COACHES HOT SEAT BLOG

What one of the reality show producers in Hollywood needs to do is to get to South Bend quickly and document what is going to be one of the most fascinating stories in college football in 2008.  Charlie Weis realized about 3 games into the 2007 season that something had gone horribly wrong in the offseason, and there was not a damn thing he could do but take his lumps for the rest of the year.  Notre Dame was not prepared to play football in 2007 and that is the fault of one Charlie Weis.  Weis recognized that fact and went about both retooling his coaching staff, giving up calling the plays and hiring Jon Tenuta, and focused on bringing some very good football players to South Bend.  So far so good in the 2008 offseason, but we are not to spring practice yet, and that is when the rubber meets the road for Weis’ future under the Golden Dome.  Below you will find out analysis of Charlie Weis and Notre Dame in 2008:

Charlie Weis and Notre Dame in 2008

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Art Thiel of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is out with a column on the Univ. of Washington’s efforts to get the taxpayers to fund a portion of the remodeling of Husky Stadium, and there is a lot that can be said here about the very important issue of public funding for sports stadiums.  Since it looks like there is little chance the Washington legislature will allow the taxpayers’ money to be used in the Husky Stadium renovation, Art Thiel in his column proposes that UW turn to the business community and to UW’s real estate holdings for the needed dollars.  Those are certainly some good starting points, but an even more important thing is for the people running UW to recognize that the challenge of raising/finding the money to renovate Husky Stadium is a great opportunity to prove that great things can be achieved without leaning on the taxpayer.  The University of Washington is a great institution of higher learning with a diverse and very wealthy alumni base, and when you throw in the amount of wealth that has been made and created in the Seattle area in the past 30 years, there is no reason that the approximately $300 million dollars that is needed to renovate Husky Stadium cannot be raised privately.  Stanford University faced a similar problem a few years back, when it became painfully obvious that a renovation of Stanford Stadium was going to be a must to just keep the local county officials from shutting the stadium down.  Stanford Stadium in the end only cost $90 million dollars to renovate, which is a lot less than $300 million, but all of the money was raised privately from Stanford alumni and from university investment funds.  Of course, when you have an alumni base with a lot of very successful people in it, you don’t have to go a long ways to raise a few million dollars, but one still has to marvel at how Stanford not only raised the money but completely rebuilt the stadium in one year.  I will not bore you will all the details, but rather will refer you to a terrific article that was written about the stadium renovation in Stanford Magazine in 2006, Ready for Kickoff.

Washington is now faced with the obvious fact that they have to renovate Husky Stadium and they need to start on that renovation very soon (due to some transportation projects that are planned to start soon near the stadium).  Since it is now obvious that public money for the stadium renovation is not in the offing anytime soon, UW just needs to face facts, roll up their sleeves, start raising money, and get the stadium renovation done.  It makes little sense to make comments like, “There is no Plan B,” as the interim AD at UW said recently, because those kind of comments are not going to move one shovel of dirt.  If Washington is really committed to a first-class athletics program, and putting a competitive football team on the field, then it is time for UW to quit fooling around and starting raising the money to get that job done.  If Coaches Hot Seat were at Washington, we would not be wasting time in Olympia, but would rather be working the phones with the alumni and selling them on the absolute necessity of renovating Husky Stadium.  Here is the plan:  Get to work.  Crying about how it is impossible to raise $300 million dollars will only doom the project from the start.  Washington needs to put together a plan that mixes good old fashioned fund raising from alumni, fans of the university, and the local millionaires and billionaires in the Seattle area that would be glad to lend a hand (if someone would call them!), and include in the plan the involvement of the Seattle business community and also find a way to leverage the very valuable real estate assets that the university owns in downtown Seattle.  A plan including all of the above could be drawn up in about an hour, and people could be on the phones soon thereafter.  If we were at UW we would start with naming rights for Husky Stadium, which from where we sit would have to be worth in the neighborhood of $2 million dollars a year, which over a 15 year deal would be $30 million dollars (The LA Coliseum is reportedly looking to sell the naming rights to that stadium for $5 million dollars a year).  Get WaMu, Microsoft, Clearwire, Costco, or one of the other dozen big-time companies in the Seattle area on the phone and get the naming rights deal done, and UW will have 10% of the money they need to get the renovation done.  Take that naming rights contract to a local bank and no doubt a loan could be obtained to get the renovation started.  This isn’t rocket science, but rather just good old fashioned hard work, and sitting around the office crying about how the taxpayer is not going to finance the stadium renovation is going to get the people at UW nothing.

