I am not being really critical of the Manning hire. I'm fine with it because he's fairly young. The problem with Manning is 2 or 3 decent years and he's gone. You can't get to a 1000 wins with a Coach if you hire him in his 50s. Look at the ages and experience level of Knight, K, & Dean when they were hired. The other reason I wanted to hire Wes (& Wojo) was to get them while we could blocking them from what all insiders know is likely their eventual trajectories. Wes has more college wins than any 33 year old alive. That will continue. And one day he will be on an ACC sideline. I was hoping we would gamble and it would be us. It seems like the fact that his dad struck it rich and is one of our top 5 most loyal donors (even after we snubbed his son as a player) is being used against him. Why? Firing is never easy anyway. Donating to the school hurts you?? Silly. It's time to recognize the era and make bold moves. We have nothing to lose. Old dudes are lazy, nonrisk takers, that do not rock the boat. That's why nobody smart wants to hire an old lawyer, doctor, or basketball coaches. We have watched Wellman's lazy, conservative, stale, risk averse moves leave us with a decade in the trash bin and a neusue of a basketball stadium around our neck. The only bright spot has been the improvement of the football facilities and we all know that is exclusively the result of Bob McCreary.
Paying all that money to Wellman has been a huge mistake. We could have signed Wes or Kelsey to a long term deal for a fraction of what we pay that guy. And now we would have a coach that could be with us 4 decades instead of an old retread dude whose upside is 5-6 years. I hope we get another shot. In the meantime, maybe Manning can get us better positioned before he heads somewhere else (like Kansas if he does well here)