A few Pack fans have bought into the Tom O’Brien “plateau” argument. SFN has already given some good statistical insight into the new coach, which I see no need to recreate now. Although they aren’t nearly as widespread as the wishful thinkers at the local Raleigh dishwipe would have you believe, there are some Pack fans who are upset at the idea of hiring a coach from a BCS school who has shown consistent and steady improvement in his W/L record while not looking or acting ridiculous and fielding teams of kids who keep their noses clean and leave the institution with diplomas. The fallback has already become, Wull, look, there’s a Fire-TOB web site, and the BC fans are celebrating — ’nuff said!
Granted, the specter of Herb Sendek comes into play. The thought process sounds like a paraphrase of the old Scooby-Doo trope: “He’s boring … TOO boring!” That’s just silly. The high-water mark of Wolfpack football coaches in recent memory is a “gentleman coach,” Dick Sheridan, who did at NC State what TOB did at BC: field disciplined teams of kids who posted consistently better W/L records while not drawing undo attention to himself in the process.
That having been said, it’s simply not the case that all BC fans are thrilled to see their all-time winningest coach leave, the coach who had taken them to 7 of the school’s 17 total bowl games (41 percent) and won 6 of them. There are other Eagles fans in what could be called the “What, are y’all NUTS?!” contingent (OK, probably better said the “What, are you guys NUTS?!” contingent).
And this blogger hits them hard. Read the whole thing; I’m only going to cut to the chase:
Anyway, the point of this post is that I stalwartly disagree with just about every word on the FTOB website. The only thing more ridiculous that FTOB would be some disgruntled George Mason fan starting firejimlarranaga.com should the Patriots fail to make this year’s NCAA tournament. Unless BC plans on hiring Bear Bryant as coach, anyone who believes BC is in better shape without Tom O’Brien is a moron. Glam rock band Cinderella said it best: You don’t know what you got, ’til its gone.
Well, OK, one more thing, since several here have repeated the FTOB “he doesn’t win against ranked opponents” critique:
Here is BC’s year by year record under Tom O’Brien against teams that finished the season with winning records.
1-5
1-6
1-3
1-5
2-4
2-4
3-3
2-1
4-2
5-1Hold on a second. That looks suspiciously like improvement. In fact it almost looks like constant improvement. BC has improved its record against winning teams each of the last 5 seasons, culminating with a 5-1 record this past season.
Two concluding notes:
• Please keep comments on this topic on topic or I will disable the comments feature. Thanks.
• Hat tip: PackPride