On to the passing of William F. Buckley.  It matters little if you agree or disagree with the politics of Bill Buckley (a true conservative if there ever was one) on whether you recognize the giant presence that we lost yesterday with Mr. Buckley’s passing.  Yes, Bill Buckley was a giant, and he played a pivotal role in the revitalization of the conservative movement in the United States after the defeat of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election.  Of course, all of Mr. Buckley’s dreams were realized when Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency in 1980, and no doubt Bill’s heart was warmed in March of 1983 when Reagan called the Soviet Union “the focus of evil in the modern world.”  The USSR was “evil” in every sense of that word, and there is only one way to meet “evil,” and that is head on.  Without the efforts of the Bill Buckley’s of the world there probably is no Ronald Reagan in the White House, and thus there might still be a Soviet Union.  Last night on Charlie Rose, several  of Bill Buckley’s appearances on Charlie’s show were featured, with Mr. Rose finishing the show by saying, “So Bill Buckley left us this morning, he was probably more ready than we were.  Much as anyone, I valued him.  When I came to this city (New York City) and started doing this show 16 years ago, I was little known and had not made my mark in life.  He came on, and then he sent me a handwritten note with enormous flattery and I lived with the hope that I didn’t disappoint his early prophecy.  We became friends.  Several years ago when I was sick and came back from near death, he called and wanted to take me to dinner.  He wanted me to sail, and I never accepted, until one evening he said to me, “I am not sailing anymore.  I am not doing a lot of thing I used to do anymore.”  Why don’t I ever learn!  There is not always tomorrow.  I last saw him at Pat’s (Mr. Buckley’s wife died in April 2007) memorial service and I knew her death was the last crushing disappointment for him.  People were walking by as he sat in a chair in the front row after the service.  I was last in line and when I stopped he looked up, and he saw me and he started crying.  And I said, “I will come see you,” thinking there will always be a tomorrow.  And now he is gone.  There is no tomorrow.  But what a life, what a man, and what a friend.  We think of the wife he joins and the son he leaves and the rest of the Buckley clan.  Good Night Bill.  Good Night to you.”

Well said Charlie Rose, and well done Mr. Buckley for a life well lived. 
Bill Buckley’s creation and proudest accomplishment:  National Review
In addition to his writing, Bill Buckley was an accomplished sailor and if you would like a couple of interesting reads, Buckley’s books on crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are worth your time:  Atlantic High:  A Celebration  &  Racing Through Paradise:  A Pacific Passage

William F. Buckley  1925 – 2008

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In order to show the utter absurdity of the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) as a way to determine a National Champion in college football, Coaches Hot Seat introduces the GCS, the Game Championship Series for college basketball!  Yes, it is not enough that college football has the most asinine way that could ever be conceived by a mammal with a working brain for a way to determine a champion, but we believe that college basketball should not be left out of this insanity.  The GCS, Game Championship Series is thus inaugurated on February 27, 2008, with the first ever GCS Rankings.  Yes, we have a ranking too!  No, Coaches Hot Seat does not use a formula created by a dozen attorneys that combined one poll that has been around for 50 or more years, and then getting together a group of morons, most who watch no more than one college football game each Saturday, to vote in another poll.  That second poll is combined with the first poll, and then a bunch of computers (computers for God’s sake who have never seen a down of football!) are thrown into the mix to spit out the BCS Rankings.  Can you say, “Stupid is as stupid does?”  No, we are not idiots at Coaches Hot Seat, but rather Americans that believe championships can only be won on the field of play.  Imagine that, Americans acting like Americans, instead of this communist/socialist/elitist crapola that the BCS Boys have dreamed up, which exists only to keep a very small group of people employed and which also allows them to keep a stranglehold on the game of college football.  Americans believe in fair play, and the BCS is anything but that, but we digress…..

