I think it's strange how often we give a pass to assistant coaches. Childress is one of the only constants across all of these garbage teams, and people want to promote or retain him? Our fundamentals are as bad as our strategies - if he doesn't bare any responsibility for direct coaching he's still failed to influence consecutive coaches in any meaningful way. If Manning's history as a player fuels his garbage coaching why does anyone assume Childress's doesn't? Kinda reminds me of the Battle stuff while [name redacted] ruined us. Sure there were some very unfortunate extenuating circumstances when Dino took over instead of him, but when [name redacted] was hired there was definitely the "Battle recruits, Jeff coaches" plan being espoused. If problem #1 with Manning and [name redacted] was their complete inability to inspire players or fans, problem #2 for [name redacted] was garbage recruiting, problem #2 for Manning is coaching strategy. When they fail so completely in a known area of weakness, it's not helpful to just really like Rusty Larue because he's such a Wake Forest guy. We're lighting millions of dollars on fire making this program awful - there have to be repercussions for it.
Of course the ultimate responsibility is 100% on the head coach, but hopefully we've learned our lesson about retaining critical assistants during coaching changes. Clawson is an inspiring coach who brought his whole staff with him. Just do that again after Manning is fired. Then just like Clawson has done, hold the staff accountable - the football program has far more excuses to suck than does the basketball program.