Our local bowling teams are back home. Winners & Losers settle in for a long winter of boasting, bloviating, blaming and bellyaching.
WuffWorld is, of course, ecstatically euphoric. Visions of a 2015 Football Final Four have quickly replaced sugar plums in lupine dreams.
TeamCutcliffe lost their 3rd annual bowl game nailbiter. They return to Cameron Indoor to cheer on this year’s collection of K One&Dones.
UNC’s BitterBlueZoners are organizing car washes and bake sales to raise the $10,000,000 ante for the “Lets Us Hire Jim Harbaugh” Sweepstakes. …. not really. 🙂
Suncoast Dome Records obliterated Friday include:
(1) Youngest team to ever win a Tier-3 bowl game in a domed baseball stadium.
(2) Youngest team to ever beat Presbyterian, UNC and Central Florida in one season.
(3) Greatest one season turnaround by the youngest team to ever win a Tier-3 bowl game in a domed baseball stadium…. AND also beat Presbyterian, UNC and UCF.
TRBKennel will host a JacobyForHeisman2015 poster painting ceremony in The Brickyard at noon on Tuesday.
….. meanwhile 26 miles to the West, the scenic sidewalks of Franklin Street are awash with Tar Heel tears aplenty. Hearts (and hopes) are as black as those ugly Larry Fedora helmets. Elias Sports Bureau archivists are calling “it” THE most uninspiringly dispirited bowl performance in Quick Lane Bowl history. The 23,000 “announced” attendees in Ford Field unanimously agree. The mini-van chartered to carry the entire UNC fan contingent had breakfast at a Cracker Barrel on I-77.
IMO Larry Fedora is a “good” college FB CEO along with 86% of the Div 1 / FBS head coaches. He is not near an Elite-level of Saban, Meyer, Briles, Fisher. Neither are 98% of college head coaches. Larry Fedora is NOT a messiah nor a miracle worker. Most coaches aren’t.
UNC does not deserve an Elite FB CEO any more than any program “deserves” one. That’s for the “but, but…. aren’t we a sleeping giant?” loonies to bitch about. Could a Saban, Meyer, Fisher come to UNC and be as successful as they are where they are? No. It always gets back to Crum’s Lament about Harvard vs Oklahoma.
The elite coaches thrive at schools where Athletics, Academics & Admissions have “an understanding” and simply are NOT an issue for whatever reasons. Do they have their own versions of a Crowder Scheme? Who knows…. but they somehow never have “academic issues”. They DO have “get arrested” issues because they are always juggling 20-25 loose hand grenades some of which will go BOOM. Just as Butch was creating at UNC before it went BOOM. UGA, Okla, even Bama and tOSU kick 4-5 guys off each year who cross the “Bona Fide Bad Boyz” conduct line. Its called Collateral Damage in Elite Juggernauts jargon.
In BTCFB, you do not win without Big Time Athletic Talent PERIOD. A Very small % of that level of talent comes with any measurable level of academic prowess or academic interest. It all comes down to how an institution chooses to deal with those unmeasurable levels. That sets the tone for its on-field / on-court success.
UNC Admin steadfastly refuses to create any sort of remedial academy for its academically disadvantaged athletes. UNC prefers to keep them semi-literate and uses “eligibility majors” to hide them. That is an institutional prerogative. It is a horrible disservice to the disadvantaged youngsters, but, hey, who cares? Apparently just Mary and a handful of other silly idealists.
Fedora (and Bubba) thought the “scandal” was over & done when they signed on. It wasn’t. It still isn’t. It won’t be for the forseeable future. Uh Oh! Fedora is not a good enough FB CEO to overcome that ball & chain situation. Very few would be.
Then there’s Fedora’s laissez faire attitude towards team thugginess which, IMO, is at the core of this “negative lockerroom” team dissension issue now percolating to the surface. Butch/Blake (who?) allowed a strong thug personality like Marvin Austin to become their locker room persona. How’d that work out?
LF’s job is safe for now but recruiting will be “fog a mirror” mediocre at best. Next year’s roster will be as modestly-talented as this one. Recruits have a 3-year memory. Anything beyond three years ago is irrelevant. Choo Choo Who? “Lofty pine trees” don’t seem to matter all that much to today’s BlueChippers. They only know UNC as a program under a dark cloud of finger-pointing turmoil. Oh, and that does wear black and/or goofy chrome helmets of course.
Roy is also encountering insurmountable recruiting barriers which will drop his vaunted program out of the Annual Top Ten by next season.
LF’s seat will get progressively hotter with the Blue Zone Bunch (BZB) who are no more rational today than when they dispatched the ill-fated BOT3 off to Chicago to be bedazzled by Butch’s Super Bowl rings. How’d THAT work out?
The BZB is all, and only all, about Bragging Rights. They don’t care what devil lies in the details. Just get them those Bragging Rights. Semi-literate dumb jocks?? Who cares?
State should dominate UNC for the next few years in both recruiting and on-field, which is all that really matters to a large vocal faction of “those people”. If Dave Doeren manages to assemble enough talent to get to an upper tier ACC level two years in a row he will be lured away by mega-bucks and “those people” will start all over again. The Football Gods have a very cruel sense of humor.
Duke is simply an anomaly and will remain so as long as David Cutcliffe is there. David Cutcliffe IS an exceptional coach in a unique situation.
Alas…. those “ALL Tar Hole fans” that “ALL State College fans” obsess over are never going to change one iota. The Carolina Way Gang have never allowed Reality to affect their inflated opinion of themselves and are not about to now. “Five In A Row” never phased’em. Whatever scoreboard horrors await won’t phase’em either.
“They” will simply blame Dan Kane, Mary Willingham, Jay Smith, BobLee, Chansky, Holden et al. Along with Art Pope and The Koch Brothers of course.
“ALL State fans” will continue to obsess about the Carolina Way Gang’s obsession. Those two “ALL” factions deserve each other.
In case anyone has forgotten, that same “ALL State College fans” faction was calling for Dave Doeren’s head on a platter about two months ago. Except for TRBKennel of course. TRBK never wavered. Bless his heart.
Speaking of TRBK, he has personally declared NCSU to be Mack Brown’s mythical “State Champions” despite not playing ECU or Duke. He used his own lop-sided algorithm to circumvent that fact. At my suggestion, B’rer Kennel is buying “Our State” Championship rings for every WPC member who wishes one. Contact Bobby Purcell for BK’s address to send him your ring size.
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