[Cactus Jack]

No margin of error for the rest of the schedule if we hope to get to .500 and make a bowl. 

Ohio and Murray State will give us a total of three wins. 

Vanderbilt isn't looking like a sure thing, but if we lose that one, we're probably looking at a four or five win season at best.

Florida and Auburn are winnable. There isn't an outcome that would shock me here; either team could win close or blow the other out. All three programs are already on a terrible course and I think one of the safest predictions that I could make is that one of the three is probably looking for a new coach at the end of the season, if not sooner; I hope it isn't Kentucky, but that'll be another thread.

Tennessee will be heavily favored at home and we never seem to play well against them. Call me crazy, but even if the year is atrocious, I could see us putting it together against the Vols, Ole Miss, or Texas. We've always played Ole Miss fairly well in Oxford-- Lane also strikes me as someone who is a system coach that's good with lots of prep time and able to compete with anyone in a one-off, but is also susceptible to being caught napping or letting his team slip into buying too much of their own hype. Texas is at the end of the year and could be our "bowl game" if we're otherwise ineligible; before you laugh too hard, remember that historically, Kentucky is exactly the type of program that finds a way to beat the Longhorns. They renew their rivalry with A&M after we visit for what's going to be a trap game regardless, but their schedule is very favorable and I don't know that Vandy, Florida, and Arkansas soften them up on the approach. 

Coming into the season I didn't feel great about getting Louisville the week after going to Austin. I think this is the year that our streak is snapped, and I think that bandwagon has probably been filling up pretty quickly over the past two weeks. Hopefully that's an overreaction, as we're only two weeks in and the tides can turn quickly, but as things stand today, Louisville and Miami are looking like the two best teams in the ACC. If you go to ESPN and look at their October 19th game, the Cards are actually favored by 1.5 at the moment.


I want to be optimistic, but if you told me that I could guarantee that we don't do anything flashy but go 6-6 with wins against Southern Miss, Ohio, Vanderbilt, Florida, Auburn, and Murray State while taking some bad losses against the rest; or I could watch the rest of the season play out and hope that we right the ship and pull off a bigger upset (or at least prolong the streak against Louisville) knowing that the wheels could fall off at any moment, then I'd call the former betting with my head and the latter betting with my heart.


If you were told today that you could guarantee 6-6 in the scenario above, would you take it, and if so, how are you feeling about the Liberty or Las Vegas Bowl?