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GJ Kinne: The next great offensive mind of CFB?

GreenspointTexas

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49,948

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Starting to think GJ is just not good at personnel decisions...

Chad Morris back in college coaching, per report

ZACH BARNETT       2 HOURS AGO

In 2010, Tulsa threw for 3,650 yards and 31 touchdowns behind the combination of Chad Morris and GJ Kinne; the former was the offensive coordinator and Kinne the Golden Hurricane's quarterback. 

In 2024, Kinne and Morris are back together. Texas State's head coach has hired Morris as the Bobcats' wide receivers coach, according to a report Friday from Dave Campbell's Texas Football.

Screenshot_20231130-133310_kindlephoto-16337149.png.e5f9b321d363c96a2b3ad7cda72c7caf.png

The job will be Morris's first on-the-field coaching position since 2020, his lone season as Auburn's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach. He spent 2021 as the head coach at Allen (Texas) High School, 2022 as an analyst at South Florida and 2023 in the same role at Clemson.

Texas State experienced its best season in decades under Kinne, its first-year head coach. The Bobcats won eight games, including the First Responder Bowl, the program's first postseason win at the FBS level.

Morris replaces Craig Stutzmann, who took the offensive coordinator role on Ken Niumatalolo's new staff at San Jose State. 

 

 

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Evil Bill Obrien

Evil Bill Obrien 3,509

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Well seeing as Chad Morris was in the rumor mill for head coach before we hired GJ I guess I'm fine bringing him in as a position coach/coordinator instead of HC... 

Gotta be a touch awkward for Morris to be working for his old grad assistant at SMU, but between GJ, Mack Leftwich, Barrick Nealy,  David Bailiff and Chad Morris that's some kind of brain trust in coaching positions especially on the offense. 

 

Edit: may have gotten my Morris's mixed up and that was Eric Morris that was in the rumor mill for HC before GJ got hired...tomato tomato 

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49,948

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Sources: Texas State to promote from within for defensive coordinator hire

Former NFL, CFL, XFL and AFL player Dexter McCoil has continued his swift rise up the coaching ranks.

ZACH BARNETT       3 HOURS AGO

Texas State is set to promote Dexter McCoil, Sr., to defensive coordinator, sources told FootballScoop on Thursday. 247Sports first reported the news.

McCoil joined the Bobcats in December of 2022 as an original member of GJ Kinne's staff. He coached safeties on Kinne's Incarnate Word staff in 2022, and prior to that coached defensive backs in the Louisiana high school ranks.

McCoil and Kinne were teammates at Tulsa in the early 2010s. 

Following his time as a Golden Hurricane, McCoil played professionally for nine years -- bouncing between the Arena League, the CFL, the NFL, and the XFL. He won CFL Rookie of the Year honors in 2014, won a Grey Cup with the Edmonton Eskimos in 2015, and spent parts of three seasons with the Chargers and 49ers.

McCoil replaces Jonathan Patke, who took the defensive coordinator job on Manny Diaz's new Duke staff in December.

Texas State is coming off its best season at the FBS level, going 8-5 with a win over Rice in the First Responder Bowl. 

 

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Evil Bill Obrien

Evil Bill Obrien 3,509

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Went to the Take Back Texas tour stop in Houston last night and GJ Kinne & Don Coryell got my Maroon and Gold colored glasses on and ready to run thru a brick wall. Been a Bobcat sicko for a long time and never thought Texas State football would have me so fired up in June. Conference title looks within reach and if that happens along with a few other things falling our way...big things are on the table...


Also GJ cutting it up with a few of the old SWT "Big Cigars" (who knew SWT/Texas State had Big Cigars at all) about the quote from GJ "Big ass NIL checks" they wrote to help keep the roster mostly together was awesome. I'm sure players like Mahdi, Hobert, Nash Jones and others had some P5 offers/NIL come their way and managed to hang on to them and add more talent depth.

 

Can't wait for August, can't wait to finally get the monkey off our back and fuck up the dirty birds from San Antonio on Sept 7th live from San Marvelous at 3pm on ESPN.....u. I'm starting hydrating for that game now it's gonna be so god damn hot but you bet your ass ill be there.

