Recent Comments
HOKIE HOOPS WIZ
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9 months 1 week
# | Some say the sun shines brightest the day Pawl Finebaum gets removed from ESPN 70
The man is a legitimate "quarterback whisperer"
Yea, well, so was Fuente, who is currently digging ditches in Oklahoma.
You misunderstand how bad Iowa state has been historically.
They can allocate the pool of NIL funding via collectives to each sports program as they see fit. Every school has been doing this. We went "all in" on football to pay Drones a king's ransom and retain a few players who demanded a lot to go 6-7, and way underfunded basketball.
HOKIE HOOPS WIZ
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9 months 1 week
# | The Argument for Matt Campbell to be the next VT Football Coach Only won 9 or more games in two seasons although it appears this will be a third with a 5-1 start. He has had them in the rankings in seven of those seasons but not really enthusiastic about him and if he really wants an enormous amount to walk away from ISU then not worth it to me. 2022 was especially brutal. Been to two Big 12 Title games but lost both. Been to 7 Bowl Games but 3-4 there.
He's running a system that doesn't fit his skillset with an OL that can't pass protect. I don't think he's great, but I also think most college qbs suck, and outside of the top dozen, it's just about scheme fit and surrounding talent.
Then he totally destroyed VT basketball last year by not even giving the program a remotely competent amount of NIL, saying they vastly misjudged the market there.
By definition, I don't think schools are responsible for "giving" NIL - they are separate entities. So don't think you can use this against Whit.
RAIL EXPERT
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9 months 1 week
# | Some say the sun shines brightest the day Pawl Finebaum gets removed from ESPN How old is he? I'm so fucking tired of old men that look like turtles, great grandpas and corpses running the country.
He looks like a fucking turtle.
I echoed this sentiment a bunch in the search committee thread. I completely agree. I felt pretty vindicated listening to the tsl pod.
Maybe none of this matters Maybe I'm reading into the comms too much. Maybe these people are mostly powerless and just being made to feel important after their donations.
Or maybe it's a shit show and we're fucked.
It all boils down to complete lack of leadership at VT. Pry's poor leadership of the team, Whit's poor leadership over the AD, and Sands' poor leadership and oversight of athletics. Too many people who are close to retirement and hoping things would be juuuust good enough to squeak by a few more years. I think there was a significant likelihood that this year's football team was going to be bad before the season started, and most people probably knew it. I don't think anyone expected Pry to completely shit the bed as bad or as fast as he did to start the year though. It's really put VT in a horrific position. You can't let Whit hire a third coach, but you can't fire him immediately either because a) there's no one with any experience on navigating a coaching search or managing athletics enough to take over as interim, which shows how poorly he's staffed and run the AD; and b) you don't have time to hire an AD and a coach together in this tight of a window generally. So we're in this awkward "we sort of nominally have an AD but he's not the decision-maker" status, and we put together too large a committee IMO to find a GM at first, which has been contradicted now by our pseudo-AD who apparently speaks for the search but is not a part of it? Wtf is even actually going on at this point? Who is in charge?
Again, piss poor leadership on all fronts at VT. Bitter and Coleman nailed it on the podcast today, the messaging is completely awful and confusing. I'm starting to feel more and more like this is going to be a giant cluster and we are going to miss on anyone worth a damn as HC because of how dysfunctional we appear to be at the moment. Who the hell is the coach even going to report to right now?
This article from Pat Forde suggests just that plus a ton of other potential coaching changes
https://www.si.com/college-football/forde-yard-dash-imagining-the-wildes...
Way more to an AD job than purely hiring coaches. And even if that was the only metric, he has completely killed the number one cash king at VT - football. You can give him somewhat of a pass on the Fuente hire, it was universally praised at the time. But the dysfunction that was reported by ESPN in the department at the time with Ballein sandbagging Fu occurred under Whit's watch. He wouldn't give him the funding to hire Barry Odom or replace Cornelsen in 2019, that awkward 2020 press conference...then follows it up and allows Ballein to recommend and set up the Pry hire which he should have known was going to be complete failure. And then paid him $4+ mil and gave him a large buyout when NO ONE ELSE IN THE COUNTRY WAS INTERESTED IN PRY FOR A HC JOB. SC paid Shane Beamer like $2.5 mil when he first got hired.
