GD: History says UF in big trouble

I know that you hate Greg D****. We all do.

This guy hates Doyel so badly that he blogged an entry in March proclaiming his disdain.

I really can’t stand this guy. He works for CBS Sportsline Every time he writes about the ACC, his main goal is to piss off as many people as he can. The bad part is he goes into every story with ignorance and tells only half of evey story.

Interestingly, the issue to which ^he is referring stemmed from a March press conference where Doyel publicly question Coach K about some typical Duke hypocrisy was one of the only things that Doyel has ever done to semi-impress me. To be fair, GD was seemed to be on quite an anti-Duke tirade this winter; check out this link for more.

Regardless of the “Doyel issue” this article provided some interesting historical perspectives about coaches that change their minds to return to their old jobs. I think that you will appreciate the information.

Hear me out. Please? You’ll get your turn at the end of this story, but for now I need you to understand the history — two decades of history — that suggests Billy Donovan’s empire at Florida has been mortally wounded by the events of the past week.

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28 Responses to GD: History says UF in big trouble

  1. beowolf 07/05/2007 at 9:35 AM #

    Big frigging deal.

    Has he found evidence of Jim Valvano’s “mafia hit” on John Simonds, whom he couldn’t find in a Yahoo! search one day?

  2. kool k 07/05/2007 at 9:44 AM #

    I think I saw Simonds at a karaoke bar a few weeks back singing “Don’t stop Believing”.

  3. noah 07/05/2007 at 9:45 AM #

    Dickheadfuckface is the king of Ad Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc Island.

    (that means, ‘After the fact, therefore because of the fact.’ I went outside and it rained…therefore it rained because I went outside.)

    Rollie Massimino went to those Final Eights because he had a really good group of players that stuck together and peaked at the right time. He never returned to those heights because:

    1) He wasn’t the greatest coach in basketball to begin with (lifetime winning percentage of .562) and
    2) He stopped being able to just cherry-pick the cream of the Philly crop every single year. It’s the same reason John Cheney at Temple began to struggle at about the same time.

    Bobby Cremmins ran into the same sort of problems at Georgia Tech. He had a guy in New York that helped him land all of those guys like Stephon Marbury and Kenny Anderson. He and Cremmins had a falling out and as a result, Cremmins suddenly had to make do with substandard talent.

    Glen Mason is a FANTASTIC football coach. Kansas, aside from Gayle Sayers, has no football history. 4-7 is actually pretty damn good at Kansas. And Mason did a terrific job at Minnesota. They’re playing in the Big 10 and they don’t even have their own stadium. Minneapolis and St. Paul are pretty nice cities….in June…but recruiting guys there from FLORIDA in the late fall and early winter when its -3 degrees and there’s 100 feet of snow on the ground and you’re asking them to come play football in a 1970s ugly-ass DOME?? That’s not an easy job and Mason STILL did it well. He was on the shortlist at Ohio State before they took their current coach.

    Dickheadedfuckface did this same crap with Lowe. “THESE guys weren’t good coming from the NBA to college…therefore LOWE can’t be good! Because one thing has to do with another!”

  4. waxhaw 07/05/2007 at 10:57 AM #

    Sort of like saying GD does have a brain therefore he must use it occasionally. One does not lead to the other. (For more evidence of this see your average wal mart hole fan.)

  5. Pack92 07/05/2007 at 11:18 AM #

    noah,

    I’m still laughing over the nickname for Doyel. I could not have said it better myself. You’re also spot on about those coaches. It seems for Cremins especially that he was exposed by a lack of talent.
    I’m still laughing…

  6. Dr. BadgerPack 07/05/2007 at 11:39 AM #

    Noah– you are grossly missinformed on your midwest winters.. Everyone knows Minnesota only gets 99 feet of snow.

    Different note– know of a good monitor cleaning service? ’cause my coffee inexplicably ended up there after reading your post.

  7. Girlfriend in a Coma 07/05/2007 at 12:06 PM #

    Noah meant that DickHeadFuckface is the king of “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc” island.

    “Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc” translates from Latin “after which, therefore because of” — an obvious error of logic.

    “Ad hoc” in Latin means “for this” — it has come to mean “for a specific purpose.” Ad ad hoc committee comes together for a specific purpose, for example.

