I've never seen a team more overmatched. At any level. Ever.

[noeynox]

Lol so the only criteria is “ duh Diaco sucked”.

Or he got hired at Michigan.

The hiring of the head football coach is the one thing an AD can't get wrong. No AD gets to make two bad football hires. Thought everybody knew that. My bad.

 

[UConnNick]

Lol so the only criteria is “ duh Diaco sucked”.

Let's not forget that he and Suzy stood idly by while watching Jurich rocket Loserville into the ACC. Forget about the Disastro hire...missing out on the P5 opportunity dwarfs that by comparison, if we're rating the enormity of Manuel's mistakes. The guy was simply not up to the task.

 

[CL82]

Or he got hired at Michigan.

The hiring of the head football coach is the one thing an AD can't get wrong. No AD gets to make two bad football hires. Thought everybody knew that. My bad.

I get it you were traumatized by the Red Pants years. We all were. But most of us are capable looking at Warde’s entire tenure and not just focus on one hire that pretty much anyone would’ve made. But I get that you can’t. So go ahead throw one more “but but but he hired Diaco” in there and we will call it a day. What you lack in diversity of argument you make up for I’m stamina. Congrats on that, I guess.

 

[noeynox]

Let's not forget that he and Suzy stood idly by while watching Jurich rocket Loserville into the ACC. Forget about the Disastro hire...missing out on the P5 opportunity dwarfs that by comparison, if we're rating the enormity of Manuel's mistakes. The guy was simply not up to the task.

You're wrong because...Michigan.

 

[CL82]

Let's not forget that he and Suzy stood idly by while watching Jurich rocket Loserville into the ACC. Forget about the Disastro hire...missing out on the P5 opportunity dwarfs that by comparison, if we're rating the enormity of Manuel's mistakes. The guy was simply not up to the task.

See now that’s a valid argument, in my opinion. I don’t think that he or Susie could’ve managed to save given that FSU was stretching it’s muscles a little bit and conference to push for a stronger football school, but you go down swinging not sipping piña colada‘s.

 

[noeynox]

I get it you were traumatized by the Red Pants years. We all were. But most of us are capable looking at Warde’s entire tenure and not just focus on one hire that pretty much anyone would’ve made. But I get that you can’t. So go ahead throw one more “but but but he hired Diaco” in there and we will call it a day. What you lack in diversity of argument you make up for I’m stamina. Congrats on that, I guess.

You offered nothing impressive.

I already gave him credit for the apr thing in this thread before you brought it up. Too bad you can't understand the hiring of the head football coach is the most important job an athletic director has. FB coaching staffs are hard to buy out. Thus we got discount Randy.

 

[UConnNick]

You offered nothing impressive.

I already gave him credit for the apr thing in this thread before you brought it up. Too bad you can't understand the hiring of the head football coach is the most important job an athletic director has. FB coaching staffs are hard to buy out. Thus we got discount Randy.

Who really cares about the APR thing anyway? Yes, we got hammered for it by Emmert in a ridiculously unfair way just because he had an axe to grind with UCONN, but that all happened on Hathaway's watch. It wasn't Warde's fault to begin with. As for Warde getting credit for "fixing" it, I'm not so sure he deserves any gold stars on the blackboard. Fixing it could have been nothing more than doing what every other school does...fudging their numbers. You get a room full of accountants and ask them "What's the number?", and they all reply in unison, "What do you want it to be?"

 

[Scrutineer]

Why? Jeff was so impotent. He literally was the most useless AD ever. He didn’t raise any money, didn’t get anything done. He was an incompetent caretaker.

I always wondered if he bothered to call his mentor, Lew Perkins, for advice on hiring a football coach. Now, with what Edsall said about UConn blowing it by not hiring from within (Orlando and Moorhead), Hathaway may just be the one who caused most of the current mess.

He sure didn't seem comfortable around donors at a reception at the Boston Garden before a UConn basketball game there. Maybe 50 people there and he, at most, talked with a few people at two or three tables. Didn't make it to the whole room. Inexcusable.

 

[ZooCougar]

I always wondered if he bothered to call his mentor, Lew Perkins, for advice on hiring a football coach. Now, with what Edsall said about UConn blowing it by not hiring from within (Orlando and Moorhead), Hathaway may just be the one who caused most of the current mess.

He sure didn't seem comfortable around donors at a reception at the Boston Garden before a UConn basketball game there. Maybe 50 people there and he, at most, talked with a few people at two or three tables. Didn't make it to the whole room. Inexcusable.

Big Lee railroaded the only good football coach KU had in recent history.

 

[Scrutineer]

If you are saying Diaco was certifiably insane and, perhaps more importantly, utterly incompetent as our head football coach, I am in full agreement. As I've posted on many occasions, I can't find too much fault for Warde's hiring of the guy though. He was a Broyles award winning coach and his particular brand of insanity would have come off as quirky enthusiasm in a interview. I think most of us would have pulled the trigger on the guy.

He was a "safe" hire for an inexperienced AD. The Broyles Award year got him the job over experienced and successful head coaches in lesser leagues and sane coordinators in bigger leagues. Hiring is hard and maybe he sought advice from experienced AD's and coaches in the B1G and elsewhere, or maybe he didn't. We'll never know.

 

[Scrutineer]

Results do matter. All the national championships that happened under Wardes watch? They matter. Fixing RPI? It matters. Getting us through the NCAA ban? It mattered. And yeah Michigan did see all that and guess what? It mattered.

But keep going all in on “duh Diaco sucked” as if that carries the day.

It's a reach to credit Warde with NC's on his watch when the coaches weren't really his hires. He had no choice on Ollie because of Calhoun's timing and even tried to save face by making the appointment provisional. Who knows who he would have hired if Calhoun hadn't managed it so well. Maybe Glen Miller............

