(12-05-2013 10:08 PM)mjs Wrote: I don't know individual players' grade point averages since releasing that would be a violation of the Buckley Amendment. I was told that one coach (I believe he was later a coach in Chicago -Northwestern?, that got shot and killed while jogging) was ready to take the job until he saw the combined grade points of our players which was allegedly 0.7. I loved Newell while he was here, and still appreciate all that he did, but he left the program in a mess financially and academically when he was run out of town by Chancellor Young.
My main point about Newell, on this board, has been that if he really was a "great" coach someone other than you would have figured that out and given him a DI job in the past 25 years. You can't get much lower on the totem pole than UAM and I'm not sure that West Alabama (the last job he was fired from) is much better. Jim Platt was fired from here, after Newell, and has been employed at the DI level (assistant or head coach) since that time. He is now an assistant at a pretty decent program at St. Louis U.
Of course you don't know anything about individual players grade averages and neither do I, or your dumb ass friend. Evidently your friend doesn't know anymore about who can read or write than he does about basketball or basketball coaches. I don't know much about basketball either, but I've finally found someone who knows less.
Have you ever heard me say that Newell was one of America's great basketball coaches? I don't think so. I've said he was very good here, and he was, and a hell of a lot better coach than Shields. I believe he's a damn good coach, and he did a pretty good job considering what he had to work with at the school "lower than a totem pole, UAM."
I really have no idea why he's had job problems. Could be all the things you always list when you're on one of your run down Mike Newell rants. It could the problems you said he had with the finances, the players that your buddy said that couldn't add or subtract, could be that some here have said he had a reputation as a womanizer sorta like Slick Willie, or it could be that he's the type of person that once he became a head coach, his ego wouldn't let go back to being an assistant and working for someone else again. And he did have an ego. But I really have no clue. I thought you and your buddy would know that since you both seem to know about all his short comings. And I don't deny that he certainly had some short comings.
No doubt in my mind, and I don't think I'm the only one that thinks so, but Shields couldn't carry Newell's jock as a basketball coach. And if you've done your homework, you know that I said in a post a couple of days ago that I didn't even consider Mike to be the best Trojan coach since I became a fan. I think Wimp is, with Newell second. By the way I picked your pal Shields 4th, although some distance ahead of your other buddy, Platt.
But if you didn't read that, maybe you can get your ole buddy Jim to teach you how to "revise history." He's an expert at that. What he doesn't know or remember, he'll make something up.