Murphreesboro The Daily News Journal

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BilldGopher

BilldGopher

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Coverage from the Blue Raiders home press. Here's the link:

http://www.dnj.com/section/blueraiders&template=cover

Disappointment sprinkled with a nice helping of hope for the rest of the season...sounds familiar...

Go Gophers! Beat the Coyotes!

Edit Note: Correct spelling for home city is "Murfreesboro." Not enought coffee yet. My bad dance4raiders. Billd.
 

Not trying to be rude, but typos bug me. It's "Murfreesboro." Congrats on the win last night. MTSU always knows how to eff up the home opener. Happens every year. Many fans, including me, were pissed 2nd half at what was apparently "MT Football" on that field. I really thought we were just playing hot potato. Kilgore ended up being alright. Good enough to start right now? NO! Several times he should have thrown the ball away and apparently was too choked up to do so. Big talk about a great MT football team pre-season and last night, they didn't prove it. MT fans have had some things to say today though....They better get their s**t together. Otherwise, we're looking at a mediocre season. Congrats and I hope the visiting Minnesota fans enjoyed their time here!
 

Kilgore is not your problem. He was really sharp. It's hard to win a game when you only play offense for 14 minutes.
 

dance4raiders said:
Not trying to be rude, but typos bug me. It's "Murfreesboro." Congrats on the win last night. MTSU always knows how to eff up the home opener. Happens every year. Many fans, including me, were pissed 2nd half at what was apparently "MT Football" on that field. I really thought we were just playing hot potato. Kilgore ended up being alright. Good enough to start right now? NO! Several times he should have thrown the ball away and apparently was too choked up to do so. Big talk about a great MT football team pre-season and last night, they didn't prove it. MT fans have had some things to say today though....They better get their s**t together. Otherwise, we're looking at a mediocre season. Congrats and I hope the visiting Minnesota fans enjoyed their time here!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be too hard on your team; they played a good game tonight. It came down to us being able to control the ball which is what most of us thought would be the case. We are definitely going to commit to running the ball this year & our O-line showed a lot of improvement in that area from last year. Bennett is 100% healthy again & and our FR Kirkwood is going to be a beast.

Kilgore looked better than I expected; being that this was his first D-1 start.
 

dance4raiders said:
Not trying to be rude, but typos bug me. It's "Murfreesboro." Congrats on the win last night. MTSU always knows how to eff up the home opener. Happens every year. Many fans, including me, were pissed 2nd half at what was apparently "MT Football" on that field. I really thought we were just playing hot potato. Kilgore ended up being alright. Good enough to start right now? NO! Several times he should have thrown the ball away and apparently was too choked up to do so. Big talk about a great MT football team pre-season and last night, they didn't prove it. MT fans have had some things to say today though....They better get their s**t together. Otherwise, we're looking at a mediocre season. Congrats and I hope the visiting Minnesota fans enjoyed their time here!
Click to expand...

MTSU fans were excellent hosts and everyone seemed pretty good natured about the trashtalking. Other than a little beachball incident everyone seemed to get along fine. Wouldn't recommended the hotel I stayed at though. Good luck to ya'll the rest of the season.
 


minibeaver said:
MTSU fans were excellent hosts and everyone seemed pretty good natured about the trashtalking. Other than a little beachball incident everyone seemed to get along fine. Wouldn't recommended the hotel I stayed at though. Good luck to ya'll the rest of the season.
Click to expand...

Thanks. You too. If you don't mind me asking, where did you stay? That way I will not recommend it to other visiting fans. Also, your fans were pretty good too. I ran into 2 that were a little rude, but nothing I couldn't say something about and handle myself. ;) Congrats on your win. After this loss, I'm now expecting to go 10-2 for the season...next loss to Georgia Tech. I think if MT doesn't beat Troy this year though, our fans will go insane.
 

MTSU should be a very good team this year. The Gophers did an excellent job of exploiting the size-disparity. Yet, the game was still very close. MTSU will have fewer issues with low TOP and size mismatches the rest of the year.

Kilgore was excellent considering his lack of experience. If Dasher comes back MTSU should be able to win a lot of games again.
 

Dance4Raiders

I noticed in one of the articles that your stadium seats 31,000, had just under 26,000 last nite and has never sold out in 75 years. What's your take on that. I was surprised it had never sold out.
 

I was surprised to hear that MTSU has the highest undergraduate enrollment in the state.
 



station19 said:
Dance4Raiders

I noticed in one of the articles that your stadium seats 31,000, had just under 26,000 last nite and has never sold out in 75 years. What's your take on that. I was surprised it had never sold out.
Click to expand...
It wasn't 31K until '98, when we started the move to 1-A. I knew it hasn't sold out, but frustrated about it more than surprised.

We're a growing program in a conference filled with unpopular schools. We're in SEC country surrounded by UT, Vandy, Bama, Auburn, UGA, UK, etc. fans. There are many excuses. None of them are good ones. We'll get there soon enough. Winning will fix that problem (and UT sucking it up won't hurt any).
 

RaiderATO said:
It wasn't 31K until '98, when we started the move to 1-A. I knew it hasn't sold out, but frustrated about it more than surprised.

We're a growing program in a conference filled with unpopular schools. We're in SEC country surrounded by UT, Vandy, Bama, Auburn, UGA, UK, etc. fans. There are many excuses. None of them are good ones. We'll get there soon enough. Winning will fix that problem (and UT sucking it up won't hurt any).
Click to expand...

Question for you MTSU guys. I know you all are the biggest undergrad enrollment in TN. So are a lot of your students more UT fans than MTSU fans? Not a perfect analogy, but lots of my friends from high school went to UW-Eau Claire or UW-La Crosse, and I know they made the trip to Madison or Minneapolis way more than they went to home games at their own schools.
 

While it's a horrible analogy now, it used to be spot-on. I've only been a fan since 2004 and was in school until 2008. There was a lot of progress over those 4 years towards ridding the campus of orange clad fans. Blue Raider knowledge and pride grew a ton while I was there. I'd hate to have seen it before then.

I imagine during the 1-AA glory years (ranked #1 and a couple undefeated regular seasons) and during/immediately after the jump to 1-A in '98 there was swell of support. It'll take a long lifetime for me to see a true MT/UT rivalry and to eliminate dual or lopsided allegiances.

The way I see it, some people want to be a part of the crowd and others want to be apart from the crowd. You'll always have folks running to what 100K other people do on Saturdays. I guess I've always been one to want to get in on the ground floor. We're getting more and more support yearly (as our avg attendance shows) and we have a coach who has inspired many in the fan base to see the parallels between MT and FSU. I think we can get it done.

I still get the old "who do you root for" and I say MT, and I get back "no, really... who do you root for?"
 

MTSU's problem with fans is the fact that we're a commuter school. We have like 25,000 students but only 2,000 dorms on campus. Most students live in Murfreesboro with many also in Antioch, Smyrna, and Nashville. So that's also why many have not come to games to make it a sell-out. If you live in Nashville, you usually won't drive on a Saturday or Thursday night to be at the game. Many students are MT fans. Several are UT, Ole Miss (I don't why after a loss to Jacksonville State today), and Alabama fans (I think they're just jumping on the National Champion bandwagon). The way I look at it, if you don't support the school you go to, then why go there?
 



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