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Message: [QUOTE="tep624, post: 1531112, member: 430"] Deciding when to cut bait is always an agonizing decision. I think there are good arguments on both side of this coin. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing - a successful program on and off the field. And I have lost all confidence in Shafer's ability to do that. If it's a talent thing, quality of citizen thing, etc, you can show tangible improvement in those areas, i.e. Grades, recruiting rankings, community service performed, etc. These things aren't really our issue. Yes, recruiting could be improved, but I still think our current recruiting is good enough to get us in that 6-8 win range each season. Our issue is game day performance of our HC and coach decision making. And 3 years in, you would expect those things to no longer be problems, because those things typically are improved with experience when it is just an experience issue. We haven't seen that, and if anything, we've seen a regression in quality of decision making from the 2013 season to now. Which leads me to believe that the game day performance and decision making of Shafer is more a systemic problem. I have no confidence at this point in his ability to improve on this critical area. And this is an area that DECIDES games. I truly believe that even if this program is back humming, we will still encounter 2-4 games a year that will be close games, and will be games where decision making of the HC will have an enormous impact on the outcome of the game (think Pitt instead of URI, URI, we could have had a monkey on the sideline picking plays and still won.) There has to be a guy out there that brings the qualities that Shafer brings to the program, and believe me, I appreciate those, while also having the ability to make good decisions in games. I truly value his commitment to good citizens, academics, the improvement in recruiting, and the conditioning and prep of our players. But we will never be successful on the field, where it really matters, where dollars are earned for the program, with decisions like we've seen over the past 3-4 weeks. [/QUOTE]

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