We’re No Better Than They (Train) Are (Is)

This one hurts to admit.

I always used to tell myself, “Gillispie may not be great, but at least he’s better than Kragthorpe.” Well, he isn’t. In fact, he may be worse. If Kragthorpe has done one thing, it’s unify the fanbase. They all fucking hate that guy, so they’re gonna hunker down and wait until the day he leaves. With Billy G, he has polarized a fanbase with rational individuals who objectively judge results versus racist morons who love his ‘aw shucks, no-nonsense’ attitude (I'm doing the pow-pow-pow Yosemite Sam gun thing with my hands right now).

This hurts me because I loved nothing more this football season than reading the meltdown on insidetheville.com, watching the Syracuse losses, our beatdown of them at Papa John’s, Bolen’s numerous stuffings on fourth-and-one, and the farce that they called a kicking game. Now, I’m left to sleep in the bed I’ve made. And that bed is filled with poo.

Ev…er, Gene, covered most of the reasons why Billy sucks, the least of which is the total lack of improvement across the board, so I won’t belabor that. This is more of a compare/contrast essay, and sadly, when it comes to results on the court/field, it’s a lot of compare and very little contrast.

Krags has stupid maxims he uses every press conference (I’m the captain of this ship!), our boy does too (We got whipped!) Krags’ teams quit on him, our guys obviously quit last night. Krags team didn’t build on a momentum gaining win (South Florida), ours didn’t either (Florida or Tennessee). Krags’ personnel decisions are baffling (Vic splitting time), ours are too (LANDON SLONE...NOW?!?!) To throw in a horse racing analogy (which is now my favorite sport of March), it’s a dead heat.

And spare me the “Billy is a top notch recruiter” argument. First off, he embarrassed us with that eighth grader, and even when Orton gets here, Billy will have him out top, guarding another mid-major guard, watching us lose in our season opener. He won’t make them any better. Plus, GET A FUCKING POINT GUARD!!!!

Gene also said something last night that I have thought countless times, ”What the fuck is up with our dad?” He then said something else, “Did you ever think we would be in a position where we had to sweat it out come tournament time?” And with Tubby, we never did. With this guy, two years straight.

And the ‘cupboard bare’ argument sucks. Yeah, Jared Carter is our only senior (and what a Senior Night that will be), but Tubby did his best work with projects like Gerald Fitch, Chuck Hayes, and Erik Daniels. He also made the top notch athletes (Bogans, Prince, Rondo) better all around athletes and NBA players. Plus, when everyone pissed and moaned about his shitty recruits, he went out and got the #1 class in the nation, just to shut everyone up. But, Minnesota sucks right now, so I’m gonna leave this one be.

There is one aspect of this rant that becomes the contrast part of the essay, and it has to do with our AD. We have already seen that Jurich is perfectly fine with fiddling mindlessly as his kingdom burns to the ground, all the while insulting his customers, but Mitch can be better than that. We have an AD that knows he is not bigger than the program. He can fix this, and he needs to do it much sooner than later.

Mitch, go get somebody, anybody. Darrin Horn would be terrific (he’s kicked our ass twice this year), as would Jay Wright (for selfish reasons…rowwwwr!), and I still like John Pelphrey as an option. Look, I know these guys aren’t perfect, but I am ready for the devil-I-don’t-know instead of the douchebag-I-do.