Stranger said:
Many of you are acquainted with me and know that I have been personally attending Baylor football games, non-stop for over 62 years. I've served on college and public school boards and had to hire and fire coaches, superintendents, college presidents and untold school teachers. In addition, for over 15 years i had 70 plus employees at any given time.
I owned Baylor football tickets in all sports for many years and have contributed well over six figures to Baylor Athletics
That doesn't mean I'm smart, but I have plenty of experience. I've seen this sort of train wreck before. I was told this by a smart man many years ago and truth and experience bear out this statement:
"It's not the employees you fire that cost you the most money. It's the ones you DON'T fire."
That addage has been proven true to me many, many times. It's really hard sometime to let go of a guy that you just knew would work out, especially if you have a lot of money invested in him. If you've stuck your neck out on a hiring decision it's hard to back down. Nobody likes to be proven dead-ass wrong.
Matt Rhule may be a good Christian man, a great family man, a man of character and a hale fellow well met. But a good fit as a football coach for the Baylor Bears, he is not.
Baylor has a bad habit of hiring guys like that.
Bill Beall and Kevin Steele were two of those guys that fit that profile. In both cases the Board of Regents made those hires because they fit the Baylor image. They passed over some coaches that would have probably won them more ball games. I know of one of those "pass-overs" that won a national championship at another university.
Kevin Steele was hired because a couple of those all-knowing Regents were impressed by his bs that he attended Sunday School and Church every Sunday, even during football season. Another applicant was asked by the BOR if he was a church-goer if he attended faithfully. He answered that he did, but not during football season. An honest answer was apparently not what they wanted. The only thing that mattered was the color of his prayer cloth.
It is my fear that the BOR acted unwisely with Rhule (:and Rhoads for that matter) because they were more interested in repairing their image (which they iniated) that to hire a real candidate.
Losers like Beall and Steele have a look and a manner about them. Steele choked his first two games at Baylor and the remarks that followed both losses were telling. I was sitting in a skybox as a guest of a letterman/donor at the UNLV debacle. It was the first game for the skyboxes and spirits were high for the new regime. Like everyone else we cringed at what we saw on the field.
Steele had invited us to the press conference after the game and what we saw made us sick. Instead of owning up to his mistake Steele slimed around some excuse that he was trying to teach his players to win. His inability to look anyone in the eye and his preaching of that goody two shoes theology during the press conference assured us he was in over his head and didn't have a clue about what to do to turn us around. We suffered even worse as his tenure wore on. I hate to admit it, but after the 70-22 blood letting at Cal, I bet $50 a game on Baylor's opponent and gave the points on all of the Bears remaining games that season. And I won $500 bucks. Baylor never covered.
Sadly, after that game, Baylor gave Steele a one year extension. Talk about throwing good money after bad.
So . . . down to Rhule (and Rhodes).
Rhule has that look and manner about him. My mind flashed back to that first Steele press conference. He even wears Steele's five o clock shadow. Close your eyes and you think Steele is speaking.
He has no answers. He has that same smug look and preaches those same platitudes while refusing to look anybody in the eye. He brought slow, stodgy old up-east, Big X football into Texas and has refused to try what has actually worked here in recent years. Instead of embracing success he has decided to shove his will upon this team. I realize there are injuries,but this guy is offering no solutions.
You all know what Steele did to Baylor's program. For you young pups (I was a student then) Beall went winless his first year, won one game his second year and won a whopping two his third year, none of them conference games. In his defense, Beall just never knew what to do. Lord, do we wish we only had a three year deal on Rhule?
So to the chase . . . This guy will never produce a winner. He ain't got it. He don't fit. It's time to p*ss on the fire and call in the dogs. The hunt is over. At least Arkansas had the balls to fire Jack Crowe after losing to Citadel at the first of the season. Frank Broyles knew. He'd looked him in the eyes and listened to his excuses. I doubt we have anybody on the BOR that could pull that trick.
That's what needs to happen toot-sweet. Baylor will not win another game this year under this good Christian man. If they do, it will be celebrated as a moral victory so that Rhule can live to fight another day and draw another $4 million paycheck.
Pay the guy off. So what if it costs $14 million. They've given more than that to women crying rape. (some were legitimate, for sure). The BOR will soon have payments on a stadium they can't afford when the fans and donors decide to leave and sit on their wallets.
As I mentioned earlier, they cannot afford NOT to fire him.! The time is now not later.
I hear you. But I also think the point is probably moot. Unless something unforeseen happens, Rhule gets 3 years from the administration to put the program on solid footing.
Even with the disaster of last season, I was willing to give Rhule the benefit of the doubt. Now I'm starting to doubt whether I should have given him that benefit. Three games in 2018 is enough to start seeing a pattern, and I don't like what I'm seeing, particularly on defense. You can get by on less talent if you're tough and disciplined, and this team looks to have neither quality.
Rhule didn't come into this job like Beall or Dave Roberts or Steele, none of whom had shown they could succeed as head coaches before arriving at BU. Rhule turned a god-awful program at Temple into a pretty good one. So it's not like we don't know WHETHER the guy can coach; we just don't know whether he'll be any good at BU.
Right now the results are not encouraging. But I think we have to wait to see where they wind up this year.
When you fire somebody after just two seasons solely for poor results on the field, you have to go into that knowing that you'll be creating doubts in the minds of coaching candidates as to whether they'll be given a fair chance to turn things around. And this is especially true given the depleted state of the program when Rhule arrived. We might miss out on some good candidates who otherwise would be willing to consider the job. That ought to give us pause.
On the other hand, if it's abundantly clear by the end of the season that he's not going to get the job done in 3 years or 6 years, maybe we can't afford to wait, especially if the stands are almost empty every week.
"Free your ass and your mind will follow." -- George Clinton
