1999 Aloha Bowl
Member
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2013
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- 21
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- 14
Part 1: Was at the Miami game. During game, sat next to a couple of Wake alums who also came and brought their own "Fire [Redacted]" sign. I remained where I was sitting and shouted "Fire [Redacted]!!!" and "Roll the Quad, [Redacted]'s Gone!!!" at every lull in the game and PA-sound, which was surprisingly often given that UM pipes in crowd noise during its football games. It was quite cathartic and enjoyable, even several Miami fans joined in making fun of [Redacted]'s horrific earned reputation.
Back to the other Wake alum-fans. They on the other hand moved throughout the plentifully empty seats to get the best vantage point from which to pose the sign, and eventually ended up right behind [Redacted]. During a TV timeout, instead of gathering with his coaches or players, a visibly pouting [Redacted] approached UM security and requested that they remove the sign. Security asked [Redacted] why the sign needed to be removed? His response was "It's disrespectful."
TLDR, it was more important for [Redacted] to have a sign cheering on his impending firing removed than conferring with his coaches to win the game his team was losing.
Part 2: Leaving the game I saw the Wake team bus and camped out to see if our emotionally frail, embarrassingly incompetent coach would saunter by. In the mean-time I spoke with a female graduate from the Class of 2013 who had formerly been an on-campus student-manager for the team and was waiting to talk to all of the players who she was very good friends with (story checked out, virtually all of the players beelined for her out of the smattering of people waiting by the bus and knew her by name, talking to her until they had to go).
This former student-manager (or whatever similar work-study title with the basketball team was) was a treasure trove of information on both the students' and the players' perspective on [Redacted]. First, she said that everyone - the North Carolina media, the students, and she herself - hated Jeff [Redacted] because he was a bizarre as*hole: Absurdly bad at coaching basketball yet incredibly arrogant to everyone he interacted with. This isn't really news to anyone, but the sincerity of her confidence in the universality of hate for Jeff [Redacted] was a force to be reckoned with. Apparently he is hated without pity by literally everyone in Wake Forest and Winston-Salem. Second, she said that almost all of the players dislike [Redacted]. The catch with them is, according to her, that the players are afraid to say anything to the public expressing their dislike and mistrust of the coach because they're on scholarship and don't want to get frozen out of playing time if they're ever going to get to play abroad post-Wake. Third, apparently everyone who graduated in her class missed Dino Gaudio badly, but now in Year 4 the younger 2014-onward Wake grads don't because all they've known is this as*hole.
Unrelated because he's no longer with the team, she had some awesome stories of how much J.T. Terrell hated [Redacted]. Likewise unrelated but very interesting, she said that Tony Woods was awesome and that there was much more to his story than what made the news, and that Woods himself made the decision to transfer and not [Redacted] or Wellman, because he was really spooked by the scarlet letter he felt he had on his back after the event broke with the media. Third, she said the local and regional media's hate for [Redacted] borders on the unreasonable. Apparently their thoughts are similar to ours - [Redacted]'s a smug geek who is terrible at what he does but lives in such a self-imposed state of denial that his responses to their/reporters' questions come across as pompous and laughably unaware.
TLDR, (1) the hate for [Redacted] in North Carolina is visceral and burns stronger than 1,000 suns, and (2) our players can't stand [Redacted] but are afraid to say anything because they're on scholarship and don't want to lose playing time since their opportunity to play professionally post-Wake depends on availability of PT.
Part 3: Eventually the assistant coaches came out (LaRue, then Battle), followed by a few of the players (McKie, Codi Miller-McIntyre, Moto, Washington), and then [Redacted]. Initially I was going to resume the heckling with some real bombs, but had a last-minute change of heart because it was poor McKie's last game and there were several nice players' moms nearby and I felt like I'd be inviting a curse for years if I deployed the f-bombs I had readied for [Redacted] in the moms' presence.
Instead, I simply thanked Battle and McKie for staying with Wake Forest through the worst times in our basketball program's history. McKie was grateful, albeit wore a very grim face, and moved on to talk to the former student-manager pretty quickly, but Battle had a very interesting reaction - he just looked at the ground and exhaled "Yeah some tough times, yeah. We're in a tough conference." The combination of the first-half of that sentence and his non-verbals were pretty obviously expressive of sentiment along the lines of "Yep, we've been fuc*ed up pretty badly for a while now."
Finally, after all of the assistant coaches and most of the players have come out and are socializing, Jeff [Redacted] emerges. This I wish I could've recorded for everyone here: Nobody heckling him, he walked with a very odd combination pout-smirk on his face into the bus, and sat down in the front by himself. For about 20-30 minutes, he literally sat on the bus by himself in silence, staring at the front window. After about 25 minutes, I guess he realized nobody else was getting on the bus and he decides to come back out of the bus.
After the last ACC game of the season, who comes to talk to him? No assistant coaches, no players, no player families. When it looks like he realizes this, [Redacted] then approaches one person to briefly talk to - an elderly, wealthy-looking alumnus. After talking to this person for about 10 minutes, [Redacted] returns to the bus - still empty by the way - with his wife and they both sit there alone in silence staring out the front of the bus. When the moms appear to have ventured out of earshot and [Redacted] walks by, I let the f-bombs rain down on him being a fuc*ing awful coach who ran from responsibility for the losing that's defined him here. At this point [Redacted] starts to visibly pout more than smirk and continues with wife back up the bus steps. They sit together in the bus staring out the front door like mannequins.
At this point I leave, and the assistant coaches and players are totally oblivious to where or what has happened to Jeff [Redacted], who is continuing to sit on the bus, essentially by himself.