Edit: Want to add that the RPI and NCAA ban are what staff members fix. The AD is supposed to be the visionary laying out where we want to be in 5, 10, 20 years. Join a Power 5 conference, expand the football stadium, find major donors, secure funding and build new facilities on campus such as the basketball training facility, baseball, softball and soccer stadiums. Maybe he did some of that (Werth center) but I'm not sure.

 

[champs99and04]

Who really cares about the APR thing anyway? Yes, we got hammered for it by Emmert in a ridiculously unfair way just because he had an axe to grind with UCONN, but that all happened on Hathaway's watch. It wasn't Warde's fault to begin with. As for Warde getting credit for "fixing" it, I'm not so sure he deserves any gold stars on the blackboard. Fixing it could have been nothing more than doing what every other school does...fudging their numbers. You get a room full of accountants and ask them "What's the number?", and they all reply in unison, "What do you want it to be?"

If by fixing it people mean he sold our players down the river in exchange for less stress on his part, then yes. The real fix would have been to publically fight it, but that would have required a spine. It would be like giving Benedict credit for fixing our compliance problems by hiring Hurley. You don't get credit for keeping a rigged system rigged.

 

[champs99and04]

Results do matter. All the national championships that happened under Wardes watch? They matter. Fixing RPI? It matters. Getting us through the NCAA ban? It mattered. And yeah Michigan did see all that and guess what? It mattered.

But keep going all in on “duh Diaco sucked” as if that carries the day.

I agree that it would be unfair to characterize his tenure as a failure based on one hire. Giving Diaco the extension was what really crippled us and that was Benedict's doing. Perhaps in hindsight you could question the hire, but it isn't as if there were a ton of enticing prospects knocking on the door (I'm pretty sure people here wanted Narduzzi, and it looks like he could be on shaky footing at Pitt after a promising start). I can't bring myself to fault an AD too much for his failure to resurrect an irrelevant program with limited growth potential.

There were rumors from credible sources that Shaka wanted the UConn job, meaning there's every reason to believe Warde played his role in smoothing the runway for a great hire there (at the time, he was probably a sexier name than Hurley is now). In that context, the one year contract he gave Ollie makes sense. Calhoun put him in an impossible spot where he was either marrying himself to an unproven coach or punting on another recruiting class (which we couldn't really afford to do given how thin our 2013 and 2014 classes were). He was going to take heat - and did - no matter how he handled that.

He struck me as a reasonable, charismatic guy in general, and because of that competence he probably made sense for a school like Michigan that sells itself. On the other hand, I really question his management of PR at UConn. He was as big an apologist as any when it came to the APR, yet it seemed to buy us no good will with the media and only cemented the narrative he should have been fighting, especially given the timing. Perception was a huge problem throughout his tenure, and while much of that was no fault of his own, he certainly didn't do much to rectify things. Waiting until "the first semester grades came out" to give Ollie a real contract really irked me, even if it might have been Herbst's idea. And fairly or unfairly, the Tom Jurich quote about UConn being "written in pen" will forever haunt his legacy. That was the single most pivotal moment in UConn history and he's not going to be on the right side of it.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Ignorant, naive, incompetent leadership. Land of steady habits.

 

[CL82]

It's a reach to credit Warde with NC's on his watch when the coaches weren't really his hires. He had no choice on Ollie because of Calhoun's timing and even tried to save face by making the appointment provisional. Who knows who he would have hired if Calhoun hadn't managed it so well. Maybe Glen Miller..

Edit: Want to add that the RPI and NCAA ban are what staff members fix. The AD is supposed to be the visionary laying out where we want to be in 5, 10, 20 years. Join a Power 5 conference, expand the football stadium, find major donors, secure funding and build new facilities on campus such as the basketball training facility, baseball, softball and soccer stadiums. Maybe he did some of that (Werth center) but I'm not sure.

Disagree, he gets credit for all that went right on his watch as well as all that went wrong. That's the nature of being a department head.

 

[uchusky32]

The score will not do it justice. If Boise wanted to win 100-0, they could.

It's not the kids fault. You can't even pin it on coaching (though they haven't helped). This is the the result of an institution completely squandering its signature investment through close to a decade's worth of bad decisions.

Pasaqualoni did a lot of harm. Warde did some harm. Ollie has his share of skeletons in the closet. Benedict has made some huge mistakes. Diaco did everything he could to finish it all off.

There's one common denominator and that's the person running the school. Don't tell me sports don't matter when we all know everything is ultimately about money. All of this is an embarrassment. It's an embarrassment to have had an FCS quality football program since she took over. It's an embarrassment to send a bunch of teenagers out to Idaho to lose by 100 to grown men in front of a national audience. It's embarrassing to have reports of your old basketball coach offering $30,000 to the mother of a recruit because you needed a leech to get out of another horrible contract your AD OK'd.

People need to wake up. I have all the patience in the world for a bad team. I'll watch them at 0-2, 0-9, whatever. It's another thing when the people who make the big money are never held responsible. You don't get to lecture people about academics and NCAA rules when they're making the money that you're then getting credit for spending. You sure as hell don't get to self-report petty violations to get out of a contract that you can't pay because your football program is a national laughing stock.

I'm embarrassed to even be associated with this school at this point. That might not have much to do with this football game, but maybe it's a time where people will be less willing to tolerate pro-establishment BS. It takes more than a player or a coach or an AD to destroy one of the most decorated athletic departments in the country. It takes a president that doesn't know what the hell they're doing.

I've seen a team more over matched then this. When I played CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) basketball in NY we beat a team 68-2. They held us to 44 pts the next game but manage no more pts than 2 that game as well.