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GJ Winne

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Went to the one at Scholz and I've been to pretty much every one since Fran was hired.  1st time I've seen a coach legitimately confident in the upcoming season.  I know the majority of the transfers we have are guys that didn't make it at the P5 level, but we've never had anywhere close to this amount of talent on campus. Most off the players we've had since moving up didn't even have offers from a winning G5 team. The last 2 classes:

P5 - 30
G5 - 18
FCS - 18
JC - 12
HS - 19

Deeper at every single position than we've ever been.  Favorable schedule w/ 7 home games and Sammie State paying us to play them at NRG.  Hate that we have 3 weeknight games, but fuck it - let's ride. 
 

 

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GJ Winne

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On 1/27/2024 at 9:02 AM, Evil Bill Obrien said:

Well seeing as Chad Morris was in the rumor mill for head coach before we hired GJ I guess I'm fine bringing him in as a position coach/coordinator instead of HC... 

Edit: may have gotten my Morris's mixed up and that was Eric Morris that was in the rumor mill for HC before GJ got hired...tomato tomato 

Chad Morris wasn't in the public rumor mill, but he was 100% considered.  He made it very well known behind the scenes that he coveted the job as far back as August of 2022.

At the Scholz Bobcat Coach's Luncheon he called Morris "the wealthiest WR coach in CFB" which got a pretty big chuckle.  Said Morris heads up the HS recruiting due to his relationships.

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Evil Bill Obrien

Evil Bill Obrien 3,509

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Not to overlook anything this upcoming weekend but super amped for Week 2, gonna send the Group of 5 guys home on body bags after a float Friday and tailgate for a 3pm game Saturday the 7th:

Will 100% be getting me some Joe Dirt pizza that day, either at tailgate or stumbling over to Gumby’s postgame, hopefully drunk on finally beating the Roadbirds

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futureman

futureman 22,690

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On 8/26/2024 at 8:51 AM, Evil Bill Obrien said:

Not to overlook anything this upcoming weekend but super amped for Week 2, gonna send the Group of 5 guys home on body bags after a float Friday and tailgate for a 3pm game Saturday the 7th:

Will 100% be getting me some Joe Dirt pizza that day, either at tailgate or stumbling over to Gumby’s postgame, hopefully drunk on finally beating the Roadbirds

you’re not beating UTSA.  sorry. 

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perfectchaos007

perfectchaos007 6,768

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A 1 score win against Lamar doesn't exactly inspire confidence for this team going into next week. UTSA didn't look much better today, but at least they were playing an FBS team. Teams improve most from week 1 to week 2, so the i-35 rivalry will come down to which team improved the most after their lackluster week 1 showings. 

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GJ Winne

GJ Winne 177

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Battle for Interstate 35

Texas and Texas A&M are finally renewing their conference rivalry this season, but it might not even be as Texas-centric as the I-35 Rivalry between UTSA and Texas State. The two schools, less than 60 miles apart, have a lot more in common than just proximity.

Their two coaches first met in 2005 at a Dairy Queen in Gilmer, Texas.

Now-Texas State coach G.J. Kinne was then a star quarterback whose dad, Gary Joe, was his coach at Canton High School in East Texas, before the father was shot by a disgruntled parent in the team's locker room. Jeff Traylor, now at UTSA, was the coach of his hometown Gilmer Buckeyes, about 70 miles away from Canton, where he had built a powerhouse that won three state championships. (The Buckeyes now play at Jeff Traylor Stadium.) In 2005, Traylor and G.J. Kinne first matched wits when Canton and Kinne beat Gilmer and Traylor 61-58 in a playoff game. After that season, Gary Joe Kinne landed a job at Baylor and G.J., whose mother and father were divorced, decided he wanted to escape the family history in town -- and his mom and stepdad opted to move to Gilmer.

This came as a shock to Traylor, who had a star quarterback, Jamell Kennedy, who was committed to SMU.

"We meet at the Dairy Queen," Traylor said of G.J. Kinne. "You can't make this up, now. I said, 'You sure we want to do this?'"

"I think he was trying to talk me out of it," Kinne said, but he was determined to play for Traylor if he couldn't play for his dad, even noting he also had admired Traylor's work with the McCown brothers (Randy, Josh and Luke) as their QB coach at another East Texas school.

Kinne enrolled then Kennedy got hurt. Kinne stepped in, threw for 3,216 yards and 47 touchdowns with one interception and rushed for 11 more scores. He was named the Texas 3A Offensive Player of the Year and signed with Texas Longhorns before eventually transferring to Tulsa, where he starred for Gus Malzahn. (Kinne also later worked for Malzahn at UCF, after working with Traylor at SMU then at Arkansas for Chad Morris, who is now on Kinne's staff at Texas State. Got all that?)

