Be careful what you hear this week, what information you receive and which conversations you pay attention to.
People will tell you Ball State's 27-23 loss to Liberty doesn't mean anything. They'll call it a glorified exhibition. They'll point to NCAA bylaws that count only one win against a Football Championship Subdivision opponent for bowl eligibility, making the Flames pointless after the Cardinals beat Southeast Missouri State on Sept. 2.
Use your discretion wisely.
Any win matters for a program with three in the past 21 months. Every game is important when a wandering team full of underclassmen is trying to find its way in college football.
An outcome that doesn't factor into bowl eligibility still counts. Ball State isn't remotely a bowl-caliber team. The program needs to take baby steps.
Saturday night was a great opportunity for that.
The Cardinals could have equaled last season's win total before losing a game. They had a chance to prove FCS struggles were done. Fans could've received a rare opportunity to feel good about this team.
None of that happened.
Bowl eligibility notwithstanding, Saturday's game felt like the worst-case scenario. The Cardinals failed to beat an FCS team for the second straight season. The athletics department threw away $300,000.
Ball State's loss was bad enough. Consider how it happened.
I warned in my last column the Cardinals would lose if they didn't play their best football. I was wrong. Ball State was sloppy, undisciplined and disappointing throughout, and it still had a chance on its final drive.
That's the troubling part.
The Cardinals clearly were the better team. But, by the second quarter, they looked like an FCS squad trying to knock off the big, bad FBS opponent. Not the other way around. Reality was flipped.
So much for going "all in."
"It would have been a great 30-27 win, wouldn't it?" Stan Parrish rhetorically asked after the game.
I scoffed the first time I heard that comment. I thought it was a joke Parrish would feel good about narrowly beating an FCS team at home.
But the more I thought about it, the more my opinion changed. Maybe Parrish is on to something. After all, he knows his team better than anyone.
I've had expectations that are too high for Ball State this season. I'd hoped the Cardinals could make 2010 interesting, perhaps make a run at a .500 record.
Those goals are lost. Done.
With three unwinnable road games coming up — Purdue, No. 9 Iowa, Central Michigan — Ball State will be 1-4 the next time it plays in Muncie. I only see two more wins this season — home games against Eastern Michigan and Akron.
So, Parrish was right. Saturday would have been a good win. Regardless of the score, regardless of bowl implications and regardless what anyone tells you this week.
Now it's time we shut down our expectations the rest of this season. It's time to accept a new reality.
Ball State is a lot closer to the FCS level than it is to being a bowl team.
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