take less (or more?) of whatever you’re on.
I agree with the general premise (UW needs to care more about winning) but The number of assumptions in here is both galling and irresponsible.
What if GA enjoys his role at Cal? Or maybe Todd Monken is a relentless asshole and hates Seattle? Or like Airwolf/DDY mentioned… Other coaches who we seemingly are interested in are hesitant because they don’t have relationships with Lake or UW.
Also, CP won the 2010 Fiesta Bowl with seniors who would’ve been the class of 2006 (his first non-transition)… Or are we going to retroactively say that isn’t a big game because it was against TCU? He smoked VA Tech and UGA in big games too with his own players.
I agree with you on a ton of this stuff. I was trying on my edgy writer’s hat so I don’t feel incredibly strong about too many of my positions on this outside of Pete needing to be more of a killer because for me, nothing is concrete in football analysis without film & the analytics on top of that film. Those are the only ways you can make a football argument concrete with me (unless it’s obvious shit like Bob Gregory sucks).
I honestly think Monken was an asshole but if I was circling him from the start of Cleveland’s downfall, the first time Head Coach who was alerted of this the day after the Apple Cup / the Saturday after Thanksgiving should be all over him before his contract was even up. In that case as the hot new coach, you shoot for Mars so that if you fall short of a huge goal that was hard to pull off, you at least land on the moon. You don’t aim for the moon because if you come up short then you’re floating around in the middle of bum fuck outer space like it seems we are with Kellen Moore-Mark Helfrich-Joe Moorehead (please by the graces of god).
Aim for multiple national championships because as dynastic as the Don James era felt, it still only yielded one half of a championship. You don’t say your goals are to win the conference and get to the Rose Bowl cuz then you have years like last year, you say we’re winning every fucking thing and if you come up just short at least you just won the Rose Bowl. Remember when Lebron said “not three, not four, not five” that Heat “dynasty” barely won two rings. Remember when Seattle’s LOB was gonna win multiple Super Bowls? Yup just one. Same goes for a big splash hire OC hires & I have not felt that “attack mode” energy being matched.
If from the day Jimmy took the job he was almost tampering with Cleveland to get an interview with Monken with a blank check in hand signed by the AD, it sends a bat signal to the rest of the coaches on the market that we got money, we are being aggressive, and we’re have a great location compared to most CFB OC gigs. Now coaches are lining up to try to get your interview instead of us lining up trying begging them to let us interview them (sounds like we didn’t even try to interview Okie State OC or WR’s coach once Monken was headed back). Once it’s established that you got big money coming from a big city, then coaches can look into our QB/WR/OL situation and again an interview with us is a chance to win the lotto not the other way around. Ed O and LSU did went straight up to the Saints with a bag of cash and a broken offense and said fix it Damnit because we’re LSU, and they did.
I am going to go back and say that the TCU game wasn’t a big game. That TCU win and subsequent undefeated season was 2009-10 not 2010-11. Pete’s first year was 2006-07, with Redshirting that puts the last Hawkins recruits (who Pete recruited too) in the 2010 class. Everyone in the country wanted to see both of those teams get smashed by someone and the BCS was so tired of their complaining that they sent them the ultimate bird and said y’all can play each other and no one will care.
Pete deserves credit for beating Oregon twice, Va Tech, and UGA. He deserves credit for everything he’s done, I love Pete. But if Pete was really the guy to build a dynasty for UDUB, after beating OU with an iconic game, he should’ve been able to outrecruit the bottom halves of POWER5 conference teams with the recognizable blue turf, pro development, and cool uniforms the way Urban Meyer did at Utah and Bowling Green. The way Nick Saban did at LSU. Instead he never went undefeated in a shit tier conference after the last remnants of Hawkins’ recruiting was gone. And he went 8-4 in his last year in a fucking awful conference while getting Smashed by a mediocre Sark team that just had more talent.
Pete laid a foundation that doogs claim Sark did. It’s really going to take a Dabo like competitive passion to the point of being a lovable psycho crazy uncle to take do the hard part which is take it to beating Ohio State in last years Rose Bowl and Beating USC and Bama in the 2016. Every day that KB is still on staff let alone Bob Gregory, I worry that Jimmy Lake isn’t big time like that.
Gerald Alexander was an easy call because his contract was so low 250k and his results of running the show on his own were already proven. People don’t turn down 350k-400k raises because they don’t want to have Will Harris as an assistant. If Jimmy cared about selling the amazing pitch that recruits could be a part of the first team to win a national championship with a head coach of color & how important it is to monopolize the west coast as Clemson, LSU, and Ohio State recruit the shitnout of LA, Gerald is on staff. I think the same ego that told Jimmy he’s a good enough developer where he could take Elijah Jackson and James Smith over Kelee, Elias, Clark, and Ayden Hector is the same feelings he had towards not valuing Gerald Alexander for the same price rage we value him, which was damn near blank check money. Terrence on staff & Gerald not being kn staff is excusable if 550k a year Bob is gone ASAP and that wasn’t the case and still isn’t.