Prologue: I had this column outlined BEFORE “Massacre Amid The Lofty Pines”.
One of our favorite shows is Shark Tank. Survivor has “Voted off the island”. Apprentice has “You’re Fired”. With Shark Tank the signature line is “… and for those reasons, I’m Out”. A shark says that when he/she decides they do not want to invest in the whizbang business opportunity de jour.
My mind was made up prior to high noon on Saturday. “Massacre Amid The Lofty Pines” simply reaffirmed my conclusion. 
For the following reason, I’m Out…. of the Fedora Fan Club.
OMG! BOBLEE IS GIVING UP ON LARRY FEDORA !!! THIS is the straw that will break the UNC camel’s back. Not hardly.
I’m just a guy with a website. Granted, a very popular website. I do have a “rep” in certain circles over there but the Fat Cats sure don’t like me and the Board Monkeys REALLY don’t like me. The South Bldg admin crowd – Nope. Tiny Little Carol? Yeah, right! My decision will not swing any votes.
Lets get this out-of-the-way. The Massacre Amid The Pines made the Little Big Horn look like a picnic-in-the-park. No excuse whatsoever for such a “Hands Up” surrender. Were the Folding Fedorians doing a Ferguson demonstration?
Was I the only one who noticed that State v Carolina did NOT make ESPN’s “Rivalry Week” line-up. ESPN did not even list it among the top 15-20 rivalry games in America on Saturday. Utah State v Boise made the list. Can you spell IRRELEVANT boys and girls? These were two teams of 2-stars, walk-ons and “projects”. Mel Kiper Jr does not have any of the players on the Kenan turf Saturday on any “hot lists”. Not to take anything away from WuffDave’s Pack’s celebration; but beating ECU’s b*tch is not “Rush the field & TP the Brickyard” stuff.
Back-to-back routs of UNC and Wake Forest is not exactly a Murderer’s Row gauntlet. The Pack’s much decried OOC Ws may be more impressive.
It was a Massacre. Scoreboard-wise not as Massacurial as the last TWO ECU Massacres but those are pretty hard to beat. To all Brickyarders who measure time by “a year we really beat Carolina bad” – 2014 is officially “one of those years”. Kudos to you.
The Massacre is not why I’m Out as a Fedora guy. Losing, even losing to State, is not all that uncommon to any Tar Heel fan. Five In a Row was only three years ago. UNC’s Football history is much better than it gets credit for when viewed over 60 years…. but it has endured its share of “down years” for sure. 2014 officially became “a UNC down year” about 8:00 into the first quarter.
Beating McNeese State or South Dakota A&M in Shreveport or Detroit or Birmingham won’t save this roadkill season. Yes, I would forfeit the who-cares bowl and hope the NCAA notices… but that won’t happen. The coaching staff get a 13th month bonus even if it’s “Shreveport”. If I ran the Belk Bowl, I’d put NCSU and ECU together for Mack Brown’s Mythical State Championship… but that won’t happen either.
There is ZERO chance of Fedora being fired no matter how many Fat Cats / board monkeys are going nutz. DC Vic Koenning WILL likely move on. This isn’t Vic’s first rodeo. He’ll be fine. I am simply withdrawing my personal support.
Fedora is doing what he thinks he has to do to try and WIN. His future is 100% tied to WINS. He won’t get any credit for character-building. Good thing, huh?
Larry Fedora lost me over the Thug Trifecta of: Logo Stomp – Aloft-gate – LockerRoom Trash. He mumbles some wink-wink apology that an SID wrote for him, but in none of those three Thug Incidents did he seem to “really give a s**t”. His half-hearted “we win or lose with class” mumble after trashing the Duke Locker Room was IT for me. I’m Out.
Larry obviously does not agree with Captain Woodrow Call and BobLee about “tolerating rude behavior”. Thats Larry’s choice.
Of that Thug Trifecta, the only disciplinary action he took was with Aloft-gate when he suspended four thug-aletes for “the Liberty game”!! Really Larry? And THAT was only after three weeks and report of the thuggery leaked out. Suspending the perps for the Liberty game was a version of the “find a walk-on to sacrifice” gambit.
I may be the only UNC alum who can’t tolerate rude behavior. Alas, I am a naive anachronism.
I appreciate the impact of NCAA / UNC self-imposed sanctions Larry inherited. (Those sanctions were deserved!) I appreciate that more and more and more academic scam crap keeps coming out that makes recruiting top talent next to impossible. I’m pretty sure he never expected “more and more and more crap”. He is not expecting the next round of crap coming down either.
You cannot win without TALENT and Thug-Talent is better than no talent as far as being competitive on the field. I get that logic. Letting his thug-aletes select the unis…. and letting his thug-aletes stomp the logo…. and letting his thug-aletes stomp the walk-on…. and letting his thug-aletes trash the Duke Locker Room keeps his thug-aletes happy, I suppose. If Larry keeps his current thug-aletes happy they won’t say bad things about his program to the future thug-aletes he has to recruit. I see his strategy.
Not ALL of Larry’s recruits are thugs. Not all of The Butcher’s were thugs. John Bunting recruited his share BUT John kept them on short leashes and jerked them pretty quickly. A handful of thugs is manageable. More than handful makes an embarrassing mess. Larry’s “so what” attitude is where I have a real problem.
There is ZERO chance that either coaches or other adult staff were not totally aware of the locker room trashing as it was happening and before the team buses left The Wally. They knew but they didn’t care. I care. The board monkeys didn’t care but; unfortunately for Larry, he quickly lost all support from that gang by 1:15 Saturday afternoon. No coach should EVER play to that motley audience…. EVER.
I decided in 1982 and again in 1984 that my alma mater’s Ws & Ls would never affect my personal happiness up or down. It has been a wise decision for me. I appreciate that most of you don’t live your lives that way. I am probably THE ONLY one who does.
The Massacre Amid The Lofty Pines was a Great Victory for NC State. For all of you who celebrate such occasions, I congratulate you.
Art and I had Dave Glenn on our show pre-Massacre Saturday. The three of us had a “Quint, Hooper, & Brody on the Orca” chat. Like that classic scene from Jaws, we compared the stoopidest board monkey encounters we have each had over the years. We’ve all been “lunatic fringified” too many times to count.
Dave and I also discussed off-air the likely fate of “Amy-The Greatest BuzzBabe EVER”. The mind reels…..
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