  8. BoKnowsNCS71 07/05/2007 at 12:41 PM #

    You guys are going too easy on him. Tell us what you really feel.

  9. haze 07/05/2007 at 12:52 PM #

    ^ Didn’t know that Morrisey was a latin scholar.

  10. TopTenPack 07/05/2007 at 2:14 PM #

    How many cool points do we lose for:

    1. Bring up logical fallacies on a sports blog (with the Latin name)
    2. Correct the Latin name of the fallacy in a later comment

  11. Girlfriend in a Coma 07/05/2007 at 2:29 PM #

    I’m already running in negatives as far as cool points anyway. I would think posting Latin translations on an internet site would cost me a whole lot of cool points.

    I just didn’t want a DickHeadFuckface apologist to show up and correct noah. It was a preemptive strike.

  12. noah 07/05/2007 at 2:45 PM #

    POST hoc…duh. That’s my fault and many thanks for correcting me.

  13. choppack1 07/05/2007 at 5:48 PM #

    Noah nailed it. I think you have to look at each of these situations on their own.

    Cremins – His diamond had ceased shining a while back. He was no longer getting great PGs.

    Glen Mason – Yea, Kansas went back to stinking, but if I read it correctly, he was only at KU one year.

    Guess what – next year Florida may struggle, but it’s because they’ve lost 5 starters, not because Donovan changed his mind. However, I think Donovan does have the top rated recruiting class in the country. His little dip into the pros probably won’t help him on the recruiting trail, but if, he continues to be successful and doesn’t pull this crap again, he’ll be fine.

  14. Dr. BadgerPack 07/05/2007 at 8:31 PM #

    After walking around today, the populatioin here (I live in Gainesville now) can be added to the list of those who hate Gregg Doyel.

    This town thinks so highly of their “elite, pro style” sports– words of a local columnist– it’s not even funny.

    Chop- around here, the locals think Donovan’s flirtation with the Pros will HELP recruiting. I don’t buy it.

    I hope one day similar discussions will be had about State (and Wisconsin, I hold allegiances to both). You know, the, why would the coach want to leave after 2 NC’s discussion… OK, I’ll put the bottle down now.

  15. choppack1 07/05/2007 at 10:08 PM #

    BP – Gator fans are about as diehard and as unrounded as they come. The last thing this world needs is another Gator chamionship.

    There is no way – I repeat – no way whatsoever – that this little stunt will help his recruiting. At best, it shows he loves the college game and doesn’t want to leave right now. At worst, he looks indecisive, weak and flaky.

    I don’t think a recruit is going to know anything right now. All he’ll know is what Donovan did last year. OTOH, guys like Roy and K haven’t shown that they are going anywhere. And you can bet other coaches will use it against him.

    We’ll see – end of the day – if stays at Florida and he’s committed – I think Florida will continue to be a force. If this episode costs him some confidence and swagger – that’s another story.

  16. gumbydammit 07/05/2007 at 10:17 PM #

    I’ve said it before, and it deserves repeating. There is only one good thing that came out of Greg Doyel being born – his birth certificate. And that is only because you could use it to wipe your ass.

  17. Dr. BadgerPack 07/05/2007 at 10:20 PM #

    Chop- Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree w/ the crowd down here. I think Donovan’s manuvere was a Rod Tidwell move (show me the money) and it should bite him in the ass. In a perfect world, anyway.

    On a tangent– I see folks here in Gainesville wearing UNC apparell and they seem to enjoy (1) bad mouthing my NC State gear that I wear with pride and (2) badmouth my education level. I would have though most folks in a “championship town” would gravitate towards the local team.

    Even more of a tangent– while at Wisconsin, I had 3 undergrads that I supervised one summer… NC State, Duke, and Carolina. I briefed them on the project and asked them about their backgrounds in chemistry. They each spoke, and after the UNC student stated her background, the State and Duke students looked at one another and cursed. I asked if that was because of the school affiliation– they said, no, it was about the fact that 2 weeks were about to be spent on “remedial” chemical education!

