COLUMN: PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE IN ATHLETIC DIRECTORS
On Sept. 27 of last year, I wrote a Too Broke To Fold column about USU’s poor football performance entitled “Stop Throwing Stones.” The Aggies were 0-4 at that time, and even though they managed only one win the entire season and finished 1-11, I stand by my words.
Sure, USU was outmanned and overmatched. They bungled, they fumbled and they lost games they should have won. They struggled mightily to score touchdowns. When the defense played well the offense didn’t, and vice versa. Other times they just got their asses kicked on both sides of the ball.
I fail to see how Brent Guy’s job should be in jeopardy stemming from this misery as is regularly asserted on Internet message boards.
As I pointed out on 9/27/06, many coaches struggle in their first few years with a program, particularly when they are trying to rebuild from the ground up, as Guy is doing. Another look at Virginia Tech is instructive; when Frank Beamer arrived in Blacksburg, the Hokies were a laughingstock with virtually no prestige. Now they are a perenial top 25 squad with a fearsome defense. A lot of that is due to Virginia Tech’s leadership having patience with Beamer through his first few seasons, when he had records of 2-9, 3-8, 6-4-1, 6-5, 5-6 and 2-8-1.
Guy isn’t just trying to improve a lousy football team; he is doing it with inferior facilities and without the benefit of a huge budget like Bronko Mendenhall and Kyle Whittingham have at their disposal.
USU can field a winning football team within our lifespans. Aggie fans who watched Boise State’s thrilling overtime win over the mighty Sooners of Oklahoma may have thought, as I did, “Why did this happen in Boise and not in Logan? What does Boise have that Logan doesn’t? Why not USU?”
The answer is there is no reason why USU can’t do what Boise State did. It may sound ridiculous after a 1-11 showing, but Guy has the program on track. Facilities are improving. USU’s recent deal with Learfield Sports should be great for the bottom line and give Athletics a few more dollars to throw at their problems. Guy is recruiting hard in Texas and California, stockpiling more athletes that fit in his system. USU has finally found a home in the right conference after years of wandering the desert between the Big West, Sun Belt and nonaffiliated. And not for nothing, the WAC was 3-1 in bowl games, with the one loss coming by one point when Nevada lost to the Miami Hurricanes 21-20.
The key, in my honest opinion, is to stick with Guy. The North End Zone project was a good metaphor for USU’s football team last year: it wasn’t good for anything when it was just piles of jumbled girders, rebar and bricks lying around in the mud, but if they keep on working and putting one brick on top of the other, pretty soon it will be a shiny new locker room complex and a great selling point for USU.
There are more examples from the recently ended college football season of how, with the right man in charge and a sound plan, gridiron glory can be had at schools which until recently were the antithesis of athletic excellence.
Wake Forest University won the ACC championship for just the second time in their history and played in the Orange Bowl. The Demon Deacons were previously thought of as a purely basketball school, turning out NBA players like Tim Duncan and Josh Howard. The most notable Wake Forest player in the NFL is likely Baltimore Ravens fullback Ovie Mughelli.
Yet this year Wake pounded NFL-player factory Florida State 30-0 at home. How did a private school with the third-smallest enrollment in Division I-A achieve such notable success? After powerhouses like Miami and Virginia Tech joined the ACC, life was supposed to be even more difficult for the Deacs. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Coach Jim Grobe, who was named national coach of the year for 2006, is a big reason for the success. In his sixth year with Wake Forest, Grobe, whose career record at Ohio University and Wake hovers around .500, proved the value of perseverance. Wake’s last three seasons were all losers, but the school stuck with Grobe, and it paid off in spades as the 2006 edition Deacs were molded in their coaches old-school image: they were outgained but never outfought, and they forced turnovers and played best with their backs to the wall.
The other obvious example from 2006 is Rutgers. When Greg Schiano came to Rutgers, the school was best known for being the birthplace of college football, having hosted the first intercollegiate game ever in 1869. There is little worth mentioning between that date and Schiano’s arrival in 2001. Schiano took his lumps, going 2-9 in his first year, followed by 1-11, 5-7, and 4-7 seasons.
Schiano persevered. He kept recruiting in Florida. He kept preaching about defense, kept believing that Rutgers could be more than easy pickings for the other Big East teams.
“Keep chopping wood,” Schiano would say, no matter what setbacks stood in his way.
In 2006 Rutgers finally proved Schiano’s critics wrong and silenced their doubters, going 10-2. They won their bowl game over the Kansas State Wildcats. (The ‘Cats are themselves an example of what a determined coach can achieve when he goes to work and the administration stands behind him. Bill Snyder turned a program that had had four winning seasons in 52 years into a top 25 power.)
I’m not promising bowl games for USU in the near future. I’m not even promising the Aggies will be any better next year than last.
But I will declare that, given a few more years, USU fans will see a return on the school’s investment in Brent Guy. The bricks are there; they are lying right over there, behind that sawhorse, beneath the old tarpaulin. All Guy needs is the continuing support of the administration, the fans and the alumni to build something great at USU.