ODUalum78
Overseer of the Unwashed Masses
Posts: 9,363
Joined: May 2012
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I Root For: ODU
Location: Chesterfield, Va
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RE: Is BW A Scapegoat?
(12-18-2019 11:44 AM)AimHigh Wrote: (12-18-2019 11:40 AM)Gilesfan Wrote: (12-16-2019 10:26 AM)ODUalum78 Wrote: (12-16-2019 09:15 AM)Retroview1955 Wrote: According to this guy, Rahne can't help us either and thinks our football program will go nowhere, while completely nullifying the success other programs have since they move up and upgraded it's coaches.
You can read it here, but I'll still quote:
https://www.pilotonline.com/opinion/lett...story.html
Is he a pessimist or does he have a point?
Costly move for ODU
"I graduated from Old Dominion in 1973. I don’t know ODU football coach Bobby Wilder personally, but was amazed at how quickly he was able to start with nothing and build a team capable of winning the Colonial Athletic Association championship in only three years.
What I don’t understand is after waiting 69 years to bring back football, why wasn’t a winning program, and a packed stadium, enough? Why the rush to play teams so far out of ODU’s league? Why schedule games against three Atlantic Coast Conference teams in 2020? And who was responsible for the decision to move up to the Football Bowl Subdivision so quickly? Was it due to the overzealous and spoiled fan base who thought Wilder could bring in a Taylor Heinicke whenever needed? That might be possible at Alabama and Clemson, but not ODU.
Moving to Conference USA has left ODU with no natural rivalries and instead of busing teams to Williamsburg, Richmond and Harrisonburg, must instead pay a considerable expense to fly its football, basketball and baseball teams to Alabama, Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
With a new stadium to pay for, and increased travel cost, ODU has been reduced to selling games to Liberty University — $1 million last year and $800,000 next year.
Wilder has been forced to be the scapegoat for the bad decisions of others."
Joe Simons, Chesapeake
Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk
The author is addressing two separate issues, success on the field and operational costs, and then erroneously trying to combine those two as a reason for BW's demise. Even individually his reasoning is flawed.
Let's address the conference move first.
VCU and GMU had already bolted the CAA, so our two natural MBB rivals were gone. "Claimed secret knowledge" aside, there is absolutely NO evidence we were ever considered for A10 MBB, none. GMU and VCU both had Final 4 credentials and those were the primary factors in their considerations. Saying we could have gone to the A10 is tantamount to those JMU posters saying they could have gone to the AAC whenever they wanted but their admin didn't want to.
So we are left in a very watered down CAA basketball league.
When we joined CUSA, we did indeed have a natural rival in ECU. No one could have foreseen the changes in CUSA that occurred AFTER we joined.
The television guarantees were attractive, and aside from 3 games, JMU, W&M, and UR, I for one certainly prefer to play UVA, VT, NC State to Stony Brook, Albany, Campell, and Elon.
It might surprise you to know that the two ODU playoff games with GaSo were in the top 5 of all time of FCS television ratings, and that all but the lowest of the bowl game[s] generate higher television ratings than even the FCS NATC. GaSo has moved up, and quite frankly the watered down FCS has recently become the exclusive JMU/NDSU club.
As for the financial burdens, no one could have predicted the impact of the after-the-fact Kirk Cox legislation. Guess what, the stadium was falling apart,and did not meet a number of codes, and as such would have had to be replaced anyway.
Even so we have been largely successful with fundraising, most recently raising over 2 million in a few days, of a 5 million goal set for the year.
The bottom line is that at the time, the move was the correct decision, and quite frankly, is still the right one IMHO.
None of the above helped make BW a scapegoat, and in fact as I understand it, he was one of those leading the charge when the opportunity came to move up.
BW did a great job starting the program and made us an almost instant success with brilliant scheduling and the happenstance of Hofstra eliminating football.
The rest is the tale of Taylor Henicke, who fell into our lap mostly because of his dad.
In 2011, without TH, we lose the the UMass game. We likely go on to lose 5 more that we otherwise won, going 5-7 regular season in 2011 (instead of 10-2) with no playoff, affecting future recruiting including the future receivers.
The recruiting domino effect would have been huge.
So, without one generational QB, we have a less than average DII defense, no recruiting bump from playoffs, and bizarre personnel moves like the ones surrounding Bill Dee, we likely stay mired in the middle of the pack of the CAA, if not the bottom.
BW was no scapegoat, and the decisions were the correct ones.
I really don't believe this and I think it downplays how good the team was. ODU was beating UMASS by 2 touchdowns when DeMarco went down. It has also been said by people in the program that Craig Oh (or whatever his name is) was a very capable backup QB. Furthermore, DeMarco would only have missed a couple games before coming back because he was healthy enough to play but lost his job to Heinicke. We know DeMarco was good enough to beat some of those teams; Craig would have made it competitive.
Ya mean Nate Ong? He was hurt with a shoulder injury when DeMarco went down
We would have to had to go to FR Tyler Clark
I don't believe we beat UMass with Tyler Clark
I don't believe we beat URI with Tyler Clark
I am not even sure about 'Nova with Clark
Even if Ong is back, (not sure about the timeline) we do NOT win vs JMU.
I remember the UR game well. It was a classic TH beat down. I don't believe we win that with Ong, and certainly not with Clark.
We do NOT win at W&M w/o Henicke
We probably do win vs NSU
So even best case, winning URI (but I don't think so) and 'Nova (questionable) we don't get ranked, and at a BEST case 6-6 we don't make the playoffs.
Even with a healthy DeMarco, we don't win vs JMU, UR, or @W&M, and we may not have won vs UMASS or even URI.
(This post was last modified: 12-18-2019 02:06 PM by ODUalum78.)
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