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Dino Gaudio charged with extortion

As if this has much anything to do with his time at Wake. Wellman let the "character issues" rumor take root as further justification of the firing of Dino when there was some minor backlash as to firing a guy who got to the postseason (nevermind that he was thoroughly outcoached in the postseason) AND hiring a guy in his place that made the fanbase shrug at best. There were rumors of him banging coeds that were not squelched and perhaps originated with the AD (I have no idea if they were true or not and don't care). There was nothing about extorting Wellman once he was fired, which is what happened here, though some of you are acting in a "I told you so" way, as if there was ever a hint of criminality around the program with him at the helm. He then went on to be an ESPN contributor for twice as long as he was HC at Wake. Maybe he latched on to some Connecticut gumbahs while he was up there or something and learned the art of extortion. Who knows. I think this sucks for Dino. I'm also frankly kind of fed up with the federal investigation into how college hoops does business and linking criminality to what is an unsavory but generally accepted practice around recruiting. The feds need to fuck off already, and had they fucked off, Dino's firing would've been just a footnote and not a reason to manipulate something he said into making him a cooperating witness. I'm not saying he's a victim, but he's not much of a criminal either. Fuck off, feds. Find something better to do.
 
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devi8 said:
Boston College may be closing in albeit under multiple ADs. They fired Al Skinner (most wins in program history & an alum) in 2010 & have not been back to the NCAA tourney since. In 5 of those 11 seasons, their teams have won less than 10 games. That would be the equivalent of going straight from Odom to Bz/Manning
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Al Skinner played at UMass.
 
Crazy to see folks still defending Dino here as if this isn't all that bad and Feds should find something better to do. It's fucking blackmailing a public institution for 17 months of cash during a pandemic that is crushing schools all over the country. There were a few posters back in the post-firing days that essentially said Dino was shady as hell and there was actual fire to the smoke around his eyebrow-raising exit from Wake. Those posters got absolutely lambasted by some of the same posters excusing Dino here, they defended his character and pushed an insane conspiracy around Wellman somehow leaking allegations and orchestrating some whisper campaign. All that stuff had zero to do with the [Redacted] hire, and it was reiterated dozens of times in arguments over his stint at ESPN and again when he got back into coaching. To insist that Dino getting caught here has zero ties to his background at Wake is laughable. You don't just wake up one day and oops, accidentally attempt to extort a public institution for hundreds of thousands of dollars, oh just kidding I was just mad. And no, he doesn't get some kind of break for copping to this AFTER he was caught by both internal recordings and Federal "we'll put you in legit prison" investigators.

You can whatabout with [Redacted] or Mack being a dick or blaming the Feds - this is just a piece of shit act and there's no way to sugarcoat it.
 
Oh good, just as I thought the rehashing the Dino hiring/firing was starting to die down there’s a totally helpful post that manages to disagree with everyone and no one at the same time.
 
DCDeac said:
There were a few posters back in the post-firing days that essentially said Dino was shady as hell and there was actual fire to the smoke around his eyebrow-raising exit from Wake. Those posters got absolutely lambasted by some of the same posters excusing Dino here, they defended his character and pushed an insane conspiracy around Wellman somehow leaking allegations and orchestrating some whisper campaign. All that stuff had zero to do with the [Redacted] hire, and it was reiterated dozens of times in arguments over his stint at ESPN and again when he got back into coaching.
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Ron, is that you?

Once again, all insinuations here about his character issues, but nobody wants to say what the issues were. Did he threaten to kneecap said posters? I mean, if the guy is looking at hard time and has had his reputation destroyed, I think that at this point we can probably come clean and make public all the rumors about his character instead of making nebulous references to them.

I said what I heard already, which was that...

(1) He was banging coeds.
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

Please feel free to fill in 2 through 5. I will put the caveat here that I have no idea if 1 is or was true (nor do I care), and can't vouch for the truthfulness of 2-5 either. There, you're now off the hook. Come clean.
 
Not sure if you looking for hotel receipts and videos of transgressions. Good luck with that.

Back when Dino was at WF (and as was stated at that time), the word was that he was a rockhead and treated those that he didn't perceive as directly helpful to him like crap. Just not smart or a particularly good guy.

Those that closely observed the program could see that the team cratered at the end of the year each of the three years he coached (and he had NBA talent) and recruiting was declining. Prior to WF, Dino had a horrendous record as a HC at Army. Then drove the Loyola program off a cliff (Dino was fired after 3 years; his last year Loyola went 7-21). It wasn't about whether or not Dino was banging coeds or committing crimes. He lacked the ability to lead an ACC level program as he had already twice demonstrated he couldn't lead a low level program. He had no business coaching WF after the one interim year following Skip's passing; there was no way it was going to end well. Some people chose to look past Dino's ineptness because Buzz was also massively unsuited; so, with that pathetic comparison, to some, Dino appeared to be palatable (or at least more palatable), but he was in over his head from Day 1 at WF.

As for the L'ville mess, that simply underscores the man's stupidity. No reason to feel sorry for him. He was gifted into a three years of salary for the WF head job (something he did not deserve and would have never been considered for if not Skip's unexpected death); he parlayed the WF job into a sweet gig at ESPN (no way ESPN would have given Dino the time of day if not for the WF HC job); then, after being out of the game for seven years, Lville (who pays well) hires Dino as assistant for 3 years. Rather than appreciate how he went from just another low-major loser as HC, to an ACC HC, ESPN TV guy and a high level assistant at a top program, Dino felt he was entitled to more. Clown.
 
