Denim Millward
Sports Editor
After a 2012 campaign featuring one win, negative national publicity and a dearth of even remotely competitive contests, a lack of excitement and enthusiasm for Bengal football in 2013 is understandable.
Despite the collective dumpster fire that was the 2012 season, there are an abundance of reasons Bengal fans can look to for hope that 2013 will be markedly more successful for Coach Kramer and company, and more enjoyable for ISU faithful.
Make no mistake about it, last year wasn’t just bad; it was historically bad.
The Bengals’ defense gave up 70 points or more in over a third of their games last season.
Of their 10 losses, only one was by single digits. ISU was dead last in the Big Sky Conference in both points for (228) and points against (592, a mind-boggling 196 points more than the second-lowest team Portland State).
After such an abysmal performance, it’s hard to imagine Bengal players and coaches being anything but angrily motivated to put last season out of everyone’s minds by virtue of significant improvement this year.
In addition to the added incentives to succeed, the 2013 schedule is very kind to the Bengals, further bolstering their chances of a turnaround season. Absent from the 2013 schedule are three of the top five Big Sky Conference teams in 2012, including Montana State, who finished second in the conference in 2012, and Montana, who the Bengals haven’t defeated since George W. Bush was in his first term and Beyoncé topped the charts with “Baby Boy.”
Barring catastrophe, the Bengals will likely start the season with back-to-back wins against NCAA Division II schools Dixie State and Western State, and a 3-1 record after bouts against Washington and UC-Davis is a strong possibility.
(ISU’s lone single-digit loss was against UC-Davis, who edged out the Bengals 52-45). Playing defending Big Sky champion Eastern Washington will definitely not be an easy task regardless of the venue, but the Bengals will at least be in the cozy confines of Holt Arena instead of the red turf, dubbed “The Inferno” of Roos Field in Pullman.
While ISU football will have a new face at quarterback in Justin Arias, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the Bengal offense won’t miss a beat transitioning to Arias from former starter Kevin Yost, who put up Madden-esque numbers in his time with the Bengals.
“Arias has picked up exactly where Kevin Yost left off,” Kramer said to Bengal writer John van Vliet in van Vliet’s spring offensive preview of ISU football in the April 17 edition of “The Bengal.”
Van Vliet, a former ISU offensive lineman and former teammate of Arias’s, echoed Kramer’s sentiments regarding Arias’s preparedness and ability to run Kramer’s pass-heavy offense. Throw in the fact that Arias redshirted last season after seeing sparse playing time in 2011 to solely focus on taking the reins from Yost in 2013, and it becomes clear that the most crucial component of ISU’s offense is in great hands.
History is also in favor a much-improved season for the Bengals; specifically, the coaching history of ISU head coach Mike Kramer. All disciplinary actions and controversy aside, Kramer has a well-established track record of taking floundering Big Sky programs and turning them into successful, perennially competitive teams.
It’s easy to get hung up on Kramer’s 3-19 record in two seasons at ISU, but a brief look beyond that shows that Kramer has improved his squad’s performance dramatically after the first few seasons.
After taking over head coaching duties at Eastern Washington in 1994, Kramer began his tenure in Pullman with back-to-back losing seasons in 1994 and 1995, going 4-7 and 3-8, respectively. In his third year, Kramer broke .500, going 6-5, and the following year he posted an impressive 12-2 record and an appearance in the NCAA Division I-AA Semifinal.
The turnaround he orchestrated at Montana State may be even more impressive. Beginning in 2000, Kramer suffered through a winless inaugural season to finish one game under .500 in 2001, an impressive 5-win improvement in a single year. From 2002-2006, his remaining years as head coach of the Bobcats, he always posted a winning season.
His achievements at Montana State include three conference titles and three appearances in the NCAA Division I-AA championship tournament. This was with a Bobcats program that was in as bad if not worse shape than the Bengals were in when Kramer was hired in 2011.
Year three of the Kramer regime will be the first year in which the majority of players who play key roles on the team will be Kramer recruits, a factor that is especially significant in his pass-dominant offensive scheme.
Though pass-heavy, the Bengals look to add at least a modest amount of a multi-dimensional attack, relying on a relatively young offensive line and the running back duo of Aaron Prier and Xavier Finney to add a second prong to the offensive attack.
During spring practices, Kramer seemed to be equally impressed with Finney and Prier, both of whom should see their fair share of carries. The rushing game is all-but guaranteed to be an improvement over the anemic rushing efforts of last season, where the highest rushing total by one player in a single game was a 57-yard effort by Prier in ISU’s lone win.
If Finney and Prier can cobble together even a semi-competent run game just effective enough to require opponents to take it into account, it should prove to make Arias’s job much easier, not to mention Idaho State’s passing attack more potent.
It may seem odd for anyone to be preaching optimism in the wake of the nightmare that was the 2012 Idaho State University football season.
Despite the lingering stench of last year, a favorable schedule, confident quarterback, improved running game and head coach who has been through this twice before have created a renewed sense of hope and a reason to be excited for Bengal football in 2013.