So here we are, with the first ever GCS Rankings, which will be used at the end of the basketball season to set up 5 games with 10 teams, with only the top 2 teams in the final GCS Rankings having the right to play for the National Championship.  Sounds stupid you say?  That is exactly the point.  Below you will find the first ever GCS Rankings, but before we do our witchcraft (we learned well from the BCS Boys) to create these new rankings, first let us explain what the 10 teams that are lucky enough to be part of the great Game Championship Series will be doing.  Strike up the band and send the women and children to bed, because this is hype at its worst, and so we move on to the actual GCS Games. 

1.  The Moron Game- This game will be played in Los Angeles, California (and will be preceded by a parade!  Yes, stop the presses!  A parade!) on Saturday March 22, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  We are sooooo smart! 

2.  The Idiot Game – This game will be played in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday March 22, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  What genius!

3.  The Really Stupid Game – This game will be played in New Orleans, Louisiana on Sunday March 23, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCC Rankings!  Somebody make me a Hurricane!

4.  The Asinine Game - This game will be played in Miami, Florida on Sunday March 23, 2008 and will match up two teams that are randomly pulled from a hat, from the GCS Rankings!  Let’s hit South Beach!

5.  The GCS Championship (This is dumbest idea since man stood up on his two hind legs, which was about 4 million years ago!) Game- This game will be played in Los Angeles, California (no parade for this one, but we can all go to the Kodak Theater together!) on Sunday March 30 and will match up the two top teams in the Final GCS Rankings!  The idiot that thought this up would do well to run for Congress, because as Mark Twain said, “Suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of Congress.  But I repeat myself.”

Now that we have the basic outlines of this incredibly stupid way to determine a National Champion, we introduce the First Annual GCS, Game Championship Series Rankings!  We will use the GCS Rankings to pick the teams to play in the above games, and since this whole things makes absolutely no sense, I think we all know how very stupid the BCS really is……  Now on to the GCS Rankings:

1.  North Carolina
2.  Tennessee
3.  Memphis
4.  UCLA
5.  Texas
6.  Duke
7.  Stanford
8.  Wisconsin
9.  Xavier
10.  Georgetown
11.  Louisville
12.  Indiana
13.  UConn
14.  Butler
15.  Vanderbilt

There you have it, the first ever GCS (Game Championship Series) Rankings!  What joy and how smart we are to come up with this stupidity!  Now, we all know how this foolishness ends, but just to recap, at the end of the regular season the 2 top teams in the Final GCS Rankings will play in the GCS Championship Game.  No other teams in college basketball will be eligible to play for the National Championship, but rather the people running the individual GCS Games will pick 8 teams to play in the other GCS Games.  Pure genius you may say, but no you are wrong.  A first grader could come up with this idea, but then that same first grader would come to the conclusion that his idea for the GCS was really stupid, and then that same first grader would draw up a series of brackets to determine the National Champion on the field of play.  That would be a sure mark of an American!

Right now (Imagine I am saying this breathlessly!) if the season was over, North Carolina would play Tennessee for the National Championship in the GCS Championship Game!  The other 8 teams the GCS Games would pick would be playing in meaningless exhibition games, but we never told you there was any logic to this insanity.  Just for the sake of stupidity, below are how the games would shake out if the college basketball season ended right now:

GCS Championship Game – North Carolina vs. Tennessee
The Moron Game – Memphis vs. Texas
The Idiot Game – UCLA vs. Duke
The Really Stupid Game – Stanford vs. Xavier
The Asinine Game – Wisconsin vs. Georgetown

There you have it, the GCS, Game Championship Series!  2 teams get to play for the National Championship and the rest play in meaningless exhibition games.  If this seems very stupid then you realize how so very stupid the BCS is, and how it is abhorrent to everything that America stands for.  Are there really living, breathing people that can defend the BCS with a straight face?  Yes, and some of those very people will be gathered in Indianapolis in a little over two weeks to pick the teams for…….hold on…….can you believe it?……..don’t say it is so……yes, the very evil……A PLAYOFF TOURNAMENT.  What a bunch of hypocrites!

We will be updating the GCS Rankings every week until the end of the season, and we will end up with two teams and two teams only out of all of the great college basketball teams in the country of ours, that will be able to play for the National Championship.  Everyone else can…., well, you know what they can do when an abhorrent system like the GCS is used to determine a champion.  Those other teams can go to HELL! How so very stupid…….

