• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

ESPN: Coaches at a crossroads

Bkf prefers it when the coach is the problem child who ends up in the news instead of the student athletes.
 
"They want to stick their nose in the air and proclaim what an academically superior school Wake Forest is."

I don't. I left college 30+ years ago. I didn't think WFU was academically superior to other similar schools then, and I don't now. There are a lot of good schools. WFU was a great place, for sure, and I had fun there. But now it has priced itself out of contention for my kids.

So all I really want is to win in sports without cheating.

What I really don't want is to pretend WFU has different rules than everyone else and that's why it sucks at sports.
 
bobknightfan said:
At least Bob Knight's team were comprised of student-athletes....almost all of which...over a 40-year coaching career....stayed out of trouble and graduated.

And he managed to win 11 Big Ten titles, 3 NCAA championships & 902 games with those kinds of kids.
Click to expand...

Got it. It's ok so long as wins are the end result.
 
Ron spend all those years building his own little empire. Now he wants to put it to the ultimate test of keeping his buddy installed as HC against the will of most of the fan base.
 
deaclite said:
Ron spend all those years building his own little empire. Now he wants to put it to the ultimate test of keeping his buddy installed as HC against the will of most of the fan base.
Click to expand...

Think we need a different word than "empire." Empires typically grow by conquering other nations. We couldn't conquer a sandcastle in our present condition.
 
Kent said:
"They want to stick their nose in the air and proclaim what an academically superior school Wake Forest is."

I don't. I left college 30+ years ago. I didn't think WFU was academically superior to other similar schools then, and I don't now. There are a lot of good schools. WFU was a great place, for sure, and I had fun there. But now it has priced itself out of contention for my kids.

So all I really want is to win in sports without cheating.

What I really don't want is to pretend WFU has different rules than everyone else and that's why it sucks at sports.
Click to expand...

Absolutely! +1
 
Bkf, you really have no idea what happened with the Dino firing. You should just stop talking.

We all agree he needed to be let go, but not for the reason Wellman has now made up.
 
bobknightfan said:
As I said in my original post, I'm not defending the hiring or retention of [Redacted]. I'm only saying that Dino had to go. And the names of the reasons why (in addition to the Gary Clark/Jeff Teague fiasco that made national television news)....as everyone should know....include Tony Woods, Ty Walker (Skip had a part in those two, as well), Melvin Tabb & J. T. Terrell. You can google them to get the arrest and/or suspension stories if you are interested. And Ari Strewart was arrested on drug charges after he left WF, so I doubt he was clean when he was here, either. There may well be others, but that is more than enough reason to fire Dino.

(And I haven't even touched on the increasing problem Dino had of recruiting players who were not the least bit interested in being a student, getting an education, or graduating.)
Click to expand...


All stuff that happened after Dino left.

And most of the players who weren't committed here when Dino took over appear to be 4 year players.

As usual, you are pretty much wrong on every fact.
 
bobknightfan said:
The problem with some of our fans on these boards is that they want to have it both ways. They want to stick their nose in the air and proclaim what an academically superior school Wake Forest is....then they come right out and say that they would have no problem with Wake Forest breaking NCAA rules and being put on probation if it meant a trip to the Final Four. Fortunately, these people are not the ones who are making the decisions for University.

And, obviously, these people are blinded by partisanship to the point that they have lost all objectivity if they cannot see...or admit...the transgressions that were going on regarding Dino's firing. I don't need to list the transgressions or the names. They were in the newspapers...and police records...for all to see.
Click to expand...

I don't know how many times this argument has been put to rest, and yet someone will raise it again. There may be some paople on these boards that advocate for Wake to assume SEC morals in sports. But there are very few of them, even fewer than the supporters of Buzz and Ron. The issue for the overwhelming majority of the fans is that they disagree with Wellman and his dwindling handful of supporters insistence that for Wake the choice is between Buzz and SEC morals. That is not the choice; that is self-serving dissembling by Ron Wellman and friends. Many other academically oriented schools do much better at sports without sacrificing either their academics or their culture. Overwhelming evidence for athletic success by academically demanding schools has been repeatedly presented on these boards. Just to name one example, six of the eight Ivy League schools did better than, or as well as, Wake in the Director's Cup this past season. The overwhelming majority of Wake fans would like for us to run a clean program and still manage to field winning and championship caliber teams. This is clearly no longer possible with Ron Wellman at the helm and Jeff [Redacted] as our basketball coach. Unfortunately, there are still some fans who cannot, or will not, see the impossibility of doing what Wellman has done and saying what he has said and still being able to lead our athletic programs credibly and su8ccessfully. In a sense, Ron Wellman and Jeff [Redacted] have become zombies: they are physically here but they are dead as far as the fans and success at Wake is concerned.

We can have both a clean program and athletic success at Wake. It's just that Ron Wellman and Jeff [Redacted] cannot provide them.
 
Buzz is clown-shoes. Wellman is the target, as I've stated before. I'm starting to wonder if Hatch is the catalyst. Cut off the head.
 
Bottom line is it's been 6 years since there was a coach running the Wake Forest basketball program that had any business doing so.

All the rest of it is just noise.
 
VaDeac said:
Think we need a different word than "empire." Empires typically grow by conquering other nations. We couldn't conquer a sandcastle in our present condition.
Click to expand...

