Will we ever win a Big Game?

Topic

Howdy Folks,

It has come to my attention that winning games is hard. That’s what coaches will tell ya. Man it’s hard to win a game when an oblong ball can take all kinds of funny bounces, right?

Well Oregon’s shit team just won something we haven’t won since 2001. Not a Rose Bowl BUT a BIG game. I didn’t watch cuz I’m not a BAG but I knew they would. How? They have a coach who was fired from FIU? They have an LSU like offense (lol)? Nope. They don’t care about anything other than winning.

Wisconsin cares about cheese. Wisconsin cares about recruiting to what “fits” their mold of human beings they want as model citizens cough cough. Wisconsin cares about fitting their archetype instead of evolving. Oregon can’t even spell evolution.

Washington has everything Oregon has, WANTS and then some. Yet we’re the first coaching staff/fanbase/community to excuse ourselves for not winning with the good ol “winning football games are hard”. Is that what Bama-Clemson-Ohio State says?

Do you know how hard it is to have the type of BIG GAME WINNING tradition that UDUB has? Do you know how badly Baylor, Oregon, Stanford, BOISE STATE wish they could sell that to recruits? Did you know that our own Sav’ell Smalls has never even heard of Mason Foster? HOW TF WOULD HE KNOW WHO TUI IS LET ALONE DON JAMES LET ALONE WINNING IN BIG FUCKING GAMES LOOKS LIKE IF WE DONT CARE ABOUT IT AS THE FOOTBALL PROGRAM’S LIFE SOURCE.

Do you think Oregon cares when you say “how much did you have to pay Kayvon Thibodeaux to get him to come there?” Fuck no. Do you think they care about the race-baiting shit or the lack of all PAC-12 players? Fuck no. Not a great example here cuz he was a retard, but do you know how much Sark cared if you asked him if Shaq Thompson and John Ross III came to UDUB without the help of some cash? Not a single fuck. Do you think Nick Saban cares if you accuse him for foul play with Ale Kaho? FUCK NO BECAUSE HE HAS AN ENTIRE FANBASE AND ADMINISTRATION ON HIS HEAD TO LIVE UP TO THE HIGHEST EXPECTATIONS THAT COULD BE BESTOWED UPON A CFB HEAD COACH, WIN A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP OR FUCKING ELSE.

We’re doing the opposite right now. Pete didn’t care if he lost Joe Ngata. Pete didn’t care if his offense was a joke. PETE DIDNT CARE THAT HE BLEW LEADS AGAINST OREGON. He didn’t. Football made his stomach turn once he saw the effects it was having on kids.

Now with Jimmy in the saddle, my biggest worry going in was that he would be too much like Boise. Crazy right?! A team with the 3rd most Rose Bowl wins, the 3rd most Rose Bowl appearances, the 2nd most wins behind USC out west LOCATED IN THE HEART OF THE SECOND BIGGEST MARKET ON THE WEST COAST, would be looking for help from Boise State. How many times did Pete win big games without Dan Hawkins recruits? Zero. Fucking zero.

Do I believe there is a happy medium? Of course and I couldn’t be more thankful to coaches like Chris Petersen for helping me see that. But you wanna know what not caring about winning looks like? Keeping Keith Bhonapha going into the bare 2021 class after he dropped Austin Jones in 2018 and after he didn’t try to get Bijan this year. Keeping Bob Gregory on because he is a nice stern fella doesn’t fucking fly at Bama-Clemson-LSU-UGA-OU-Ohio State. Not caring about winning is trying to bring Kellen on because he’s nice and smart and could use us as a platform. Not caring about winning is when you don’t sell out for Todd Monken from the second your named the head coach. Not caring about winning is letting Gerald Alexander, the coach with the most LA ties in the conference, hang out at Cal on a 250k a year salary.

Does Jimmy care about winning EVERYTHING, every coaches battle, every recruiting battle, every marketing battle, every video content battle, every revenue and fundraising battle? I don’t know. He better. Because right now we are Stanford. Have the highest standards. Again here we are saying it. Everyone wants to beat Oregon and match Oregon and use them as a bar fuck that. BEAT EVERYONE AT FUCKING EVERYTHING.

