(11-16-2013 09:06 PM)CheeseSndwch Wrote: (11-16-2013 08:55 PM)10miners Wrote: what happened?
Coach Bower was fired.
The mistake wasn't firing Bower. The mistake was firing Bower and then not sticking to the plan for life after Bower.
Fedora was a $1,000,000-per-year coach. We've tried to replace him with two $750,000-per-year coaches and it hasn't worked.
The same AD hired both of these bargain basement coaching staffs. He also advocated for staying in CUSA, and for letting LA Tech into CUSA, so that we could save on gasoline. That's what Bama does, right?
This is not a difficult problem to explain. In theory, it's not a difficult problem to solve. We need to spend more money. We've tried the alternative, and we can't afford it. As much as we can't afford road trips to Temple, AAC entrance fees, or Larry Fedora, we can afford 9,000-person crowds for games against FAU even less.
Here's a novel fund-raising idea: ask people for money. "Send us money and we'll win football games" is not a letter that's hard to write. I'm still waiting to receive it.
Say what you want about our financial situation, but neither Jeff Hammond nor Bill McGillis has ever sent me a letter, or, better yet called me on the phone and flat-out asked for money. And yet we hear no end of complaints from the athletic department about our low budget.
If I got a letter from Bill McGillis asking for $1,000, he'd probably get it. If I got a letter from Bill McGillis asking for $1,000 to hire Bobby Petrino and join the AAC, he might get $2,000.
Instead, I get robo-calls from a dead-sounding John Cox offering to let my kid into our blowout vs. FAU for free. I don't want that. I want to take my kid to our home victory against Louisville, Boise State, or UH, and I don't mind paying for the privilege.
I'm not the only one who feels this way. At a certain point, you just have to conclude that the athletic department is just flat-out lazy. They don't want to be Boise or Louisville because they'd get annoying phone calls. The stadium would just be crowded if we expanded it. Better recruits might not listen to the coaching staff.
We cry "poor" but sometimes I think we just mean "lazy".