Monday, November 26, 2007

Enjoy that bowl, Hoosiers...

because it'll be your last for awhile. IU proved today that they are not committed to winning at football by inexplicably rehiring Bill Lynch. Look, he did ok this year. JUST OK. Using another coach's players, he managed to chalk up exactly 1 impressive win (blowing a huge lead before coming back on Purdue is what passes for impressive 'round these parts). He isn't D 1 material, and shouldn't have been retained. I heard JMV (950 was playing college football) say last week that if IU hired some young gun, he'd just win and then leave the program for a better job. To this I say, "Yeah, but he'd have to WIN in order to do that!" I'd take two or three winning seasons, wouldn't you?

At this point I'm almost willing to see what Bill Mallory is doing. Bill Lynch is NOT the answer. IU will be back to 3-9 in two seasons.

Demond Sanders: I appreciate what Bill Lynch has done for Indiana this season. He played QB on my dad's high school team so I always root for him as a coach. However, I have to agree with DZ's take on this. The bottom line is Indiana doesn't have the money to spend on a football coach at this juncture. They are committed to spending money on the infrastructure and, of course, the basketball program. They are hoping Lynch can get them back to another bowl game or two in the next few years. I had hoped they would pick a younger version of Hep, someone motivated and ambitious. I believe Lynch puts a ceiling on what they can accomplish at least as far recruiting. I hope I'm wrong, but to me this is the definition of settling for less.

8 comments:

Joel said...

I suspect it was more of an emotional, loyalty-driven hire than anything else. Which has its value, on some level. But that emotion of "win one for Hep" will eventually wear off, and if his coaching acumen isn't up to par (as you suggest...I haven't seen many IU games this year), then they may regret it. At least they didn't sign him to a ten year, multimillion dollar contract with a gargantuan buyout clause after winning two games, like my team did with their coach.

Jesse said...

I went to Ball State during the Billy Lynch era. DOES ANYONE REMEMBER HE SET THE DIVISION 1 RECORD FOR THE LONGEST LOOSING STREAK? IT COVERED 2 YEARS!!! And that was with "his kids".

Hoosiers are hilarious. GREAT HIRE! LOLOLOL.

Anonymous said...

Joel--are you a ND fan? I don't follow college ball as much as I'd like, but I am a ND pseudo-fan (my daughter knows all the words to the fight song). I don't know the contract details, but I know they're crazy.

Anonymous said...

You all make me want to cry. Oh wait, that was the IU administration. Never mind.

Anonymous said...

I follow IU football in the inverse amount that I follow the basketball program, meaning a lot and none, respectively.

In football news, good luck to Sean Taylor. Really awful what happened.

Anonymous said...

Wait, I mean I DON'T care about IU football. There are only so many sports team a man can follow.

Joel said...

Colts girl, yeah, I'm a ND fan. I'm holding out hope that this year was an anomaly, and that the Irish revert back at least to the median a bit. Maybe Belichick will teach Weis how to cheat more effectively this offseason.

And yes, it makes me feel a little dirty to root for a team coached by a former member of the Pats staff.

Anonymous said...

I'm hoping the ND season was an anomaly, too. We actually stopped watching; it was too painful. I know that this is the first year for Weis's recruits, and it's a year coming off of losing so many tremendous talents (and I'm sad that Jeff Samardzija chose baseball over football professionally, though I'm glad he chose the Cubs) so maybe it will look up in future years. Or maybe there will have to be a huge buy-out...