Replies

Too long didn’t read

Suburban Kodak wrote:

Too long didn’t read

Quote

Lazy bum. It was a solid read.

I look at it like this. I’ll be disappointed if Kellen is the new OC. I want a non Boise coach to take the helm and make it work.

Bob Gregory. If he’s retained it tells me that Lake has feelers out there and they’re coming back with no RB coaches that he finds acceptable to replace KB. Much like USC wanted to replace Helton for sure but no big fish were really available.

This is a great write up. If you can’t recruit top coaching talent to come live in Seattle then you don’t have a prayer landing top athletes. MAKE the top names come here.

Not a great start so far.

I endorse this message.

Talented kids believing they can win and having trust in each other is everything.

Pete’s system prevented that culture from building at UW for too many years.

Give me some decent linebackers, some QB sacks, and a functioning offense, the Pac-12 is ours.

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.

TacoSoup wrote:

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.

Quote

Saying “He likes his role at Cal” or, “He hates Seattle and doesn’t have a relationship” are answers that would make sense for normal people in normal life. But this is college football and we need to be able to sell the shit about our program. There is a big difference between getting the best guy and the 4th best guy. We have a fuck load of money to throw around and an INCREDIBLE city with some of the best facilities in the country AND have a roster that is stacked with talent.

They have hesitations? MAKE them see why they need to come here. Do what needs to be done short of major felonies.

So you’re saying Jimmy needs a top notch bag man? I’ve paid attention to recruiting for awhile now, and it’s not hard to see who’s taking care of the recruits. There’s plenty of smoke around Clemson, any top SEC team, and a certain P12 squad. While we’ve bowed out of some recruitment races early in the process under coach Pete.

mosdef29 wrote:

So you’re saying Jimmy needs a top notch bag man? I’ve paid attention to recruiting for awhile now, and it’s not hard to see who’s taking care of the recruits. There’s plenty of smoke around Clemson, any top SEC team, and a certain P12 squad. While we’ve bowed out of some recruitment races early in the process under coach Pete.

Quote

I was talking about recruiting coaches, so not really a bag man issue. But yes, we need better bag men.

This is all true. Not only does jimmy need to instill the alpha mentality but so does our entire athletic department. We can easily be the choice over Oregon for every kid but to do that we have to match their marketing/branding etc. Hate to bring up the game environments too but Autzen is a good time and the crowds are way more involved and in to the games than HS. I know we have a “fan committee” who now have say in gameday changes etc.. but where do we sign to get sub K in this group haha

I thought Jimmy was gonna be this guy, not Boise 2.0.

LIPO, I know, but I don’t love this start.

The Terrance Brown hire didn’t scare anyone in the league, let alone excite any recruits. It was a beta comfort move.

I really thought and am still holding out hope Jimmy is an alpha. But I don’t like the start at all.

BenoBaby wrote:

I thought Jimmy was gonna be this guy, not Boise 2.0.

LIPO, I know, but I don’t love this start.

The Terrance Brown hire didn’t scare anyone in the league, let alone excite any recruits. It was a beta comfort move.

I really thought and am still holding out hope Jimmy is an alpha. But I don’t like the start at all.

Quote

It’s perfectly reasonable to LIPO but we have reason to start to worry.

“ They have hesitations? MAKE them see why they need to come here. Do what needs to be done short of major felonies.”

How old are you? Are you married? Do you have a family or kids? Do you think these decisions are made in a vacuum?

A lot of football coaches are absolute mercenaries and psychos… but not all.

GA played at Boise, started his coaching career under Harsin and CP/Lake and Choate at Montana State. Now he is at Cal with Wilcox (more Boise + Oregon)… GA’s resume tells me that he is a certain type of cat and likely values different things then most coaches.