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With Phil Fulmer at Tennessee being in the news recently with his response to criticism from the Knoxville News-Sentinel (John Adams, sports editor), we thought we would take at look at the 2008 Tennessee schedule and predict what we think lies in store for Coach Fulmer and the Vols.  What can you say, but Tennessee faces a very tough schedule in ’08 and they have to go on the road to Pasadena in the second game of the season to play UCLA, something that is not going to be easy for a team with a new QB.  We see trouble ahead for Fulmer, and judging by the amount of e-mail we get here at Coaches Hot Seat calling for a change in the head coach at Tennessee, we believe that a change just might be in the offing in Knoxville in 2008.  Enjoy!

Phil Fulmer and Tennessee in 2008

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Since a few people here at Coaches Hot Seat played athletics on scholarship at the D-I level, we thought we would help out head football coaches everywhere that don’t seem to have a handle on their football teams.  It seems everywhere you turn there are football players getting into trouble, and it is time for the head football coaches at our universities to lay down the law and quit tolerating this crapola.  All of us went to parties in college, drank alcohol (yes, while we were still underage!), went to bars, had a great time, but none of us got arrested by the police or were picked up for DUI’s.  Why is that?  Because we had a little more respect for our coaches and universities than to go get rip-roaring drunk, act like idiots in public, or fighting with the police.  That is the behavior of someone that should not be on a scholarship at a university, and we believe that head football coaches need to have a very simply and straight-forward disciplinary policy.  No, this is not the Fulmer disciplinary policy where Phil consults with 24 people before deciding what to do to a player after he has a run in with law enforcement, but rather a very simple policy that the dumbest moron on the planet can understand.

If we were hired at Tennessee (or the dozens of other schools where players are out of control) to be the head coach, we would hold a team meeting and the head coach would say the following:

“Boys, the bullshit is over.  I don’t know what in the hell has been going on around here, but there is one thing we are not going to tolerate, and that is football players getting into trouble with the law, or acting out in public for that matter.  Therefore, we are implementing a very simple disciplinary policy and that is…

We want you to have a good time in college.  These are the best days of your life, and you should have a hell of a time, but not to the point where you make a fool of yourself or get into trouble with the law.  There is a very clear line between having a good time and acting like an idiot, and all of you know exactly where that line is.  The first time you cross that line while you are at (insert school name) and get into trouble with law enforcement or in some other situation that is serious enough to come to my attention then you are going to answer to me.  If you think offseason conditioning is tough, if you think fall 2-a-days is tough, you are going to be begging to be released from your scholarship after our coaches get done running you from one end of this campus to the other.  If you do make it through the punishment for your first offense, and you promise to your fellow teammates, your coaches, and your school that it will never happen again, then we will allow you back on the football team.

Here is where the bullshit really ends.  If you commit a second violation that involves law enforcement or something that is brought to my attention:  YOU ARE DONE!  Forget about coming to my office to beg to stay on the team, because YOU ARE DONE!  If you commit a second offense and embarrass this university you might as well go ahead and get all your football stuff together and drop it with the receptionist at the front desk at the athletic building.  If you need to get something out of your locker, a trainer will escort you to your locker, and then you will leave the building, and we never want to see you around here again.  We will honor your scholarship for the year you are in, but after that you are off scholarship, and if the offense is bad enough we will recommend to the administration that you be expelled from school.  Also, don’t think for a second that because you are a starter or a nationally known hotshot that this policy will not apply to you, but rather if you are a starter and you get into trouble, your punishment is going to be double of that of a non-starter.  Lastly, when a player at this university gets into trouble we are going to hold a press conference and announce it so everyone will know about it, and we are going to make sure that we call your hometown’s local newspaper and make sure they get the story so your Mom and Dad can read what a fine citizen you have been.   

Does everyone understand this policy?  Good, because we are not going to have a bunch of thugs and idiots on this football team.  If you think so little of this university and football team to go out and get into trouble, then we could really care less what happens to you.  If you want to be part of this university and this football team and you make this school proud of your behavior on the football field, in the classroom, and in the public, we will love you as much your mammas and papas do.  It is your job to make all of us proud, and if each of you do that, we will win a lot of football games around here.

Now that we have laid out our very simple disciplinary policy, we are going to turn to the goal of this football team.”  The head coach then turns to the dry erase board and writes:  To win the National Championship!

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