Somebody tell me that my thinking is too micro on this, and that this is really actually 17 games into a 3-5 year total rebuild......but I think the UNC game this weekend is probably the biggest game we've played for the long-term direction of the program in several years.
Nothing will ever erase Saturday night from my brain, and no matter what he does (aside from winning a championship of some sort), Mario is always going to have to recruit against yet ANOTHER late-game decision-making blunder, but going up to play the #12 team in the country, in prime-time, and coming home with a win does SOMEWHAT put that in the rearview.
But I'm very nervous about what we saw Saturday bleeding into this week, and us going up there and getting blown off the field, and if that happens, somebody please tell me that I'm being irrational in saying that it will have MASSIVE, long-term implications for the overall health of the program going forward. And what I mean is, people already negatively recruited against Mario citing his in-game coaching acumen, or lack thereof. Now, that gets ratcheted up about a million levels. The only way to shut that **** down is to win football games, and quickly, against big time opponents. Say what you want, and I know Mario is the world's most hated man on this site right now, but all things considered, we've done a ton of good thus far just less than a year and a half into his tenure. If (and yes, a gigantic "if") this staff just doesn't make the most boneheaded decision in the history of the sport, we're 5-0, Top 15 in the country, and I think we can all agree just the entire operation this season has been much improved, and prior to the last 30 seconds of the game Saturday night, as poorly as we played, we were about to survive an off-night and get through the first 5 games of the season unscathed.
But my concern is a loss this week, if it's somewhat non-competitive, actually lowers the ceiling for the entire program going forward. I completely understand we somehow got a commitment from a Top 60 overall player after what we witnessed Saturday night, but at some point, you have to practice what you preach. You can't sell these kids forever that you've got an elite program, and then lose games on the field while also literally giving them away on the sidelines. So, someone tell me that this is a big game on Saturday, but it's just the next game, and we can still lose and still go 9-3 or 8-4 and I think before the season, we would have been somewhat OK with that. And that will be good enough to continue being able to build the program in the right direction. I just feel like basically ALL of the goodness the team had built up through the first 4 weeks went right out the window on Sat night, and it's not even because they lost. It's because they lost LIKE THAT.
Am I being too dramatic and emotional? Or is Saturday night a massive indicator for the direction of the program for the next SEVERAL years?
![crossover22[]_[]](https://data.canesinsight.com/avatars/m/2/2075.jpg?1518149361){kind=avatar}