Now, less than two decades since they met at DQ, they're two of the hottest coaches in the country going head-to-head in a blizzard of emotions. Traylor has a 40-14 record with two American Athletic Conference titles at UTSA. Kinne went 12-2, won a Southland Conference championship and went to an FCS semifinal in a single season at Incarnate Word, before taking Texas State to its first bowl game in history last season and winning it to finish 8-5 after the Bobcats finished 4-8 the year before. Traylor made every phone call he could to help get Kinne the job, and Kinne can't help sharing his praise for Traylor. Both have jokingly said maybe those were bad ideas as the heat gets turned up in the matchup. Last year's game drew 49,000 at San Antonio's Alamodome.

UTSA is 5-0 in the series that dates back to 2012, when both schools became full FBS members, but four of the contests were decided by one score or less. When the two coaches meet Saturday (4 p.m. ET, ESPNU), Kinne will face Traylor along with UTSA's starting QB, Owen McCown, the son of Josh McCown.

The coaches will be on opposite sidelines, but they are still family.

Kinne -- who was in the wedding of Traylor's son Jordan, an assistant coach with the New Orleans Saints -- said this week that Jordan texted him asking whom he was supposed to root for. Kinne said he better pick Dad on that one.

Meanwhile, when Kinne's daughter, Swayze Jo, was born this summer, "Jeff was one of the first people I called," Kinne said.

The opposing coaches have a mutual love and admiration, but Traylor will always be Kinne's old coach.

"You can't help but love the kid," Traylor said of Kinne last year. "He's good-looking. He's young. He's smart. He's the whole package. I know you're not supposed to say that because I'm competing against him. But I'm just telling you, I think the world of him, and I'll be the big fan." -- Dave Wilson

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futureman

futureman 22,690

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On 8/27/2024 at 9:18 AM, futureman said:

you’re not beating UTSA.  sorry. 

 

On 8/27/2024 at 12:35 PM, Evil Bill Obrien said:

The Office Ryan GIF
 

will come back to this September 7th about 7pm ish… assuming I’m not in the Hays county drunk tank

Season 7 Oops GIF by Workaholics

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GJ Winne

GJ Winne 177

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2 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

Guess that shine is off Traylor. Hope he milks UTSA for as much money as possible because that’s going to be his last college HC job.

He went against the numbers and did not move up to the P5 job when he had the chance.  Once a G5 coach hits 10 wins, they either move up or get fired within the next 3 years.  The exceptions are the ones committed to a long term stay, and produce results - Pat Hill at Fresno, Boise State w/ Hawkins and Petersen.  It's unbelievably hard to be a consistent winner at the G5 level.  Harder now w/ NIL and unlimited transfers - all our good players get sniped.  I think Traylor is committed to staying until the job he wants opens up, and I think he can keep winning 9+ games at UTSA to avoid being fired.  He's in a uniquely good position.

 

Fuck them birds.   

Good to finally get that W.  Should be at least our 3rd, but fuckery and whatnot. 

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ButtFumble

ButtFumble 5,262

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17 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Happy for the Cats. My wife (Texas State graduate) and I watched the entire game despite my protests of better games being on.

Beating UTSA for the first time is a big deal. Enjoy it. 

post up some pics of her in the Strutters Outfit

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ButtFumble

ButtFumble 5,262

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you have to think that is an extra $300,000 in revenue if not more and a lot of that is pure profit because you do not need a lot more employees to have people buy seats, pay to park, and even the concessions probably did not hire a lot of extra people......do that a couple of more times in the season and that makes a difference to a program like Texas State on the bottom line

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GJ Winne

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Proud of the students, and the crowd overall.  I've had season tickets since 2012 and it's been a tough dozen years, not only on the field, but getting fans in the stands, getting the cheerleaders and band on the same page as the action on the field, etc.  Rewatching the game right now, and it's really impressive - look (and sound!) like an actual program!  Can't give President Damphousse enough credit - the guy has changed the culture almost overnight.  Gotta try and bring the same energy on Thursday vs Arizona State.  Tough to fill the stadium on a weeknight, but I've seen a lot of buzz from folks who made the decision to attend based on yesterday's W.

Traylor:  "Their student section was fantastic, by the way. It was deafening down there, so much props to them."

