FB: American Southwest Conference

[CruFrenzy]

The reality is it's been 4 years and that's more than a big enough sample size to see the truth of the matter.

Ohio State lost Urban Meyer in 2018 after winning the title in 2014 and hired Ryan Day. They were back to the national championship in 2020 and won another in 2024, they remained extremely relevant despite losing an all time great HC during that entire 10 year span.

Even better example is North Dakota State:

Won 3 titles under Craig Bowl from 2011-2013
Won 4 titles (played in 5) under Chris Klieman 2014-2018
Won 2 titles under Matt Entz (played in 3) from 2019-2023

Just won another title under Tim Polasek and are currently #1 ranked team in FCS this year.

So it can be done. Not saying it's easy, there's a reason only one team can win the whole thing. But consistently not even being close to contending with our athletes and resources is crazy.

[crufootball]

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.

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.

[UMHB03]

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.

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.