Besides God and my old friend and Louisiana Tech associate athletics director and former all-league defensive end and terror Ed Jackson, I am the only person to have seen every snap of Louisiana Tech football since 2011.
There have been good times — seven straight bowl games — and there have been bad times, like in 2013 when I was the third-fastest person associated with the program, and I was just writing and helping do radio stuff.
Also the past four seasons come to mind: three wins, three wins, three wins, and five wins.
So since I’ve lived it and am just a writer and a broadcaster, I can say the part that players and coaches can’t say:
Louisiana Tech, 3-1 after beating old rival Southern Miss, 30-20, Saturday, has a fightin’-man’s chance to finish the regular season 11-1. That’s up from Zero Chance in the past few hand-wringing, trying seasons, when hopes fell faster than autumn leaves.
Naturally, it would take some help from the football gods. Tech would need to stay healthy — a problem since 2019, especially at quarterback — and get a break or two. One school of thought is that you make your own breaks, so that’s another coin flip.
And there’s the Bummer Game that even good teams suffer now and then. (See Green Bay, a 13-10 loser to Cleveland Sunday.)
Plus, three of the Bulldogs’ final four games are on the road, including a transcontinental Delaware/Washington State sandwich.
Those are all acceptable reasons why they can’t go 11-1, or 10-2, or a more reasonable 9-3 or 8-4.
But here are some reasons why they can:
First, Conference USA has some good players but I’m not sure how many really good teams. In ESPN’s power rankings, only Tech (81) and Jacksonville State (85), who Tech doesn’t play in the regular season, are in the NCAA’s Top 100.
Second, their defense has been dynamite in the red zone — two touchdowns allowed in 10 red zone appearances — and hasn’t given up a fourth down conversion in opponents’ four tries. The highlight has been a goal line stand that saw Southern Miss turn the ball over on downs after a first-and-goal from the 1.
Tech’s punter, John Hoyet Chance of Captain Shreve High, a redshirt freshman, was the league’s special teams player of the week after two of Tech’s first three games and should have won the recognition again this week after punting 8 times for a 49.8 average and placing four inside the 20. Right now, he’s doing for Tech what All-America Ryan Allen did for the WAC champion 2011 team and the high-scoring 2012 team.
Offensively, this is the deal: Ashanti Cole, Jonathan Denis, Roy Brackins III, Landon Nelson, Hayden Christman, and Kenneth Bannister. Those six team to play nearly every snap of the five positions in the offensive line. It is nasty, big-boy work, and they’ve gotten better each week. Because the young quarterback, Blake Baker, can run a bit, and because they have three or four tailbacks, and because the offensive line has been able to stay together since spring, Tech was able to throw the ball downfield early in the second quarter against Southern Miss on third-and-one — gained 25 yards, Baker to Devin Gandy, which led to another score and a 30-10 halftime lead. This is a team with the confidence it could convert on fourth down if the pass were incomplete; Tech was never confident or successful on short yardage in the red zone last season.
Which brings us to intangibles. Like, for instance, the team’s best player, a 220-pound linebacker who cries when he talks about his momma and has this to say about why he feels this team might exceed expectations.
“We all love each other,” Kolbe Fields said, “a lot.”
Love helps. That, and blocking and tackling, the latter a thing that Fields excels in.
Something for sure feels different this season compared to the past several autumns, when it seemed Tech football teams invented miraculous, heart-breaking ways to lose. But Saturday in Joe Aillet Stadium, there was the long completion on a third-and-one, the goal-line stand, Field’s interception return for a touchdown, the defense’s third score of the season.
And still, during a second half when Tech played to the score and didn’t extend the lead, no Dog fan with a memory felt the three-score advantage was safe. No way, no how. Not until the fourth quarter.
But this team is getting easier to trust and impossible not to love. They play hard. Lots of energy on the sideline. Root for each other. All that kind of love stuff.
To keep the good vibes going, they’ll have to overcome a long day in a hotel before Saturday night’s 8 p.m. CST kick in the Sun Bowl in El Paso, a place where Tech has consistently won but not without difficulty. Ten years ago, a 9-4 Tech team that won the New Orleans Bowl survived a 17-15 game out there after the Miners, who’d finish 5-7, missed a chip shot field goal in the final two minutes.
Tech’s a four-point favorite this time around against a 1-3 UTEP team better than its record suggests.
If I were a coach, here’s where I’d say that nobody who’s 3-1 can go 11-1 without going 1-0 this week.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
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