Sums it up. Wellman made three straight horrible hires. We can just leave it at that.
 
Pilchard said:
Not sure if you looking for hotel receipts and videos of transgressions. Good luck with that.

Back when Dino was at WF (and as was stated at that time), the word was that he was a rockhead and treated those that he didn't perceive as directly helpful to him like crap. Just not smart or a particularly good guy.

Those that closely observed the program could see that the team cratered at the end of the year each of the three years he coached (and he had NBA talent) and recruiting was declining. Prior to WF, Dino had a horrendous record as a HC at Army. Then drove the Loyola program off a cliff (Dino was fired after 3 years; his last year Loyola went 7-21). It wasn't about whether or not Dino was banging coeds or committing crimes. He lacked the ability to lead an ACC level program as he had already twice demonstrated he couldn't lead a low level program. He had no business coaching WF after the one interim year following Skip's passing; there was no way it was going to end well. Some people chose to look past Dino's ineptness because Buzz was also massively unsuited; so, with that pathetic comparison, to some, Dino appeared to be palatable (or at least more palatable), but he was in over his head from Day 1 at WF.

As for the L'ville mess, that simply underscores the man's stupidity. No reason to feel sorry for him. He was gifted into a three years of salary for the WF head job (something he did not deserve and would have never been considered for if not Skip's unexpected death); he parlayed the WF job into a sweet gig at ESPN (no way ESPN would have given Dino the time of day if not for the WF HC job); then, after being out of the game for seven years, Lville (who pays well) hires Dino as assistant for 3 years. Rather than appreciate how he went from just another low-major loser as HC, to an ACC HC, ESPN TV guy and a high level assistant at a top program, Dino felt he was entitled to more. Clown.
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Being a lunkhead or incompetent coach was hardly a debate back when he was canned. The vast majority of posters felt like he deserved to be fired. A strong majority, as I recall, understood the need to hire in-house after Skip's untimely departure (whether it was Dino or somebody else on the staff was open for debate). There were maybe a handful of posters who felt the firing wasn't justified (There were more than a handful who wondered why we would fire Dino IF we weren't going to hire somebody with a track record and a pulse in his place). Hell, the players all wanted an in-house hiring as well. But that he may have treated some like crap was not what was implied when he was let go.
 
If people are saying that his actions at L'ville are evidence that he was not smart enough or too hot headed to run an ACC basketball program, fair enough. If people are saying his actions at L'ville are evidence that he was doing shady/illegal stuff while at Wake too, that is a pretty big accusation that deserves evidentiary support before it's take seriously.

All of that also ignores the fact that all of Wellman's decisions leading up to the Gaudio firing and the the decisions he made in the years following the firing, made little to no sense. Hiring Dino as permanent HC in the first place, the Dino extension ~8 months before firing him, hiring bz, keeping bz way longer that warranted, hiring manning, extending manning with the apparently mammoth buyout, keeping manning for 6 years. What the fuck? Talk about not being smart enough to run an ACC program.
 
I don’t know that anyone could credibly call Gaudio’s firing “eyebrow raising”.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Ron, is that you?

Once again, all insinuations here about his character issues, but nobody wants to say what the issues were. Did he threaten to kneecap said posters? I mean, if the guy is looking at hard time and has had his reputation destroyed, I think that at this point we can probably come clean and make public all the rumors about his character instead of making nebulous references to them.

I said what I heard already, which was that...

(1) He was banging coeds.
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)

Please feel free to fill in 2 through 5. I will put the caveat here that I have no idea if 1 is or was true (nor do I care), and can't vouch for the truthfulness of 2-5 either. There, you're now off the hook. Come clean.
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Dino did attempt to strong arm me (directly on the phone), and the boards in general, over getting posts taken down that directly said he had an extramarital affair. He said he would get his lawyer involved if necessary. He said he needed those removed as they popped up on a search for his name and he didn't want lies like that out there as he was looking for a new coaching position. The mods did edit those comments out figuring a charge of slander wasn't worth it since we couldn't prove anything like that to be true.

No physical violence or anything like that was ever communicated towards me in our three phone conversations. So I had that going for me, which was nice.
 
Many people in the AD didn't like him, many people he played pickup basketball with didn't like him (do you know how hard it is for grads to really not like on a personal level the head coach of their basketball team who is playing pickup basketball with them), there was the tourney/sex harassment issue, Teague and Johnson may not have been doing a whole lot on the student side, there was the constant under-achievement at the end of the seasons. It was probably more the combination of things than anything else.

Does the combination of Mack and Gaudio really scream "we're great guys completely on the up-and-up" to you?
 
To set the record straight, Wellman hired Gaudio as the permanent head coach because that's what the fanbase in mourning wanted. Those of us who wanted an interim hire and a full coaching search were few and far between. The sentimental move has been holding our program back ever since.
 
PhDeac said:
To set the record straight, Wellman hired Gaudio as the permanent head coach because that's what the fanbase in mourning wanted. Those of us who wanted an interim hire and a full coaching search were few and far between. The sentimental move has been holding our program back ever since.
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Wasn't there a keep the great recruiting class together angle?
 
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