  18. Dr. BadgerPack 07/05/2007 at 10:21 PM #

    gumby, this is the second time today I’ve had to Windex my monitor…

  19. highstick 07/05/2007 at 10:41 PM #

    Chop,

    “At worst, he looks indecisive, weak and flaky.”

    Sounds like someone we used to know, but at best he fit this description~!

  20. BoKnowsNCS71 07/06/2007 at 8:40 AM #

    I’m not sure that Donovan’s mistake and reversal will hurt him. It sends a message to recruits that he intends to stay at UF and not leave anytime soon.

    He must know how to coach and recruit — 2 NCAAT championshhips at a non-traditional basketball school (if not a FB school). Plus his players went to the NBA.

    The only thing that might affect his coaching IMHO might be the loss of assistant coaches to other jobs or some waning of “desire” on his part to work as hard as he has to build winning teams or getting distracted (the coach K effect) by taking on side projects like a show on XM radio, coaching US teams, TV shows, etc… to the point that not enough attention is placed on the team/recruiting.

    I just don’t see the cause and effect nor “history” acting like a Greek god and playing with the lives of mortals.

    GD needs to pack it up. History says that writers who speak like the Delphic Oracle — but out their ass — usually are history.

  21. noah 07/06/2007 at 8:56 AM #

    The problem with Dickheadfuckface isn’t just that he’s stupid….he’s boring.

    “Florida won’t maintain their current level of success!”

    Huh? What? Florida won’t win every national title from here on out? Wow. Way to step out on that limb.

  22. BoKnowsNCS71 07/06/2007 at 9:49 AM #

    Creating controversy seems to be the new sports journalism. Many younger folks in the media talk less about real sports now. They talk around it. Who a player dates. Who cheats on his wife. What he got arrested for. Mainly gossipy items that fit better in People Magazine than in SI.

    Mickey Mantle was a carouser as was the Babe. Probably made a few bets in their time. If the media back then was as fixated on that side of their lives, they’d probably have been banned from baseball early on.

    Some journalists today seem to have abandoned an important part of sprots news — an insteresting bio or story — and have gone to the dark side of looking for ways to diss all athletes. I heard one radio announcer criticizing Tiger Woods for playing the final round of golf in the Open while his wife was in bed awaiting the birth of their daughter. I mean — that decision should be between a man and his wife — not some value judgement by an announcer who wants to create a sense of moral warts and shine lights on them.

    GD has become Darth Vader. Lost in hate and unable to see the positive side of sports. He gets attention based on emphasizing the negative.

    At the same time, we enjoy and respect the writers or announcers who blend in information and insightful observations about sports that teach us something.

    I’m not so sure I like the “new sports journalism”.

  23. beowolf 07/06/2007 at 10:31 AM #

    In other words, sports journalists have become like other journalists. Screw telling the story, try to use your writing to “make” the news.

    Then watch in angry bewilderment as radio and blogs beat you to all the real stories.

  24. RAWFS 07/06/2007 at 10:35 AM #

    Doyel undoubtedly has a mission to be controversial, and was hired specifically to do that. Logical and factual fallacies aside, he’s very successful — he gets people talking about him and gets eyeballs on his pages and thus the advertisements embedded therein.

    To explain my theory further, what Doyel writes has to do one thing: draw attention and get clicks onto CBS Sportsline’s site — which is second ot third-tier at best considering that ESPN, CNNSi and Fox Sports get the bulk of the clicks. Then there is CNBC sports. I would even hazard a guess that CBSSL is neck and neck with Sporting News Online, but far behind in content quality. That in mind, they have to do what they can to get people to venture over there and take a look….and Doyel is quite literally a tool to accomplish that goal.

    Fairness, balance, even truth are casualties to achieve those ends, and I suspect that Doyel doesn’t believe two-thirds of what he writes. Surely he’s smart enough to know he’s as full of BS as the rest of the thinking sporting community does. At the same time, people constantly make the mistake of taking him seriously in any way and further fuel his childish tantrums by reading him at all.

    Like most bullies, the only way to make him go away is to pretend he doesn’t exist.

  25. CarnifeX 07/06/2007 at 10:55 AM #

    all these major sports outlets (most specifically the worldwide leader) are following the MTV protocol and focusing less on their initial coverage of someone else’s product and have turned to creating their own product.

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