pasqualoni fired. gerg hired.

[TheCusian]

Pat Forde ‏@YahooForde
Worst Hires of 21st Century: UConn (Paul P), Cuse (Robinson), FIU (Ron Turner), USM (E. Johnson), UNM (Locksley) or UT (Dooley)? Pick one.

I would go 1. Robinson 2. Locklsey 3. Johnson 4. Coach P 5. Dooley 6. Turner

Conveniently, Forde leaves out blue bloods like Michigan (RRod) and ND (Charlie w.)...

 

[RandygoCuse]

It's not like CT is a hotbed of college football to begin with, and living here I can tell you that interest in the program is lower than at any time during our 4 years in the wilderness under Gump. .

Hey now...What about Kyle and Ian Mcintosh

 

[orangedave]

You have got to be kidding me. Don't let reality get in the way of your undying love for Pasquadeleone. Scooch said it best. "He never, ever, shoudl have been hired in the first place." I can only think of 2 other hirings just as bad...Kiffin at USC and Schiano at Tampa. Two down one to go?

You wouldn't include Robinson at SU in that list?

 

[IthacaMatt]

holy de ja vu over on the Boneyard complete with infighting (good coach, bad coach, D sucks, Pauls a good man). How ridiculously predictable was this which is what I think we did a few years ago). The fact that I just read over there that the football players we're seen high fiving each other at the news says all that needs to be said. When that happens they play with no emotion...and you lose to Towson and UB.

Hopefully this will be a done and buried topic now.....

I just wish he had another year or two to work his magic over there.

 

[Ottawa Orange]

Unfortunately, the never ending recruiting cycle now means that coaches are going to get canned earlier and earlier. Look at USC - we are already getting reports of recruits warming up to them again now that Kiffin has been canned. Having a lame duck coach around just gives your program the stench of death, which kills you on the recruiting trail. ("You know the guy recruiting you at school X is getting fired soon, right?")

The other issue is availability of "hot" coaching candidates. If you have a vacancy, you want guys to know about right away so that you can start tampering, errrr, I mean putting out feelers ASAP. Waiting until the end of the season might mean that the hot assistant you had targeted ends up becoming someone else's HC before you could act. (I'll bet you that Chris Petersen's agent got a text message before Lane Kiffin was even able to hail a cab at LAX.)

 

[IthacaMatt]

Yep, the run of athletic, African-American QBs that spanned McPherson, Graves and McNabb was a truly innovative era for SU, and P (& D) were very much architects of that. Once the rest of college football realized they shouldn't be making those kids only play RB and WR our advantage evaporated.

I think Kevin Rogers had something to do with it, too. P&D took a step back when he left, in terms of the big play capability of the offense. We got much more conservative with the play calls. I remember them going down to NYC to study the Giants, back in the day, and after that, we became much more predictable.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Conveniently, Forde leaves out blue bloods like Michigan (RRod) and ND (Charlie w.)...

Didn't Charlie Tuna do pretty well in his first couple years?

 

[OrangeTarheel]

Anyone notice that Greggers is in the same position now as when we hired him oh so many years ago? Come on UConn, you ditched PP now hire Greggers to complete the cycle. Do it!!

 

[GoSU96]

when teams realized you could run the option, stretch the defense, and not throw the ball backwards, the athletic QBs he had success with almost by default had other choices.

i would love to know what his offensive numbers were out of the shotgun with mcnabb. i bet they were amazing - other schools took that, did it all game, and added the read option handoff wrinkle.

once the freeze option vanished, they didn't have an offensive identity.

The freeze option went away when Donnie Mac did. They didn't run that much old style option once P took over, it was a package within the offense, but not the core of it.

They actually incorporated the zone read in 2003.

 

[GoSU96]

I'm certainly no soothsayer, but I disagreed with UConn's decision and I was pretty adamant about it at the time.

My point of view was opposite of your's. I felt that UConn was plenty "stable" in the sense that Edsall used a totally unappealing style to grind a way to four seasons of 9-4, 8-5, 8-5, and 8-5. I didn't see how that was sustainable, since everyone said their recruiting was still pretty lousy.

UConn has no natural recruiting base and, IMHO, needed a young, innovative guy that could lure under-recruited, but athletic, kids to a creative, high-flying system that would level the playing field for them. P & D were plenty innovative in the 90s, but was hard to see them being that today.

They never should have taken the job, felt that way at the time. You need people who want to recruit in that job.

 

[GoSU96]

Pasqualoni is NOT a head coach. Period
In over his head

His career numbers say otherwise. Uconn job was a bad fit at that time in his career, but to say he wasn't capable of being a head coach is ridiculous on its face.

Period.

 

[Btstimpy]

I don't like the idea of firing college coaches in the middle of a season. But that's just me.

I agree with you. It punishes the kids. They have to now play 8 more games without a coach or with an interim coach who'll spend more time looking for a job along with all the assistants than he or they will coaching. The head coach gets bought out of his contract, so he gets paid. The kids suffer. Fire a head coach in December, but not in September.

I know UConn is embarrassed because of losing to Towson and Buffalo, but they almost beat Michigan.

 

[Scooch]

They never should have taken the job, felt that way at the time. You need people who want to recruit in that job.

It was a case where the narrative was warm-and-fuzzy, but the reality was far from that. I suspect both P and the UConn administration loved the notion of a native son coming home to take an 'emerging' program to the next level. That it also would involve beating SU had some attraction as well I'm sure.

You can't go home again, though.

