2025, 09:01:10 AM

Quote from: UMHB03 on November 13, 2025, 08:11:21 AM

Quote from: crufootball on November 12, 2025, 09:30:29 PMI have to keep believing that sanity will prevail and the ASC and SCAC will come up with something that means all of them will be able to bus to each other and only need 1 or 2 more games after that. I mean really if you combine all of us that is 10 teams, meaning 9 guaranteed games and you only have to find 1 other game.

Its either that or all of us end up with schedules that don't make sense.

UMHB - 2 NAIA school (flight last year), 1 D2 team (flight) and UWW (flight last year)
HSU - 2 NAIA schools, and Chapman (flight)
HPU - 1 NAIA school and Pacific (assume flight next year)
ETBU - 1 NAIA school

Lyon - 1 NAIA school and playing Hendrix twice due to championship weekend
Hendrix - All D3 but playing Lyon twice
Austin - Playing Centenary 3 times and Westgate Christian
Centenary -  Playing Austin 3 times and Westgate Christian
TLU - All D3 but playing McMurry 2 times
McMurry - All D3 but playing TLU 2 times and either flew to Huntingdon or had a very long bus ride

Next year both of us will need more games if neither are going to play round robin, STOP THE MADNESS!

I'd love to see the ASC go back to 10 teams, but I don't see it. I don't think the SCAC schools mind playing the same opponents 2-3 times or scheduling Westgate Christian if it means not getting their butts kicked by UMHB and HSU every year or associating with the dastardly Baptist Four.

Assuming UMHB misses the playoffs, which sadly looks to be likely, then Harmon needs to be on the phone Monday trying to get some D3 opponents scheduled for 2026. Continuing with the kind of scheduling we've had the last 2 years is not a recipe for success.

You might be correct but unless Harmon is not telling the truth he does call every D3 school and is turned down. This quote  from him was in the paper this week.

"We just want a Division III opponent to have a home-and-home series. We'll go to their place first and they still turn it down, even with us handling their flight and their buses."

If he really is that unable to find D3 opponents then he needs to be pushing the AD hard to pressure the other members into a round robin. This practice of scheduling almost exclusively non-D3 teams in non-conference is unsustainable if we ever want to be a consistent playoff program again.

Quote from: crufootball on November 12, 2025, 09:30:29 PMI have to keep believing that sanity will prevail and the ASC and SCAC will come up with something that means all of them will be able to bus to each other and only need 1 or 2 more games after that. I mean really if you combine all of us that is 10 teams, meaning 9 guaranteed games and you only have to find 1 other game.

Its either that or all of us end up with schedules that don't make sense.

UMHB - 2 NAIA school (flight last year), 1 D2 team (flight) and UWW (flight last year)
HSU - 2 NAIA schools, and Chapman (flight)
HPU - 1 NAIA school and Pacific (assume flight next year)
ETBU - 1 NAIA school

Lyon - 1 NAIA school and playing Hendrix twice due to championship weekend
Hendrix - All D3 but playing Lyon twice
Austin - Playing Centenary 3 times and Westgate Christian
Centenary -  Playing Austin 3 times and Westgate Christian
TLU - All D3 but playing McMurry 2 times
McMurry - All D3 but playing TLU 2 times and either flew to Huntingdon or had a very long bus ride

Next year both of us will need more games if neither are going to play round robin, STOP THE MADNESS!

I'd love to see the ASC go back to 10 teams, but I don't see it. I don't think the SCAC schools mind playing the same opponents 2-3 times or scheduling Westgate Christian if it means not getting their butts kicked by UMHB and HSU every year or associating with the dastardly Baptist Four.

Assuming UMHB misses the playoffs, which sadly looks to be likely, then Harmon needs to be on the phone Monday trying to get some D3 opponents scheduled for 2026. Continuing with the kind of scheduling we've had the last 2 years is not a recipe for success.

Quote from: Crubacker on November 12, 2025, 06:55:36 PMWell, this was the last year for the double round robin but they will have to find 5 Non-conf games instead of 4 next year.

I wish they would do a double round robin with the new teams. That would eliminate the necessity to finding non-conference opponents at all. Needing 5 opponents next year, we're going to be in even worse position than we were in 2024 and 2025 having to fill out the schedule with a bunch of non-D3 teams.