 

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BERT

BERT 4,489

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On 9/7/2024 at 9:15 PM, GJ Winne said:

Sold out at 28K.  We lost 2K seats to rearranging the donor seats last year.  This is right before the game - crowd definitely thickened up.  Great atmosphere.

 

It’s that freshmen fifteen 

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GJ Winne

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G.J. Kinne has made football Texas State’s biggest attraction since swimming pigs

Kinne’s Bobcats have been hogging time on ESPN ever since he arrived last year.

Once upon a time, San Marcos’ biggest attraction was Aquarena Springs and its marquee act, Ralph the Swimming Pig. The theme park on the crystal headwaters of the San Marcos River also featured glass-bottom boats, alligators, mermaids and a chicken that took on all comers in tic-tac-toe. But the top dog, or hog, was Ralph, a gen-u-ine even-toed, hoofed mammal who executed his signature “swine dive” into the hearts of children and adults alike.

Ralph — or one of his more than 700 understudies — famously warranted segments on Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News and “That’s Incredible!” But when Ralph took his final dip in 1996, he took much of the town’s national interest with him.

Until G.J. Kinne showed up at Texas State last year, that is.

He’s been hogging time on ESPN ever since.

The 2-0 Bobcats’ game Thursday night at UFCU Stadium against Arizona State will be one of four on ESPN this season. Until this year, according to a report in the local paper, the Bobcats had only made ESPN’s primary feed three times in school history.

“It’s a testament,” athletic director Don Coryell said over the phone, “to the man sitting here next to me.”

The man, of course, is Kinne, who kick-started his tenure last year with a 42-31 road upset of Baylor, a four-touchdown favorite, and didn’t stop until he’d led the Bobcats to a win over Rice in Frisco’s First Responder Bowl. Only one year into the job, and he’d already made history.

Before he left Incarnate Word for Texas State, Kinne had no idea the Bobcats had never been bowling.

“Damn,” he said Tuesday, “I probably should have asked that before I came.”

Kinne has shaken up things on a campus long known across the state for shaking. The university hardly shies from the reputation. On its official bio of Boko the Bobcat, the school mascot, his fields of study include “partyology.”

Considering Arizona State makes national lists of schools known for a good time, Thursday’s game seems like a natural match.

“The more I think about it,” tweeted Andy Staples, national college football writer for On3.com, “the more excited I get about the Party School Bowl on Thursday in San Marcos.”

The fact that the Sun Devils will even be on hand in San Marcos is a novelty as rare as swimming pigs.

Most FBS schools — certainly those from power conferences — are only too happy to include Sun Belt inventory and the like for nonthreatening nonconference games. Occasionally big-time schools will sign a two-for-one deal, meaning two games at their place for one on a Group of Five campus.

Until this season, the only power conference schools to play in San Marcos were Texas Tech in 2012 (a 58-10 blowout of the locals) and Baylor in ‘21 (a 29-20 heart-stopping win for the Bears).

Coryell — who’s been at Texas State for 21 years, the last four as athletic director and is not related to the Hall of Fame coach — doesn’t know why Arizona State agreed to a home-and-home in 2015. There were no stipulations, as far as he knew. Maybe it was because the Sun Devils were on their way from six wins in ‘15 to five in ‘16. The Bobcats had only been an FBS school for a couple of years. Maybe they seemed like the perfect patsies.

Back when it was known as Southwest Texas State, the school that also gave us a president (Lyndon Johnson) and a king (George Strait) won back-to-back national titles under Jim Wacker in 1981-82. But that was NCAA D-II. Until Kinne’s eight wins last year, the Bobcats had had more head coaches (Dennis Franchione, Everett Withers and Jake Spavital) than winning seasons (one) since moving up in class in 2012.

What Coryell saw in Kinne, the third-youngest FBS coach when he was hired at 34, was someone who’d gone 12-2 in his first season at Incarnate Word and led the nation in points (51.5) and yards (581.2) per game. He also liked the experience the Mesquite native had accumulated in an eventful, peripatetic life.

From the time he moved on from Canton, where his father and coach, Gary Joe Kinne, was badly wounded by a gunshot from a bitter parent, to Gilmer, where he was coached by Jeff Traylor, now his chief rival at UTSA; to Texas and Tulsa; through seven pro football stops as a quarterback and occasional wide receiver or running back exposed to the coaching of Tom Coughlin, Chip Kelly, Doug Pederson, Ryan Day and Steve Spagnuolo; to five jobs in five years as an assistant under, among others, Chad Morris, Sonny Dykes, Todd Graham and Gus Malzahn, Kinne had pretty much seen it all.

