I personally will never concede a loss. But I believe this attitude of so called "realism" is detrimental to the program if/when it is found within the program itself. Every year, every person professionally associated with the football program should go into it looking and expecting an undefeated season. This is called a championship mentality. I think the realist idea is a selfish and defeatist attitude. And calling people blue goggled because they look for and expect to see a championship is self serving as one tries to reduce their pain when that unexpected loss happens. I think just aiming for 10 wins a season leads to, excusing losses and giving up when it seems too hard. It also leads to losses to OK, Wisc, Miami. No way BYU ever wins those games thinking they can't do it. Max Hall sure didn't have a defeatist attitude. Right at the end of the first half vs OK I turned to my son and said, we've got this, BYU is going to win this game. No more than 10 seconds later they showed Max running into the locker room and yelling to the fans the same thing. Believing is the first step to achieving.
So if it helps you to go into the season expecting losses fine, but don't knock those of us that start the season truly believing in our team and the possibility of going undefeated. I've coached a lot of baseball teams (5yr olds-18yr olds) over the years in a community that seems to always have teams that win 0-2 games a year. I go into every season with a whole lot of optimism and usually win more games than all the rest of the teams from our community in every age combined (we are in a league that includes several other towns and cities about 28 teams per age group). I won the championship three times over the years and several tournaments. I hear that other coaches complain that I take all the good players. I only laugh at that because I take whoever signs up and have had to play with several autistic kids (one that at age 10 couldn't even speak). I have one now who was on our 11year old undefeated team in an 11-12 year old league. Four years ago that kid couldn't even stay in the box on the pitch. He now hits the ball every at bat and gets on at least twice a game (.400ba last season). It's all about the kids believing in themselves. If they do that, they will put in the work. And I never give up or concede a loss and so we almost never lose. Losing is an attitude which becomes a result, and so is winning.