Just listened to the Gottlieb and Rome interviews... still feel pretty mixed about Manning.
He's not really saying a whole lot in any of these interviews... but I can't really fault that because he's only been the coach for a week or so, and what is he going to say in April, anyway? He's not overly enthusiastic... and he says the basic stuff that [Redacted] said (and pretty much any other coach would say).
Two things that kind of irk me:
1- He keeps saying he hopes the 4 hall of fame coaches in the ACC retire soon. Yeah, I get it... trying to get a laugh. But it is kind of LOWF... and I thought we all wanted a coach that wanted to go head to head with those guys and beat them. I realize he's just trying to be cordial and complimentary, but not my favorite comment.
2- He seems to really be lowballing expectations for the next 1-2 years. He has a right to do that... these aren't his players. He doesn't know them all that well yet. But these are the guys he's going to have for the next 2 years... would prefer that he try to motivate them instead of making it seem (at least in these interviews) like we aren't going to be all that good until he is able to recruit. Obviously, I think most of us would agree that we don't have the talent to win the ACC in 2014-15... but I'd like to think we aspire to improve off of last year. 20 wins would be nice. .500 in the ACC would be nice.
I'm glad Manning is our coach (especially compared to [Redacted]), but the honeymoon isn't going to last 2 years (unless he pulls in some ridiculous recruits for 2016-17 and buys a little more time).