Too much, maybe. Like the 2017 Frisco Bowl, when Dykes, hired after Morris left for Arkansas and took most of his staff with him, put the young GA in charge of the offense against Louisiana Tech, a 51-10 flop.

Until those responsibilities were thrust upon him, Kinne said, he was the typical GA who thought himself at least as smart as his bosses.

Then the first night in the team hotel, three SMU players got in trouble.

“I’m not ready for this,” Kinne thought.

He grew up fast, same as Thursday’s counterpart, Kenny Dillingham. Like Kinne, Dillingham worked for Malzahn and is generally credited for salvaging Bo Nix’s professional prospects at Oregon.

At his presser this week, Dillingham called Texas State the equivalent of “a power four football team” that could “compete in the Big 12.”

He was just as effusive about the Bobcats’ coach.

“I think people should talk more about the job that he’s done,” Dillingham said. “He’s going to be on most head coaches ‘Watch Lists’ to be a head coach in a power four level here in the next four months because of the job he’s done.” 

Kinne’s “Take Back Texas” theme has done wonders for more than the football team. Season-ticket sales more than doubled this year to 5,769. The stadium’s 30,000 capacity was full to the brim for last week’s blowout of UTSA, though a second straight sell-out could prove problematic for a midweek game.

To that end, a Texas State student with a Thursday night class conflict mounted a campaign on “Maroon and Golden,” a Bobcat fan site, to seek cancellation of his class.

He was subsequently chided for even thinking class might come before football.

The Bobcats will have their hands full Thursday with Cam Skattebo, who ran 33 times for 262 yards in the Sun Devils’ win over Mississippi State last week. For his part, Dillingham is impressed with the quick release and decision-making of Texas State’s Jordan McCloud, now on his fourth school.

Even Vegas can hardly decide who should win, making Arizona State a 1.5-point favorite as of Wednesday. Whatever happens, wrote Colton McWilliams of the San Marcos Daily Record, “Texas State has already won. San Marcos will be shown on a national stage in front of millions of people and the university in a spotlight where they can attract potential students to their school outside Texas.”

Once it took a swimming pig to draw that level of attention to San Marcos, but not since Aquarena Springs folded. Texas State bought the land and made it an environmental research facility. No more swine dives. These days, it’s up to the football team to make a splash.

 

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GJ Winne

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I have never harbored delusions of grandeur and an undefeated season/playoffs, so I'm not too torn up about last night's L.

I got exactly what I needed out of this game: Be in the fight with a P5 late in the game, and show everyone, including ourselves, that we're legit. The W would have been a huge bonus, but in the big picture of the program overall, that singular result isn't as important as the process.  My goal for this year has always been a Sun Belt title, and nothing I've seen so far tells me that can't happen.

More than anything, I'm incredibly proud of the students for showing up and showing out the last 2 games.  They really made a difference in the game, causing false starts, timeouts, etc.  Unreal atmosphere that I wasn't sure we'd ever see in SMTX.  Seeing students cheer on all 3 downs of defense, get bonkers on 3rd down, quiet each other down of offense - hell, even the alumni side was up and out of their seats the whole game and cheering.  25K+ on a weeknight and 9k+ students at the game?  Win right there.

 

This was epic:

 

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Magabro

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I have never harbored delusions of grandeur and an undefeated season/playoffs, so I'm not too torn up about last night's L.
I got exactly what I needed out of this game: Be in the fight with a P5 late in the game, and show everyone, including ourselves, that we're legit. The W would have been a huge bonus, but in the big picture of the program overall, that singular result isn't as important as the process.  My goal for this year has always been a Sun Belt title, and nothing I've seen so far tells me that can't happen.
More than anything, I'm incredibly proud of the students for showing up and showing out the last 2 games.  They really made a difference in the game, causing false starts, timeouts, etc.  Unreal atmosphere that I wasn't sure we'd ever see in SMTX.  Seeing students cheer on all 3 downs of defense, get bonkers on 3rd down, quiet each other down of offense - hell, even the alumni side was up and out of their seats the whole game and cheering.  25K+ on a weeknight and 9k+ students at the game?  Win right there.
 
This was epic:
 

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