Originally Posted by jaretac 
But, look at the 2005 season. We should have walked all over NIU and instead it was close for most the game. The week after the NIU game we crushed Iowa and a week after that we struggled against Army. Not to mention the Baylor game that year or, of course, the Michigan team last year.
Just because we are better, doesn't mean we will win; nor does a loss mean that we will have a losing season. How can we get torn apart by Texas and the next week take #4 Oklahoma to the last minutes? Allot has to do with match ups, timing, atmosphere, etc. and the first game is always tense. We don’t know how the new players will react, or how the rest of the team will react to the new players.
The point is, SDSU could be a better team then some may think and we don’t know how long it will take to for our team to get rolling.
In 2005 we played Illinois State in the opener, not Northern Illinois.
We played NIU in 2004 (won 48-41) and in 2003 (lost 24-16).
I really thought we'd whup on Illinois State, but our secondary got burned a few times on some long touchdown passes. I think our guys were looking ahead to our second game that year (at home against #8 Iowa).
Anyway, moral of the story is that we definitely struggle against "cupcakes."
