PREVIEW OF HATE, WEEK SIX: THIS IS THE AUTUMN OF OUR DISCONTENT

Welcome to The Preview of Hate, a wildly popular preview column following the Colorado State Rams athletic program. Each week, we’ll dive into “Tiers” of things I hate about the upcoming matchup. Whether that be the opposing teams uniforms, city, campus, or even the actual game. This week, we break down the Utah State Aggies as they prepare for a big, season saving matchup with CSU.

Before we begin, I’d like to discuss what happened last Saturday in Fort Collins.

As Hughes witnessed it’s final Border War, we all witnessed something horrible. Wyoming’s offense was unstoppable, the Rams looked beaten down and were unable to make anything of note happen after the second quarter. In a game where the Rams should have won going away, they looked absolutely overpowered in every facet.

There’s not much else to say except that I totally predicted this. Not this, specifically, I predicted the Rams to win here, but this overall feeling of doom.

This is a young team, an immature team that will have moments like this. They’ll lay down in games they shouldn’t and lose to teams that they should’ve beat. That’s not just a CSU problem, that’s a young team problem the world over.

It still sucks, though, let’s not deny that. It sucks that the Boot is back in Laramie eating Texas Roadhouse every Saturday, it sucks that the Rams defense looked like a pile of garbage made completely out of swiss cheese. It really sucks that Wyo fans got to go to Fort Collins bars and be happy about the game instead of just being happy to be in a town with less than 100 MPH wind.

It also sucks because Collin Hill had a pretty good game, all things considered. 23/41 370 yards and a tub for the true freshman is exactly what you’d want in a game like this. Except, Collin Hill can’t do what the Rams need most and that’s tackle running backs.

Apparently, Collin and the entire defense have that trait in common. The Rams gave up 299 yards rushing and now give up 173 yards per game. In a conference full of bad rushing defenses, the Rams are the fourth worst. If Fresno State and San Jose State are your contemporaries in something, you are probably bad at that thing. The Rams defense has been very bad at stopping running backs.

So now, the season is in a dire situation. CSU is 2-3 and has USU, Boise, and UNLV coming up. One win out of those three is likely, zero is possible. At best, you’re 3-5 and basically praying to the Gods above for a bowl with SDSU and Air Force still to come.

Great!

Enter, the Tiers.

Tier One this week is Logan, Utah. This is where Utah State resides and is a town I literally have never been in.

We’ve officially reached the first week of the season to contain a town I have never stepped a single piece of my body inside. Honestly, if you asked me where Logan, Utah was I might point to somewhere in Nevada. I’m not very good at geography and I’m even worse at pointing.

So, keep in mind, the highest extent of my Logan knowledge is the beautiful Logan, Utah wikipedia page. I’m by no means an expert on Logan, I’ve just spent fifteen minutes reading about the local opera festival (which seems very nice).

Logan, Utah has a population around 50,000. Which makes it slightly larger than Laramie (but what isn’t?) and slightly less populous than the island of Manhattan (by about 3 million). It’s small town Utah at it’s finest, filled with old time movie theaters, an almost offensive amount of white people, and probably at least 3,000 dudes named Gary.

Logan is also an award winning city, here is the award they won:

Neato! Third!

Merlin Olsen, one of the greatest defensive linemen of all time, is from Logan. So, I guess that’s pretty cool.

Logan seems real quaint and wholesome. A nice place for a Gary to take his wife Linda and settle down, maybe have a couple of little Garys to run around the yard and high five over being able to eat spicy salsa.

Oh God, is that a running QB?

Kent Myers is a pretty good QB when he throws the ball. He’s been over 55% in every game so far this season and over 60% in all but one game, that’s pretty good! Beyond that, Myers also has some pretty good legs! He’s had a 20+ yard run in every game but one this year, he’s had designed runs and scrambles that have worked successfully against nearly every defense.

So now, a defense that can’t stop a running back now has to also stop a running QB. That is good, I’m really excited and not at all terrified of this coming situation.

Last year, Myers was incredible against CSU. He ran for 191 yards.

191 yards.

He’s a quarterback.

Oh, yeah, I’m not at all terrified of Saturday.

Tier Three this week is CSU themselves.

Specifically, which team is going to show up against the Aggies? Is it the team that gave a good Minnesota team a run for their money at home? Or is it a team that suddenly forgot it could play football and disappeared into the night last Saturday?

Honestly, I wish I could tell you. This team is so young and inexperienced they could come out flying with a chip on their shoulder, looking to prove that Wyoming game wasn’t them. Or, they couldn’t. They could come out and let Myers run all over them.

I really wish I could know, like a hurricane warning system but for this team’s play defensively. Like before the game the screen could flash on and say “HAVE SADNESS PILLOWS AT THE READY” so we would know that tonight was going to be a bad one.

At the very least they could send an email or something.

10:15 start times.

What in the freaking hell is an 8 PM mountain start time doing in Fort Collins?

Look, I get it, TV schedules and all that but, come ON. Are you trying to force your alumni to move back to Colorado by making every single game come on past 10 PM in the Eastern time zone? By the time the game finishes I’m either singing at the top of my lungs outside some dive bar or sleeping on the couch in the fresh tears of my sadness pillow. These games are too late!

They also don’t really encourage students to stay the entire time in Fort Collins, either. A game ending at 11 means that if it’s out of hand in ANY WAY the students are gone, off to the bars or parties. A game starting at noon means you’re breakfast tailgating and that’s not much fun either, but an 8 PM start gives you zero incentive to support the team in a game that stretches beyond 10 points in either direction. So basically, you’re going to be on TV with a half empty stadium in a 24-14 game in the fourth quarter.

I don’t know, if I was in charge I would just start every game at 5 PM, I also would provide free beer after every touchdown. I guess that’s why I’m not in charge.

That’s what I hate this week. Tune in next week, it’s BOISE WEEK.