TLDR, [Redacted] is fuc*ing weird.
In advance sorry for the stream-of-consciousness style, it's getting late and I didn't have the patience to trim up this anecdote from yesterday. I took before and after pictures of the fellow Wake alums and their sign and will post tomorrow if anyone wants to see the before-and-after.
Back to the other Wake alum-fans. They on the other hand moved throughout the plentifully empty seats to get the best vantage point from which to pose the sign, and eventually ended up right behind [Redacted]. During a TV timeout, instead of gathering with his coaches or players, a visibly pouting [Redacted] approached UM security and requested that they remove the sign. Security asked [Redacted] why the sign needed to be removed? His response was "It's disrespectful."
TLDR, it was more important for [Redacted] to have a sign cheering on his impending firing removed than conferring with his coaches to win the game his team was losing.
Part 2: Leaving the game I saw the Wake team bus and camped out to see if our emotionally frail, embarrassingly incompetent coach would saunter by. In the mean-time I spoke with a female graduate from the Class of 2013 who had formerly been an on-campus student-manager for the team and was waiting to talk to all of the players who she was very good friends with (story checked out, virtually all of the players beelined for her out of the smattering of people waiting by the bus and knew her by name, talking to her until they had to go).
This former student-manager (or whatever similar work-study title with the basketball team was) was a treasure trove of information on both the students' and the players' perspective on [Redacted]. First, she said that everyone - the North Carolina media, the students, and she herself - hated Jeff [Redacted] because he was a bizarre as*hole: Absurdly bad at coaching basketball yet incredibly arrogant to everyone he interacted with. This isn't really news to anyone, but the sincerity of her confidence in the universality of hate for Jeff [Redacted] was a force to be reckoned with. Apparently he is hated without pity by literally everyone in Wake Forest and Winston-Salem. Second, she said that almost all of the players dislike [Redacted]. The catch with them is, according to her, that the players are afraid to say anything to the public expressing their dislike and mistrust of the coach because they're on scholarship and don't want to get frozen out of playing time if they're ever going to get to play abroad post-Wake. Third, apparently everyone who graduated in her class missed Dino Gaudio badly, but now in Year 4 the younger 2014-onward Wake grads don't because all they've known is this as*hole.
Unrelated because he's no longer with the team, she had some awesome stories of how much J.T. Terrell hated [Redacted]. Likewise unrelated but very interesting, she said that Tony Woods was awesome and that there was much more to his story than what made the news, and that Woods himself made the decision to transfer and not [Redacted] or Wellman, because he was really spooked by the scarlet letter he felt he had on his back after the event broke with the media. Third, she said the local and regional media's hate for [Redacted] borders on the unreasonable. Apparently their thoughts are similar to ours - [Redacted]'s a smug geek who is terrible at what he does but lives in such a self-imposed state of denial that his responses to their/reporters' questions come across as pompous and laughably unaware.
TLDR, (1) the hate for [Redacted] in North Carolina is visceral and burns stronger than 1,000 suns, and (2) our players can't stand [Redacted] but are afraid to say anything because they're on scholarship and don't want to lose playing time since their opportunity to play professionally post-Wake depends on availability of PT.
Part 3: Eventually the assistant coaches came out (LaRue, then Battle), followed by a few of the players (McKie, Codi Miller-McIntyre, Moto, Washington), and then [Redacted]. Initially I was going to resume the heckling with some real bombs, but had a last-minute change of heart because it was poor McKie's last game and there were several nice players' moms nearby and I felt like I'd be inviting a curse for years if I deployed the f-bombs I had readied for [Redacted] in the moms' presence.
Instead, I simply thanked Battle and McKie for staying with Wake Forest through the worst times in our basketball program's history. McKie was grateful, albeit wore a very grim face, and moved on to talk to the former student-manager pretty quickly, but Battle had a very interesting reaction - he just looked at the ground and exhaled "Yeah some tough times, yeah. We're in a tough conference." The combination of the first-half of that sentence and his non-verbals were pretty obviously expressive of sentiment along the lines of "Yep, we've been fuc*ed up pretty badly for a while now."
Finally, after all of the assistant coaches and most of the players have come out and are socializing, Jeff [Redacted] emerges. This I wish I could've recorded for everyone here: Nobody heckling him, he walked with a very odd combination pout-smirk on his face into the bus, and sat down in the front by himself. For about 20-30 minutes, he literally sat on the bus by himself in silence, staring at the front window. After about 25 minutes, I guess he realized nobody else was getting on the bus and he decides to come back out of the bus.
After the last ACC game of the season, who comes to talk to him? No assistant coaches, no players, no player families. When it looks like he realizes this, [Redacted] then approaches one person to briefly talk to - an elderly, wealthy-looking alumnus. After talking to this person for about 10 minutes, [Redacted] returns to the bus - still empty by the way - with his wife and they both sit there alone in silence staring out the front of the bus. When the moms appear to have ventured out of earshot and [Redacted] walks by, I let the f-bombs rain down on him being a fuc*ing awful coach who ran from responsibility for the losing that's defined him here. At this point [Redacted] starts to visibly pout more than smirk and continues with wife back up the bus steps. They sit together in the bus staring out the front door like mannequins.
At this point I leave, and the assistant coaches and players are totally oblivious to where or what has happened to Jeff [Redacted], who is continuing to sit on the bus, essentially by himself.
TLDR, [Redacted] is fuc*ing weird.
In advance sorry for the stream-of-consciousness style, it's getting late and I didn't have the patience to trim up this anecdote from yesterday. I took before and after pictures of the fellow Wake alums and their sign and will post tomorrow if anyone wants to see the before-and-after.
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