Also, can we stop propping up Seattle as a reason for people to coach here? They live on the Eastside typically and are at the office all hours of the day. They probably can’t even name half the neighborhoods in town.

TacoSoup wrote:

“ They have hesitations? MAKE them see why they need to come here. Do what needs to be done short of major felonies.”

How old are you? Are you married? Do you have a family or kids? Do you think these decisions are made in a vacuum?

A lot of football coaches are absolute mercenaries and psychos… but not all.

GA played at Boise, started his coaching career under Harsin and CP/Lake and Choate at Montana State. Now he is at Cal with Wilcox (more Boise + Oregon)… GA’s resume tells me that he is a certain type of cat and likely values different things then most coaches.

Also, can we stop propping up Seattle as a reason for people to coach here? They live on the Eastside typically and are at the office all hours of the day. They probably can’t even name half the neighborhoods in town.

Quote

Not everyone will be able to be persuaded, but there are jobs you wouldn’t necessarily want but would take if the offer was good enough, correct? Coaches move jobs and locations all the time. It’s part of their life.

Also, living in Bellevue is 100x better than 90% of the towns that P5 college programs are in. Columbus, Ohio? Eugene? HAPPY VALLEY?!

TacoSoup wrote:

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.

Quote

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.

I see one of the biggest issues with a lack of OC, TE coach, and Booby G still being overpaid and employed is that it stunts recruiting for the next class. Kids don’t like the unknown and they have enough people (ie: FSP) around them to read the “tea leaves” for them. The accelerated recruiting cycle seems to be passing us by by the day with the lack of a complete staff to build these necessary relationships as early as possible.

Also, I’ll take half of Booby G’s salary to recruit like shit and not develop kids.

Winning BIG GAMES require accountability and a focus on the right things.

Petersen wasn’t focused on winning. He was focused on winning PROVIDED IT WAS DONE WITH THE GUYS HE WANTED. This includes coaches.

If we had Locker or Tui at QB we beat bama and penn state. But Petersen recruited Browning and that was his guy. Now we are stuck with Sirmon, Dylan Morris and an incoming high school kid.

If we had some athletic carnivores at inside linebacker (BBK and Bierra) we would have played for the conference championship this year, but now we have a stable of average dudes who probably couldn’t start on any other defense in this league, but Gregory still has a job all these years.

Bush Hamdan was his guy too.

Oh yeah, Pete wanted to win, but he left us? with too many holes to fill because he wanted his guys – whether at key positions on the team or in his staff.

Now we are paying the price. Yes he elevated us from where we were under Sark, and the Built for Life program has changed the culture and helped us land a lot of good players. God Bless Him.

But Pete never took the program to where we thought he would when he wa hired.

6-5 regular season record and winning the Vegas bowl? Give me a fucking break.

The object of football is winning the Natty. We have MASSIVELY underachieved the past 25 years. And Oregon has overachieved.

The only difference between them and us is that they want to win and we want to tell ourselves whatever outcome we get is okay and we are nice.

It is maddening. We should be a top 10 team every year with the resources and fanbase we have.

But Doogs will make excuses for every failure.

Recruiting? Oh we don’t pay recruits (lol yeah right) so we can’t get our dudes!!

Coaches? Maybe their wives don’t want to be here!

Marketing? We don’t want to be Oregon!!! (How about being Ohio State??)

GameDay? Why do you guys care so much??

It all boils down to what you want. If you want to win Natties and think that UW is underachieving every year we aren’t in the top 10, then you are my kind of fan.

If you see that and think “that’s unrealistic” then you are a Doog.

lol – look at fucking Oregon. In 91 if you had to bet on who would have the best 30 years (THIRTY) from that point between us and them NO ONE would’ve thought it was realistic for them to even be close to us. You would’ve heard all the excuses Doogs make plus a million…

But guess what, they stopped feeling sorry for themselves and made it happen and we STILL have everything better than they do.

FOH if you want to make excuses why we shouldn’t ON AVERAGE be in the top 10 at EVERYTHING.

Faith first, buddy.