RGV Pony wrote:SoCal_Pony wrote:PonyKai wrote:Thumbnail sketch:
*Larry rocks, obviously ran a loose ship.
*We get in trouble.
*Discussing new deal, SMU wants protection, Larry balks, leaves like he has for every. single. job. he. has. ever. had. and. where. we. all. knew. he. would. leave. from. here.
*Jank takes over. People expect him to do certain things well, screw up other things.
*To everyone's surprise, Jank screws up things we thought he'd do well.
*SMU adjusts pricing for revenue sport for the first time in 30 years. What it does is reasonable. What it does is in line with other schools. What it does is not objectionable.
*SMU screws up communications re. aforementioned price adjustment. Rick not good at interpersonal skills. SMU fans upset.
*Jank, realizing he can't recruit, and that he hasn't learned enough about coaching from LB, schedules an OOC so insanely, outrageously bad in an effort to pad his win total and get an extension.
*Team sucks against ridiculously bad competition. Bad D, no real offense, loses 3 inexcusable games.
*Hideously, laughably bad home schedule + bad play on the court + anger stemming from price adjustment (followed by gaarbage schedule) + talent filtering out of program + the fact that Jank induces excitement like a soggy piece of wonderbread with a Just For Men endorsement deal = fans not showing up.
I wonder under different circumstances if an AD would have protected LB more and ‘just let him coach’. My gut tells me yes. Mex says we self-reported and did our own forensic investigation of the school's servers to discover the source of the high school work. I wonder how many other schools would be so forthright. UNC, apparently not.
LB does always leave, but this situation was a little different. He had kids here and he’s getting up in years.
That of course is now water under the bridge. My concern is going forward.
Pony Kai, what do you think it will take to get Jank fired?
I'm reasonably sure we self-reported so as to stay one step ahead of the posse. Self-report and take what's coming as a result of the class he didnt need & staffer's help as pointed out by us, or not self report and take what wouldve come beyond the tip of that iceberg.
To piggy-back off this and respond to a couple of So Cal's points:
1.) Nothing I say should be taken as gospel. I'm nothing more than a raving lunatic among the crowd, more often than not to be dismissed as simply blowing off steam. I have no insider information or special insight into Jank's status here. I do know that, as with any change in revenue leadership, a number of factors would be considered nothing would ever happen until people who fund these things are tired enough to spend their own money. Turner, Hart, and Deputy ADs could be finished with Jank by Thursday morning (probably unlikely), but unless someone's there to say "here's the buyout, and here's a sack full of money for the next guy," we're resigned to hoping the school signs an endorsement deal with Just For Men. Pretty sure you know all this, so I don't want to come off as if I'm speaking down to you.
Having said that, I am not of the belief that you judge a coach based on his ability/inability to win certain games. See it a lot in CFB. "If Coach X wins his next two games, he'll likely stay. If not, he's gone." He's either your guy, or he's not. Jank's not the guy. Doesn't matter if he beats TCU. Doesn't matter if he beats Georgetown. Because of this, I want him gone by this evening. More realistically, I want him gone after this season. Because any more time, Moody's going to get emptier, talent will continue to filter out of the program, and fan interest will get further depressed.
2.) Speaking off of RGV's points--I think that needs to be viewed in hindsight. Knowing what we knew then, self-reporting was a defensible strategic position to take. No one, even the most cynical outsiders, could have foreseen that the NCAA would napalm a program over a single event where the school was self-reporting. What we should learn from that is from now, until the end of time, lawyer up, tell the NCAA to eat sh*t, and never, ever give an inch on anything. Anything other than that behavior, and I'll join the mob with a pitchfork and torch.
3.) As to Larry leaving, sure, you can make arguments this time was different (and perhaps it was), but I'm not really persuaded by that simply because Larry just aint a normal guy and never has been. And when he chose to leave kind of drops the curtain on whether he viewed this as "different." He walked, suddenly, right before the most important eval period of the year, and did it 12 hours after the horrific police shootings in Dallas. To say he treated this situation different from, say, quitting Davidson because he didn't like the carpet seems less persuasive considering those things.
4.) Speaking back to the idea (not yours) that this is some sort of bizarre conspiracy, or that Turner has some secret plot to destroy athletics, or Rick is incapable of firing a coach or hiring one, is simply laughable. Everyone put away your tin foil hats. SMU--like a huge number of schools (and other entities)--is simply more reactionary, less creative, less aggressive, and doesn't have any trail-blazing superstars ready to roll the dice on everything. It's probably populated by a bunch of reasonably smart, reactionary, risk-minimizing guys and gals that have to answer to a lot of money and a number of powerful people. They probably either lack vision or, more likely, don't have the capacity to connect all the dots from here, to the end goal, of putting SMU in the SEC--which is hard. That's why for every Del Conte there's a hundred athletic administrators no one has ever heard of. We make some good decisions (Morris, Dykes, Brown, selling booze in Moody), we make some bad decisions (baby race at half time, letting June dictate IPF location, not firing June after ASU, etc).