Then he totally destroyed VT basketball last year by not even giving the program a remotely competent amount of NIL, saying they vastly misjudged the market there. Whose job is that? Has completely sucked at staffing the AD for years now, didn't have a financial position until recently, the Hokie Club hasn't even had people
with fundraising experience.
Whit is FAR FROM a good AD and it's far past time for him to make his exit.
The thing is that just hiring coaches is not the extent of the AD's job. The AD's job includes hiring coaches, but more importantly is to create and maintain the athletic department that sets the sports up for success. It has become clear that this is not where he thrives.
Wouldn't be my top choice, but curious why Ricky Rahne hasn't been mentioned as a candidate for our position.
A vocal part of the fandom doesn't like Whit. There is also a vocal part of the fandom that likes Whit. He has hit it out of the park with basically every hire except Pry. The Fuente hire was considered a home run at the time. It didn't work out, but how much of that was Fuente versus Ballein and lack of support from Merriman. The support has been rolled out since and reportedly the money is flowing. The new GM position is basically going to be an associated AD dedicated to football support.
In other words, I really wish people would stop bitching about Whit. There are a lot worse AD's out there.
Close enough.
Now in his tenth season in Ames, Campbell is the winningest coach in Iowa State history with a 69-52 record
Over 10 years he's basically 7-5 on average (in the Big 12). Yes, that does seem to be ticking up in the last couple of years.
While better than where we currently are, is this what we want to aspire to?
Yeah... that kid really popped out on a couple of plays. Clearly the best player behind the DL by a long shot. Hopefully the new coach can keep him in the fold.
Noah chambers graded out at 89 holy cow he's good
we can't afford anyone we want. The price to pull them away from where they are is too much, and the allure of being in the ACC pales to anything in the Big10 or SEC. Even if we did manage to build up the courage to make an offer, its going to be like that girl in HS that you asked to the prom and she says she's waiting on someone else to ask her.
Huh? Drones should never be picked over anyone or anything. Just go to a game and watch it in person... if you know football at all you see just how poor he is at just about everything.
I would have said a month ago Campbell is who I want. However since then, and especially considering the "Boy Scout" recruiter reputation, I am not as sold. I hate that we are at this point in college football, however the simple fact is you have to be able to compete for the Jimmys and the Joes even if you have to get your hands dirty.
I think we'll approach Campbell and Golesh (maybe he's next in this series) and Golesh might be #1 on our list. He does know/recruit our area and coached for both Campbell at ISU (recruiting coord and TE) and obviously Heupel at UCF and Tenn...two successful programs...and now he has his own successful program. I think long term his might be the highest ceiling of the realistic candidates.
I think this might be the ultimate issue.
There were rumors that Whit had made a play for Campbell last time around and the price was much too high..maybe accurate, maybe not.
But it seems clear that Campbell is content at ISU, obviously doesn't have tremendous resources but also doesn't have unreasonable expectations and people constantly looking over his shoulder.
I think ultimately the price to get him out of ISU is going to be more than even our new cash-infused Athletics Dept can muster.
In case anyone is wondering, my boat is still not running, from when it was last not running exactly one month ago. I fucked around the engine for a third or fourth time on Sunday, looking for fuel leaks, air leaks and who knows what else that could be stopping it from getting fuel. Decided to check the idle air control valve at a friends suggestion. The IAC seemed to be literally running hot, meaning the little motor inside this sensor is probably fried. Per the internet, IACs rarely go bad, but when they do, they also cause the ECU in the engine to go bad. Ugh.
New Yamaha brand IAC..... $418 before shipping and taxes. Also, ugh.
I found a Chinese knockoff for $32 on ebay that I'll try to determine if it is part of the solution before going further into debt for the Yamaha one. If this doesn't fix the issue, I'll probably haul it to a mechanic.
I have only fished 40 days this year, including guiding. That is the least amount of fishing days in 15 plus years for me, by far. I may sound like an asshole for those that get to fish less, but I'm going stir crazy.
I'll get around to posting my summer outings with pics soon. I did have a few banner days, which were great. If anyone gets a shot at fishing Cape Lookout, the bull drum fishing has been potentially the best its ever been from what I'm hearing. There are lots of albies around too.