I was disappointed to find out how low in the playoff pecking order UMHB seems to be. I thought they'd have a pretty good shot at getting in if they beat HSU (and then Howard Payne), but it appears they're still a longshot. Hopefully we can get some breaks and several teams ahead of us lose.

The Crusaders have looked pretty close to their old selves the past six quarters. Stewart has a lot of KJ Miller in him. They'll need to keep that going next week if they want to keep their playoff hopes alive.

Not much to complain about from this week, but Michaux simply can't afford to leave so many yards/points on the field with inaccurate passes if they hope to beat HSU. He has to hit receivers more consistently when they're wide open. The tackling will need to be a bit cleaner too. There's no room for error. Should be an interesting game next Saturday.

Quote from: CruFrenzy on October 19, 2025, 12:35:31 PM

Quote from: zipmac22 on October 19, 2025, 12:08:16 AMI bet if the offense was allowed to actual use real plays instead of running up the middle a lot of the times. Or perhaps when the defense actually wrap their arms around the ball carrier to tackle instead of throwing their body through the air and hope they knock someone down.

Why are there still players on the field instead of sitting on the bench when they keep causing bonehead penalties over and over again? I have just about given up expecting to see someone different at QB. After six games the starting QB should be able to run move the ball down the field instead of all those three and out.

If Coach Harmon is able to turn the team around start playing with a purpose the fans will be there, but when we see more of the same old, same old its not going to happen.

I wrote a little about it on x but there were some positives.

For starters we do seem to finally be getting our best offensive weapons on the field at wideout. Quinci Jones #4 was probably our best portal grab in the offseason at receiver and he looked it yesterday, he's been hurt most of the season. Quinci Jones, Watson, Vidal and BJ Stewart all healthy you have your self a pretty good WR corps. The next and bigger issue like you said is QB play which has been bad all season, hate to say that but it's the truth. With 0 second half points and game after game of poor QB production idk what we have to lose, let Carson Horton play - he's the only QB that's shown any spark at all for us this season and with the improved WR's we might just have a decent shot at winning out with him in there. He's a gamer, he showed that at the end of HSU game. Small sample size yes but he rips it and again what else do we have to lose at this point?

Defensively we have to heal up. Still missing both starting defensive ends McGruder and Gaige Sanders. Get those guys back and that makes a huge difference up front.

I thought Brzezniski looked great at middle LB yesterday, good for him!!

When I saw Michaux trot out onto the field to start the game, I almost started wondering to myself if he has some kind of compromising blackmail info on Harmon or something. By all accounts Harmon is a good man, so I say that in jest, but I honestly can't comprehend what the coaches think he brings to the table that would compel them to keep putting him out there to throw one wounded duck after another every game. At 47 years old, and not in the best shape of my life, I really do think that I could complete some of the routine passes that he misses on a regular basis.

Quote from: crufootball on October 15, 2025, 01:04:54 PM

Quote from: UMHB03 on October 14, 2025, 10:13:03 PMI think your last statement says it all. We are not most D3 programs. We have as much as any program in the country when it comes to resources to work with. There is no excuse for losing 3+ games three years in a row, likely missing the playoffs for the second time in three years (again, would be three in a row without the expanded field), and getting blown out routinely. Hardin-Simmons has officially surpassed us as a program, and it's not even close at this point.

Harmon went undefeated and made a deep playoff run in his first year with a nearly intact team coming off a dominant national championship run. Since then he has been a joke, despite sneaking into an expanded playoff and getting hot during that stretch. The ongoing problems that plague the team are not being fixed. I don't expect a national championship every year, but I do expect to see a team making progress, being regularly competitive against good teams, making the playoffs more often than not, and (heaven forbid) actually earning a playoff game AT HOME once in a while. If Harmon can't handle these reasonable standards with the resources at his disposal, he doesn't need to be leading this team. This is not close to our standard.

Not even close — we beat HSU seven games ago.

UMHB is doing a lot of things now that it didn't regularly do under Coach Pete, and the biggest difference is the level of competition.

We've faced UWW every single year in the regular season under Coach Harmon, where his record is 1–3. Coach Pete's regular season record against UWW was 0–2.

We just had to get on a plane to face a Division II team. Coach Pete's record against D2 teams in the regular season? 0–0 — because we never had to play one.