Empire might be the right word. The concept of nation or nation state is fairly new (think of Italy, Germany and even Belgium in the 19th century). Traditional empires were built on centralized small state conquering tribal areas rather than centralized states. Japan was able to conquer China in the 20th century because China did not have a centralized self view of nation. Germany and Russia, in the 20th century were able to sustain empires specifically because the conquering of nation states is difficult once the identity of such is established. As a corollary, it is extremely difficult even to divide an established nation state (U.S. in the 19th century, Canada in the 20th century, Belgium in the 21st century).

So, Wellman has formed an empire because there is no organized or centralized forces opposing him. He is a nation state and we are the tribes.
 
Glad the focus of this article is away from bzz's incompetency as a coach (which is well established) and, instead, is on the piss-poor job Wellman is doing as AD. The billboard worked?

Basically, Wake is not competitive in basketball except for the rare blind-pig-finding-a-truffle type event. I'm going to try to enjoy the modest success of our football team, then, will someone please wake me when basketball is over? I no longer care to watch.
 
mothersodear said:
Glad the focus of this article is away from bzz's incompetency as a coach (which is well established) and, instead, is on the piss-poor job Wellman is doing as AD. The billboard worked?

Basically, Wake is not competitive in basketball except for the rare olfactory challenged-pig-finding-a-truffle type event. I'm going to try to enjoy the modest success of our football team, then, will someone please wake me when basketball is over? I no longer care to watch.
Click to expand...

FIFY - :thumbsup:
 
My scorecard on Wellman since I became a Deac:

1) Politely let Odom go. Good move, everyone was ready to move on.
2) Hired Prosser. Hell yes.
3) Fired Caldwell. Great guy, first black ACC head coach, but the wins weren't there. Good move.
4) Hired Jim Grobe. Hell yes. Awesome coach, great hire, perfect fit for Wake.
---- NCAA tournament appearances, Orange Bowl appearance, new football stadium, etc... -----
5) Prosser dies, retains Dino. Mistake in hindsight, but at the time hard/impossible to criticize.
6) Fires Dino. Premature or prescient? We'll never know. But Dino as a long-term leader of Wake basketball never passed the eye/smell/any test.
7) Hires [Redacted]. Panic? Indigestion mistaken for gut feeling? Buddy hire? Things were really bad enough we had to hire a zero personality NBA scout to rebuild the program? Fail.
8) Refuses to shake up the football coaching staff.
9) Refuses to fire [Redacted] after year 3 debacle.
10) Starts/continues treating fans like idiots. Extreme adherence to comical sunshine attitude.

In other words - I'd say he went from being really excellent to really fucking up lately, although in football a good year this year could fix things. In basketball, firing Jeff [Redacted] after this year and getting someone awesome *might* fix things. I'm sure there were ups and downs in lots of sports I don't give a shit about - they don't factor in. We beat OSU in soccer, that was cool. But whatever.

Still not to the "last straw" moment though. Too many good decisions to let just the [Redacted] thing take it all down completely. He's riding the horse to the cliff awfully fast though - either going to make the jump or die trying, apparently.
 
DCDeac said:
My scorecard on Wellman since I became a Deac:

1) Politely let Odom go. Good move, everyone was ready to move on.
2) Hired Prosser. Hell yes.
3) Fired Caldwell. Great guy, first black ACC head coach, but the wins weren't there. Good move but 4 years to late.
4) Hired Jim Grobe. Hell yes. Awesome coach, great hire, perfect fit for Wake.
---- NCAA tournament appearances, Orange Bowl appearance, new football stadium, etc... -----
5) Prosser dies, retains Dino. Mistake in hindsight, but at the time hard/impossible to criticize. I'm not going to call it a mistake, even in hindsight.
5.5) Per VaDeac - Bragged about the state of the program (on and off the court) while giving Dino credit and extending his contract. Then, just a few months later...
6) Fires Dino. Premature or prescient? We'll never know. But Dino as a long-term leader of Wake basketball never passed the eye/smell/any test. I think premature, but a good hire could have overcome that mistake.
7) Hires [Redacted]. Panic? Indigestion mistaken for gut feeling? Buddy hire? Things were really bad enough we had to hire a zero personality NBA scout to rebuild the program? Fail.
8) Refuses to shake up the football coaching staff.
8.5) Hires Randy Casstevens to cook the books for the athletic department.
9) Refuses to fire [Redacted] after year 3 debacle.
9.5) Completes the worst three year stretch (overall) in Wake athletic history as evidenced by the three consecutive last place finishes for the ACC in the Director's Cup competition.
9.6) Wake finishes 2013 with the worst ranking ever for an ACC school in the Director's Cup competition.
10) Starts/continues treating fans like idiots. Extreme adherence to comical sunshine attitude.

In other words - I'd say he went from being really excellent to really fucking up lately, although in football a good year this year could fix things. In basketball, firing Jeff [Redacted] after this year and getting someone awesome *might* fix things. I'm sure there were ups and downs in lots of sports I don't give a shit about - they don't factor in. We beat OSU in soccer, that was cool. But whatever.

Still not to the "last straw" moment though. Too many good decisions to let just the [Redacted] thing take it all down completely. He's riding the horse to the cliff awfully fast though - either going to make the jump or die trying, apparently.
Click to expand...

Counting "5.5", "8.5", "9.5", & "9.6" that's fourteen items that either are, or are the direct result of, Ron Wellman's decisions. 10 are negative and 9 of those are major.

It's not "just the [Redacted] thing". The "last straw" moment for Ron Wellman was last April and that's being generous. Its time for him to go.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top