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Building a Program vs Coaching a Team

myDeaconmyhand

myDeaconmyhand

First man to get a team of horses up Bear Mountain
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The article I just read about the mass defection of transfers from Butlers Basketball team reminded me of an argument I made against Grobe last offseason, in that building a program is much more than just in-game coaching. Great coaching minds are wonderful in the short term, but if those coaches don't have the personality or will power to build the brand of their team through media and fundraising then their success won't be sustained. Brad Stevens was renowned for his coaching acumen, yet Butler disappeared from college basketball relevancy nearly as soon as Brad Stevens left. Regarding coaching acumen, I personally don't give much of a shit how our coaches win their games, as long as they win games and put in a system for success that can be sustained after they're gone, and that means: recruiting, facilities, and heightened popularity/awareness. To put a personal spin on this argument, Coach Prosser and Coach Grobe both fulfilled elements of program building, Skip with recruiting, and Grobe with facilities, but it appears now that we are basically rebuilding both programs. I hope that Coach Manning and Corch Clawson are capable of improving the Wake brand in the long term, so that their eventual successors don't need to start from scratch as so many previous Wake coaches have had to.
 
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Is our house made of bricks or sticks? Reading the reports from the guys who attended the scrimmage, it's not even sticks but twigs. Some programs can survive multiple HC changes, Boise St come to mind, and continue to excel. Most, like Butler and us with Mackovic, do not succeed, after the coach that turned it around moves on. This is why a great AD is worth his/her weight in gold.
 
So true. When you build a program, your tide has to float all boats -- coaching, recruiting, media, fanbase, etc. Grobe never elevated our recruiting cachet despite a conference championship and Orange Bowl berth. It's the visionary AD who must insure that when you have the opportunity, you take advantage. And if your star coach gets hired away, you find someone equally capable and charismatic to replace him. It's not hard to see where WFU failed in the past, and if changes aren't made we risk repeating history again and again.
 
Butler is a terrible example of that. They successfully transitioned from Collier to Matta to Lickliter to Stevens. If this newest guy doesn't work out you can chalk it up to moving up in competition to the Big East or just bad luck with their newest hire.
 
I wouldn't call it scratch as much as shit
 
Yea we don't have an ACC caliber QB right now, we have one ACC quality OT and a Guard playing OT, Tyree has some potential but then after that pretty thin at WR with lots of guys who could be bit players, and then one potentially ACC quality RB who is under-sized and then a couple Safetys playing RB. Really awful. Defense might be okay.

Basketball team has an 8 person class and we are losing all shooting.

We are in a pretty rough spot.
 
Some of you people have absolutely no historical perspective on our football program. We have more talent in our program today than at pretty much any point pre-2000.

Last seasons 4-8 was considered an unmitigated disaster by most yet was pretty much a typical Wake season in the 100 years prior to Jim Grobe
 
#LOWF


"Aww shucks. We are a little thin right now at a few positions but we will hopefully get it together by the fall. It is all what these guys wanna do. Some of them have hangnails keeping them out or their minds on others things and we really just need them to step up. I got to get their attention. Winning at Wake is hard especially if there are some knotheads that aren't on the same page as everyone else. We are gonna simplify the defense as much as we can and on offense just stick with running five plays in the spring game because we don't want to tip our hand to ULM. Lobo is a real mastermind and we just need to let him get his guys in here to make it work. We will certainly compete the best we can this year and I just hope that if we play hard enough maybe we can have a chance to force a fumble on a punt to get within a score to win."

-Jim Grobes thoughts on spring practice so far in the alternate universe where he is still the coach.
 
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Bob Niedbala said:
Some of you people have absolutely no historical perspective on our football program. We have more talent in our program today than at pretty much any point pre-2000.

Last seasons 4-8 was considered an unmitigated disaster by most yet was pretty much a typical Wake season in the 100 years prior to Jim Grobe
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Who on our team matches with the following Caldwell guys:

Desmond Clark
J. Anderson
J. Diese
Ovie
John Stone
T. Williams
Fred Robbins
Calvin Pace
 
Bob Niedbala said:
Some of you people have absolutely no historical perspective on our football program. We have more talent in our program today than at pretty much any point pre-2000.

Last seasons 4-8 was considered an unmitigated disaster by most yet was pretty much a typical Wake season in the 100 years prior to Jim Grobe
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LOWF at its finest.
 
Bob Niedbala said:
Some of you people have absolutely no historical perspective on our football program. We have more talent in our program today than at pretty much any point pre-2000.

Last seasons 4-8 was considered an unmitigated disaster by most yet was pretty much a typical Wake season in the 100 years prior to Jim Grobe
Click to expand...

They were highly rated High School players. What are most of them better at today then they were when they got here? Awhile back I told the story of Barry Alverez showing up at Wisconsin and cutting all of the seniors. Besides Bud and KJ, what senior couldn't we live without.
 
Maybe he's saying, "Wellman, we will never forget."
 
The point offered in this thread was that we are starting from scratch in both football and basketball, but I don't believe that either. I would say we have fair talent, but coaching cost us a lot of games in being unable to develop players very well, and the in-game coaching was very, very poor. In football, in 10 years, Grobe went from innovative and aggressive to playing scared, ultra-conservative and predictable. Buzz was simply unable to get his players motivated and bring energy and passion, or to be mentally tough enough to play fundamentally sound. Add to that it seems we simply conceded every single road game. I'm not sure about football yet, but basketball should be at least middle of the pack in the ACC this year. I don't see DM as starting from scratch.
 
88Deac said:
The point offered in this thread was that we are starting from scratch in both football and basketball, but I don't believe that either. I would say we have fair talent, but coaching cost us a lot of games in being unable to develop players very well, and the in-game coaching was very, very poor. In football, in 10 years, Grobe went from innovative and aggressive to playing scared, ultra-conservative and predictable. Buzz was simply unable to get his players motivated and bring energy and passion, or to be mentally tough enough to play fundamentally sound. Add to that it seems we simply conceded every single road game. I'm not sure about football yet, but basketball should be at least middle of the pack in the ACC this year. I don't see DM as starting from scratch.
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Manning is our 3rd coach in 7 years, and we haven't been to a postseason tournament in 4 years. How many former top 100 recruits will we have on roster this upcoming season? All-ACC players? Impact transfers?
 
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