Jim Mashek

DEAN WORMER, NORTH TEXAS SPOIL WKU HOMECOMING … AND THEN SOME

It was a beautiful homecoming weekend at Western Kentucky University.

Autumn weather. The spectacular foilage. Visitors in from outta town. Recruits on campus. Fraternity parties.

Ah, fraternity parties.

Guilty as charged. I was an SAE at WKU, waaaay back in the day. We had a hellacious fraternity football team. Campus champs my junior year, runner-up when I was a senior at Western. It wasn’t like playing for the HIlltoppers, but that opportunity had come and gone. So Homecoming Weekend was pretty transactional, from what I remember of it.

Fast forward four decades, and some change.

Western Kentucky took a 5-3 record into its homecoming tilt with visiting North Texas. The ‘Toppers were 3-1 in Conference USA. The Mean Green, of Denton, Texas, checked in at 4-4, also 3-1 in Conference USA. Western was favored by 10 points. It was a late arriving crowd at Houchens-Smith Stadium, with homecoming festivies going strong across the street in the tailgate/picnic area.

But this game was no picnic.

This homecoming experience was more like the final scene in “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” the raucous and ribald comedy from 1978, a couple months after they gave me my WKU diploma along with a map on how to get back to metro Washington, D.C.

On Saturday afternoon, Western Kentucky squared off with the University of North Texas, formerly North Texas State University. And the Hilltoppers took it on the collective chin, getting pummeled to the tune of 40-13 at Houchens-Smith Stadium.

Tyson Helton, WKU’s personable, understated fourth-year head coach, seemed to take it in stride. He’s a pro, a measured guy, not given to histrionics or hyperventilating.

Helton still believes the Hilltoppers can do something with their season. They’ve got four games left on their schedule, road games against UNC Charlotte (next Saturday), Auburn (yes, Auburn, on November 19, one week before AU’s Iron Bowl against Alabama) and Florida Atlantic (November 26, in Boca Raton).

Mixed in is the one remaining home game, against Conference USA opponent Rice on November 11.

North Texas led the Hilltoppers 17-7 after one quarter, 20-13 at halftime, and it was still a competitive game, at least on the scoreboard, after three quarters. Western still trailed by just a single touchdown.

Then, the gates opened. WKU had a 19-play drive end with a missed field goal, from 39 yards out. The Mean Green started moving the ball with little resistance. North Texas scored three touchdowns over the final 15 minutes. Fans started heading for the exits long before it was over.

When I got off the parking structure elevator next to E.A. Diddle Arena, on Saturday afternoon, I saw some interesting homecoming floats. When I got back to my car, the Gray Ghost, on the seventh floor of the parking structure when it was over, all I could think about was how those homecoming floats were obliterated in the final scene of “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”

It all came back to me, in a flash.

Homecoming 2022 at Western Kentucky University was in step with the seminal scene of “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” what with Dean Wormer, Otter, Hoover, Bluto and the Delta Tau Chi pledge class led by Pinto and Flounder.

(In order, those roles were filled by the late, oft-villainious John Vernon, Tim Matheson, James Widdoes, the late, great John Belushi, Thomas Hulce and the dearly departed Stephen Furst.)

One of my colleagues at the postgame press conference on Saturday evening asked WKU coach Tyson Helton about his team’s offensive production, pointing out that the Hilltoppers finished the North Texas game with 466 yards total offense.

Helton thought about the innocuous question, for a moment, but he was having none of it.

“It was, by far, our worst offensive performance of the year,” Helton said. “…You can’t sugarcoat it … 466 yards doesn’t mean anything. We scored 13 points. In the red zone, we had penalties. We had dropped passes.

“It’s hard to play defense when the offense can’t get in the end zone.”

Don’t get the idea, however, that Helton spared the WKU defense. Or its special-teams play, for that matter.

“They got after us pretty good,” Helton said. “I know you hear this all the time, but it starts with me. I’ve got to see what I can do, to make us a better football team …

“We’ve got a hard week ahead of us (before traveling to Charlotte, North Carolina, later this week). We’ve got to do some soul searching.”

Tyson Helton is right, of course.

This was a homecoming weekend gone awry.

Bruce McGill, playing the role of a lifetime as “D-Day,” in “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” wheeled the cake float into town, only to cut it loose to bring out the Delta Tau Chi “Deathmobile.”

WKU brought student-athletes Malachi Corley, a sophomore receiver from Campbellsville, Kentucky, and Jaques Evans, a sophomore linebacker from Dublin, Georgia, to Saturday’s press conference. They wanted to hold themselves accountable for the disaster on the field, the 40-13 loss to North Texas.

“They came to play,” Evans said.

“We’ve got to win out,” Corley said, “and have a lot of things go our way to get back to the Alamodome (for the Conference USA championship game in the first weekend of December).”

The Hilltoppers made it last year, of course, before Texas-San Antonio, the usual tenant of the Alamodome, slipped past WKU 49-41 to claim the conference championship.

San Antonio is a fun town, to be sure, but after Saturday’s dreadful showing, I don’t see the Hilltoppers getting back there any time soon.

If all else fails, maybe D-Day/Bruce McGill can save the Hilltoppers before it’s too late.

Stay tuned.