Harmon also took the team on the road to play Bethel, a program that went 22–3 in the two years before facing us. And this week, we're playing Texas Wesleyan, who is even better than that Bethel team. Coach Pete's record against NAIA opponents was 5–1, but those games were against Southern Nazarene and Southern Oregon — solid programs, but middle-of-the-road at best during those years.

I'm not trying to hand Coach Harmon a gold star. But to ignore the level of competition and the challenges he's faced compared to Pete isn't fair or accurate.

And as far as "sneaking into the playoffs" goes, my first year as a UMHB fan was 2004 — an incredible year, no doubt — but it was also the year we got steamrolled on homecoming by Hardin-Simmons.

We did narrowly beat them 7 games ago..... and we've been utterly curb-stomped by them in three of our other four most recent matchups with them. Again, they're in a different league than us right now, and it isn't getting any better. Getting blown out multiple times per season is common under Harmon. It very rarely happened when Fred was in charge.

I understand that the level of competition has been high. We used to win consistently against quality competition, and we almost ALWAYS showed up and acquitted ourselves well even in defeat. Harmon's teams don't even look like they want to be on the field half the time.

I don't expect to go undefeated every year, but I do expect to show up and compete in every game. I also expect that when we have a down year, the coach will make the necessary adjustments and corrections to get the program back on it's feet, not continue to wallow in mediocrity with the same approach that has been failing for several years.

UMHB is not some low-budget college playing in a 1,000 seat high school stadium. We have the resources and tradition to continue fielding a great program. Maintaining this level of mediocrity for multiple years at a program like ours is completely avoidable.

Quote from: crufootball on October 14, 2025, 11:14:28 PM

Quote from: UMHB03 on October 14, 2025, 10:13:03 PM

Quote from: Ralph Turner on October 14, 2025, 12:44:13 PMUMHB is faced with the problem that I call the Bear Bryant/Darrell Royal problem (Bryant/Royal Syndrome). How long did it take those schools to ascend to the familiar heights that they knew after those 2 left?

I think there is some truth to this, and it may be a long time before UMHB gets back to the level of success it had under Fredenberg. However, Alabama and Texas didn't completely fall off a cliff after Bryant and Royal retired. Even Nebraska held on for a few more solid seasons after Osborne left. The collapse that our program has seen since Harmon took over is nearly unprecedented.

UMHB has lost 3+ games three years in a row for the first time EVER in the program's history. If not for the expanded field, it would be three straight years without a playoff appearance for the first time since 1998-2000, the first three years of the program's existence. During Harmon's four years his teams have lost 11 games (and counting), which is more than Fredenberg's teams lost in the past 15 years combined. We have been blown out more in the past four years than Fredenburg's teams were in his entire tenure.

Harmon's results as a head coach have been an unmitigated disaster, and are completely unacceptable for any school that wants to take it's football program seriously. He was great at running a defense, but he has been historically terrible at running a program.

Are things going great for the Cru, no, but Alabama and Texas both had similar drops to what UMHB is experiencing. After Bear left Alabama he was replaced by Ray Perkins who in 4 years won 67% of his games, Fred Akers replaced Royal, stayed for 10 years winning 73% of his games but went 2-7 in bowl games. Nebraska did hold on for a few years, then fired the coach and haven't been relevant since.

Harmon currently has a 68% winning percentage which isn't amazing but also took the Cru to the national semi-finals and quarterfinals. I will point out that 10 of the 11 D3 loses that Harmon experienced were to playoffs teams with the one non playoff team being a very solid UW-RF team.

It is absolutely fair to say we haven't been as successful the past few years as we were the few before that but to act like we have become an embarrassment is just not accurate. I realize we are not most D3 programs but about 240 D3 teams would happily trade our last 4 years for theirs. 

I think your last statement says it all. We are not most D3 programs. We have as much as any program in the country when it comes to resources to work with. There is no excuse for losing 3+ games three years in a row, likely missing the playoffs for the second time in three years (again, would be three in a row without the expanded field), and getting blown out routinely. Hardin-Simmons has officially surpassed us as a program, and it's not even close at this point.

