Sun Belt Sports Fans

When will it ever end? That’s a question America wants to have answered before too long… well, unless you’re David Elson.

One of the saddest yet most bizarrely fascinating dramas unfolding in college football will witness its next chapter this weekend, as the winless Western Kentucky Hilltoppers travel to the Bayou to take on the Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns for a Sun Belt ballgame that will feature one basic question: When will it ever end?

Western Kentucky carries a big heap of baggage into Saturday’s contest at Cajun Field. The boys from Bowling Green, Kentucky haven’t won a game since the 2008 season and are immersed in a hellish 26-game losing skid. Every coach in the country (save ULL boss Rickey Bustle) wants Western Kentucky to get off the schneid on Saturday, and every fan base other than the Ragin’ Cajun Nation is wishing for the same thing as well. Yet, amidst the genuine empathy for what the WKU kids are experiencing, there is one person who, quietly but genuinely, is mustering little sympathy for the university as a whole. That would be the aforementioned Mr. Elson, for a very obvious reason.

Early in 2009, Elson had his contract extended at Western Kentucky. A man who had led WKU to the Division I-AA playoffs in 2003 and 2004, and who never suffered a losing season as long as the Hilltoppers played in the lower tier of Division I competition, seemed to be getting a fair shake from a school that, in 2008, joined the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A). WKU Athletic Director Wood Selig (who is now at Old Dominion) appeared to recognize the need for patience in a time of transition; Western Kentucky was not about to be ready to compete at the FBS level. Losses would be sustained and progress would emerge very gradually. Elson, as a loyal footsoldier at the program, was going to see the project through to some kind of conclusion. Perhaps the project wasn’t going to work, but Elson would get his fair chance to sink or swim.

Well, that didn’t last.

Late in the 2009 season, with Western Kentucky still winless, Selig fired Elson and committed one of the more heartless acts of that year in college athletics. Elson’s WKU team tried mightily to get him a win in his final game, but the Hilltoppers – leading Arkansas State by a 20-3 margin with only one minute left in the third quarter – gagged away that 17-point bulge at home and fell by a 24-20 count. WKU ended 2009 with a bagel, an 0-12 mark that new coach Willie Taggart was supposed to fix.

Last Saturday, that bit of repair work was on schedule, until another late-stage meltdown denied WKU its moment of blessed relief.

Taggart and his team could smell the finish line on Oct. 16 against Louisiana-Monroe. A two-yard touchdown run by running back Bobby Rainey – WKU’s best player – gave the Hilltoppers a 24-7 lead over the wounded Warhawks entering the fourth quarter. As was the case under Elson against Arkansas State roughly 10 and a half months earlier, WKU owned a 17-point cushion, meaning that its opponent had to score three times. Last year, that’s what Arkansas State did to the Hilltoppers.

This year, under a new head coach, Western Kentucky authored an even more spectacular collapse.

Clearly, the switch from Elson to Taggart has done nothing to change the Hilltoppers’ habits. After owning that 24-7 lead against Louisiana-Monroe last Saturday, WKU watched in paralyzed horror as the Warhawks scored four straight touchdowns to build a 35-24 lead before hanging on for a 35-30 win. With WKU trailing 28-24 at the 1:30 mark of regulation, Monroe’s Robert Nelson stepped in front of a pass by WKU quarterback Kawaun Jakes and carried the pill 55 yards for a touchdown. The pick-six ended all hopes of a Hilltopper upset, creating the 26-game losing streak that continues today.

Louisiana-Lafayette couldn’t topple the Sun Belt leaders from Troy last weekend, so the Ragin’ Cajuns will likely be feeling somewhat despondent as they take the field once again. Yet, with that having been said, it would take some kind of letdown for Lafayette to lose outright to Western Kentucky.

Somewhere, David Elson is nodding his head in agreement and wondering why he wasn’t given a chance to fix Western Kentucky’s problems.

Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer