I'll just round out with this:
First off, apologies if I came off overly antagonistic. I was responding to what I thought was an unfair criticism that was being targeted only at the most recent drum major, even though other recent drum majors had done similar things. Thank you for the insight about the band in the 70s, that was not something I knew personally, and I think you are very lucky to have been a member of the band while Dr. Ben was around.
I do think you should give the current drum major some slack. The OSU game was the first live performance in front of a crowd in over a year and a half for most of the band, and it was her first performance as Drum Major. Obviously some high expectations, excitement, and nerves may cause more errors while performing than usual (I know I certainly made mistakes in live performances that I never made in practice). What we don't know is how often that drop happens, maybe that's the first time she's had that many drops while running the pregame routine, maybe every time she ran it in practice it was perfect. We don't know.
If you judged Matthew Trickett on just his performance in the Colorado game you'd think he was a terrible kicker, but everyone can have bad days and not fully represent how good they actually are at a skill (how many olympic or professional athletes have "choked" when it mattered the most even though clearly they were the most talented?). We have the luxury of knowing the results of Trickett's career as a college kicker, but we don't have the luxury of know how many times the drum major made all those tosses in practice.
I just think it's that perspective that everyone should keep in mind before writing off the Drum Major after 2 games as not B1G material.