Harmon went undefeated and made a deep playoff run in his first year with a nearly intact team coming off a dominant national championship run. Since then he has been a joke, despite sneaking into an expanded playoff and getting hot during that stretch. The ongoing problems that plague the team are not being fixed. I don't expect a national championship every year, but I do expect to see a team making progress, being regularly competitive against good teams, making the playoffs more often than not, and (heaven forbid) actually earning a playoff game AT HOME once in a while. If Harmon can't handle these reasonable standards with the resources at his disposal, he doesn't need to be leading this team. This is not close to our standard.

Quote from: Ralph Turner on October 14, 2025, 12:44:13 PMUMHB is faced with the problem that I call the Bear Bryant/Darrell Royal problem (Bryant/Royal Syndrome). How long did it take those schools to ascend to the familiar heights that they knew after those 2 left?

I think there is some truth to this, and it may be a long time before UMHB gets back to the level of success it had under Fredenberg. However, Alabama and Texas didn't completely fall off a cliff after Bryant and Royal retired. Even Nebraska held on for a few more solid seasons after Osborne left. The collapse that our program has seen since Harmon took over is nearly unprecedented.

UMHB has lost 3+ games three years in a row for the first time EVER in the program's history. If not for the expanded field, it would be three straight years without a playoff appearance for the first time since 1998-2000, the first three years of the program's existence. During Harmon's four years his teams have lost 11 games (and counting), which is more than Fredenberg's teams lost in the past 15 years combined. We have been blown out more in the past four years than Fredenburg's teams were in his entire tenure.

Harmon's results as a head coach have been an unmitigated disaster, and are completely unacceptable for any school that wants to take it's football program seriously. He was great at running a defense, but he has been historically terrible at running a program.

A loss today certainly would not have surprised me at all, but the fact that they didn't even show and compete with any semblance of pride is shocking. And appalling.

At this point, is there any argument for bringing Harmon back next year? I know D3 is not as cut throat as D1, but he has quickly destroyed everything that Fredenberg spent 20+ years building, and turned a once proud powerhouse into a master class in mediocrity in less than 4 years.

Much better second half by UMHB. Outscored ETBU 21-0, and limited the boneheaded penalties.

The OL and RBs were impressive. I think the path forward may be to lean on the running game to keep the defense off the field and limit the number of passes our QBs have to throw.

We'll definitely be underdogs next week and we have a long way to go before we can win that game, but the second half at least showed this team is capable of playing solid football when it wants to.

Terrible performance by the Crusader defense in the first half. You could put a bunch of traffic cones out there to put up more resistance than our secondary. Absolutely embarrassing. And if #5 sees the field again after singlehandedly keeping an ETBU scoring drive alive with a bonehead dead ball penalty, then Harmon should be fired immediately after the game. Inexcusable lack of discipline, yet again.

Michaux still can't hit the broad side of a barn half the time. Most high school QB's would hit the wide open WR on that flea flicker 10 out of 10 times. I find it hard to believe that we don't have anyone better.

Brain dead play call on the final play of the half.

The running game has been the lone bright spot.

After 3.5 games, I think it's safe to say that this UMHB team is barely average, if that. In other words, another typical Larry Harmon team.

Quote from: CruFrenzy on September 29, 2025, 03:20:58 PM

Quote from: Reverendbiker on September 29, 2025, 03:11:35 PM

Quote from: UMHB03 on September 27, 2025, 05:33:35 PMThe penalties and overall lack of discipline on this team (and all of Harmon's teams) are absolutely unacceptable.

If you are using penalties as an indicator of lack of discipline on "all of Harmon's teams," you might want to pick a new metric. In his 24 seasons at the helm, Pete Fredenberg's teams averaged 67.0 yds/game in penalties. In Harmon's three complete seasons, his teams have averaged 57.7.

Good stat! That honestly surprises me a little but I think it's the unsportsmanlike penalties that we've seen an uptick in that are a little concerning. Those have definitely gone up, someone posted the actual numbers as of las season it was like a 150% increase.

I think you nailed it. It's the inexcusable penalties that make the issue stand out. I can handle an occasional holding call when a guy is trying to protect the QB, or a late hit/roughing the passer when a guy is hustling to make a play and just can't pull up in time. Those kinds of penalties sometimes happen (though still shouldn't happen as often as they do) when guys are playing hard. It's the unsportsmanlike behavior that should get guys benched - cursing at the opponent, pushing and shoving after the play, taunting, etc. Totally selfish and unnecessary

And obviously, when more of your kick returns are called back on penalties than aren't, that can't be defended.