All of that is true about Dinger and Tom Hammonds. I was there for that and doing the practices at the time and was reffing the Saturday morning scrimmage when Hammonds visited. Tacy would not go down to visit Hammonds, leaving Dinger recruiting him mano a mano with Bobby Cremins. So who do you think will win that competition? asst coach vs head coach--Cremins every time. So yes, The Gentleman threw The Dinger under the bus! He did not like that Mark had been a head coach before and would not listen to his advice. Book it!
Reff, I got a PM about Carl Tacy on the Scout board back in January, 2011 from a guy who was closely connected to WF sports and the Winston-Salem sports scene at the time. Interestingly enough, he mentioned you as one of only 3 or 4 posters who probably knew who he was. He said he would like to keep it that way, so even though that was almost six years ago I have redacted all personal references in his message regarding his job, WF family connections, etc. I just thought that his view of the Tacy situation was somewhat different from yours and that you might be interested in reading it, since you evidently knew the guy. Here is his message, without the aforementioned personal stuff:
Jan 10, 2011
Bud,
I live in Winston-Salem and have known Coach Tacy for years. In fact, up until the last couple of years, we went turkey-hunting together once or twice every spring, and I plan to renew that habit this spring.
I have a few more details because I am a former member of the media who has shielded my ID from 95 percent of the people on the WF boards. I think Keeper, The Reff, Sterldogg and maybe one or two other people know who I am, and I'd like to keep it that way.
BTW: I couldn't stand John Mackovic or Al Groh, but I loved Bill Dooley and Dave Odom.
I attended an awful lot of Wake Forest football and basketball games in the late 1970s and through the 1980s. I witnessed Coach Tacy being undermined by members of the athletic department and a number of prominent Deacon Club members who I intensely disliked back then, and I was thrilled the next season when Wake beat DePaul and that crowd had to eat crow.
With Tom Hammonds and a healthy Todd May, Coach would have had Wake Forest back deep in the NCAA tournament again. Todd May was that good. Anthony Teachey told me that Todd was a much better shooter and just as good a player as Mark Alarie. The feeling I got was that Todd May's father, Leon May, is the one who chose Kentucky for him out of high school, then chose Wake Forest for him when he left Kentucky. Todd just wanted to stay in Pikeville, Ky., and play for the local college and be around his girlfriend. He was scared of needles and doctors and medicine, and Wake's medical staff couldn't get him to take a lot of the pain-killers and anti-inflammatory drugs they wanted him to take to make his injury heal faster. He was afraid of taking them, and when he didn't take them and didn't get well, he went home.
I'd be glad to talk to you when you get to W-S. I travel a lot for my job, but give me a little warning and PM me next time you're going to be up this way.