 

[SWC75]

the only way that's true is if you look at things at an incredibly basic and superficial level. something like "it's all still running throwing catching blocking and tackling"

Football is pretty basic. I look at a lot of vintage film and see all the plays we run today. Maybe not from the same formations, (you don't see empty backfields). But you see bubble screens, crossing patterns, etc. And the option dates back to rugby. In some ways I think the sport was more creative then because with more people in the backfield, you can do more things.

Case in point:

 

[Cheriehoop]

Edsall will probably be at an SU function on November 1 ... when his wife is being honored as an SU Letter Winner of Distinction. MD does not have a game that weekend, so it would possible for him to attend. Oddly, we are playing at MD the following weekend.

Played basketball against his wife for years when she played for Orange Grove in City Rec after SU and I played for Mrs O'Leary's. Ironically both bars were owned by and run by the same SU grads (The Lee brothers, Mike Bright, Hornstein etc - Billy DeMarr was the bartender) . Our teams alternated as champions for years in the City A rec basketball Finals. Eileen was a good player.

 

[tep624]

I just checked their commits. Bare cupboard.

Yeah their recruiting class is extremely weak this year.

 

[OrangeMojo]

I agree with you. It punishes the kids. They have to now play 8 more games without a coach or with an interim coach who'll spend more time looking for a job along with all the assistants than he or they will coaching. The head coach gets bought out of his contract, so he gets paid. The kids suffer. Fire a head coach in December, but not in September.

I know UConn is embarrassed because of losing to Towson and Buffalo, but they almost beat Michigan.

from the boneyard:

Jason Foberg ‏@patriotssoxrule
18m
The football players in my math class are highfiving all over the place ahaha... #uconnfootball
Details


take it fwiw - but at least some of the players appear to be ok with the move

 

[jekelish]

I haven't paid any attention to UConn football because subdivision schools don't interest me, but I do feel a little bad for Coach P after seeing some tweets from former UConn players, his former players, who are saying things like "FINALLY" and "ABOUT DAMN TIME" and so forth. Plus, one tweet someone put on the Boneyard was from a student saying that current football players are high fiving each other in class.

That's just so disrespectful it makes me sick. Be glad he's gone, fine, but show some freaking class and keep it among yourselves instead of rubbing salt in the wound in a public setting.

I'm someone who was calling for P to be fired here, by the way, so I don't say this as a P supporter. But seriously.

 

[cuseincincy]

You wouldn't include Robinson at SU in that list?

No I wouldn't. Mainly because few people commented at the time he was hired that it was a bad hire. We really didn't know how GRob would be as a college HC. many people questioned Kiffin and P's and Schiano's hiring from the get go.

 

[Lawrinson14]

Is it hyperbolic to say that this move will likely make or break UCONN athletics? I mean, a wrong hire here and they can basically kiss goodbye the minuscule shot they have of joining a power 5 conference.

 

[Scooch]

I haven't paid any attention to UConn football because subdivision schools don't interest me, but I do feel a little bad for Coach P after seeing some tweets from former UConn players, his former players, who are saying things like "FINALLY" and "ABOUT DAMN TIME" and so forth. Plus, one tweet someone put on the Boneyard was from a student saying that current football players are high fiving each other in class.

That's just so disrespectful it makes me sick. Be glad he's gone, fine, but show some freaking class and keep it among yourselves instead of rubbing salt in the wound in a public setting.

I'm someone who was calling for P to be fired here, by the way, so I don't say this as a P supporter. But seriously.

Well, to be fair, UConn's football history was pretty damn exceptional before P was hired. Hopefully they find someone who can restore the program to its former greatness.

:crazy:

 

[texascpa]

I agree with you. It punishes the kids. They have to now play 8 more games without a coach or with an interim coach who'll spend more time looking for a job along with all the assistants than he or they will coaching. The head coach gets bought out of his contract, so he gets paid. The kids suffer. Fire a head coach in December, but not in September.

I know UConn is embarrassed because of losing to Towson and Buffalo, but they almost beat Michigan.

If you read any of the posts on The Boneyard, it seems the players believed they were being punished by having PP as their coach.

 

[zibby]

This is the third year in a row a coach who lost to UB got fired. Ron English should be feeling pretty nervous now.

 

[Scooch]

Is it hyperbolic to say that this move will likely make or break UCONN athletics? I mean, a wrong hire here and they can basically kiss goodbye the minuscule shot they have of joining a power 5 conference.

I think it's more likely that the decision they made in late 2010 already did that. It's probably too late now.

I don't necessarily pin this on P, but I wonder how differently the ACC's vote on replacing Maryland would have gone on 11/29/12 if instead of 20th-ranked Louisville being 9-2 and unranked UConn being 5-6, the records and rankings were reversed.

People think there is some long-standing, master strategy at play in all the conference stuff, but we know that many decisions are made based on the conditions on the ground. Late November last year Louisville looked like a football program on the come and UConn looked like it was sliding into irrelevance.

Throw in the hoops angle, where UConn mismanaged Calhoun's exit horribly, while Louisville was signing Pitino to a long-term extension, and voila, you get a school with an arguably better geographic potential and a much better institutional profile being left out in the cold.

 

[NKR1978]

I haven't paid any attention to UConn football because subdivision schools don't interest me, but I do feel a little bad for Coach P after seeing some tweets from former UConn players, his former players, who are saying things like "FINALLY" and "ABOUT DAMN TIME" and so forth. Plus, one tweet someone put on the Boneyard was from a student saying that current football players are high fiving each other in class.

That's just so disrespectful it makes me sick. Be glad he's gone, fine, but show some freaking class and keep it among yourselves instead of rubbing salt in the wound in a public setting.

I'm someone who was calling for P to be fired here, by the way, so I don't say this as a P supporter. But seriously.

"High class" and UConn athletics have never really gone together.