If you’ve ever played or coached organized sports for any length of time you probably have experienced the feeling of getting “blown out”. It is not a fun thing.
When it happens you usually know what caused it after the fact. The other team may have just been a lot better. Or sometimes you realize that your preparation was lacking and you made the other team look a lot better than it really was. Sometimes, things just don’t go your way and it is over before you know it. Sometimes you get a little cocky. Sometimes you’re so hyped up that you can’t perform, and before you settle down you are already dead. Sometimes it is a little of everything all rolled together.
The 6th grade basketball team I coached went 15 and 1. We won the league. Our average margin of victory was over 20 points a game. I mostly remember the “and 1” game because we got blown out. It happened in the middle of the season. Truthfully, it was the best thing for us. The kids had gotten cocky and didn’t listen very well, and the coach had started coasting. We had gotten predictable in what we did both offensively and defensively and the other team prepared for us amazingly well. We got pounced on and were dead by the end of the first quarter. We easily won the second half, but by then who cared?
We went back to work and no one came close to us the rest of the year.
I think all of those first paragraph potential causes of “blow outs” happened to Arkansas against USC. Those happened in the Miami game in ’87 too.
The next year we played Miami to a dead heat in the Orange Bowl, losing 14-7. It wasn’t that they were that much better than us the previous year, we had just gotten “blown out.”
Two consecutive SWC Championships and Cotton Bowl appearances while finishing each season 13th in the nation followed the years after the Miami blow-out.
Oklahoma got “blown out” last year by USC. It can happen easily when playing a really good team – especially when that team has an extra week of preparation.
As a coach, and as a team, and as fans, you need to try and understand why you got “blown out” and what you might need to do differently. Then you need to dig in and go back to work.
The measure for the Arkansas football team – coaches and players alike – is to show up for the games and play as well as we possibly can play. Good preparation and a solid strategy that gives us the best opportunity to realize our utmost potential is a must. Strong fundamental execution of that strategy is a must. If we can accomplish those things and we still get beat, we just tip our hats and try again next week. If we accomplish those things I would venture we will find ourselves in the winning column most of the time.
We simply got “blown out.” Not happy or proud about it. Didn’t like it. However, I don’t think this particular one should serve as an overall measurement of our program. In fact, it really just serves as an opportunity to better realize things that we perhaps already really knew. We will see how the coaches and team react and go from there.
Let’s move on. Alabama awaits.