While the lot of you were gathering around your computers, at the Corner Club or in front of your TVs to watch Idaho’s much-anticipated debut as an FCS program, I was rolling out of bed on two hours of sleep because I decided to stay up all night and watched some other college football games.

I’m currently residing in Taipei, Taiwan and being 15 hours ahead of Moscow makes watching football a pain in the ass. But these are my Vandals. I love this team more than I love myself, probably, so I’ll do what I have to watch them.

So it was a little saddening this team shit the bed and wasted my time. It was 1:30 in the afternoon when the “game” was over and I ended up having to stay up the rest of the day to spend with my significant other and the entire time I was just wondering what the hell had just happened.

I could sit here and complain about the quarterback situation but even right now I’ll give Paul at least some semblance of the benefit of the doubt, however absolutely stupid the situation seems right now. I could also sit here and complain about the coaches not being fully prepared or the mentality of the program has shrunk back to its 2012-2015 form of having absolutely no expectation of beating opponents just by looking at the rosters on paper.

But I don’t know. I simply don’t know. Nobody knows anything about how good or how bad this football team is right now, not even the coaches.

We do know about Fresno State. Fresno State is going to be a damn good team this year. They could compete for the Mountain West championship and obviously Jeff Tedford is one of the most gifted offensive minds in the sport.

We also should have expected to at least throw a few punches and compete for part of the game. If we don’t commit three absolutely, unbelievably stupid turnovers in the second quarter resulting in Bulldog touchdowns then maybe we’re within a score or two at the break and feeling good about the positives. But we committed those mistakes and Fresno State inexplicably scored three D/ST touchdowns on us. It turned into one of the most embarrassing thing to happen to this program in years, and we once had Florida State put an 80-spot on us.

So, I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. We are hopefully and likely to beat up on a very bad Division II team in Western New Mexico State in our home opener next week and that will also tell us very little about this team.

Then we travel to Davis, California to take on Dan Hawkins and UC Davis in our first Big Sky Conference matchup since 1995. And that will hopefully tell us everything but maybe not. It will probably at least tell us if our “We should come in and mix it up in year one!” attitudes are correct or if they are so hopelessly and homer-esly misinformed. Because right now I have no idea.

Here are a couple of things I think I know! I know this team still has good Sun Belt levels players on both sides of the football and I know this team has leaders who were a part of that special 9-4 team in 2016 and who know how to win. I know this team has a coaching staff that knows how to prepare this team to win and develop young players into program-impactful guys. I know on paper this roster should expect to at the very least be competitive with teams in the conference we’re in now.

So who the hell knows if we learned anything at Fresno State. Burn the tape and hope it doesn’t mean shit.

Go Vandals.