New Jockey? Hold Your Horses!
As a true collegiate Sports fan, I troll on my schools' message boards. Unfortunately for me, collegiate message boards are one of the numerous evil byproducts of the internet.
If you are not familiar with the culture of message boards stay away while you are ahead. They are God awful places that are a complete waste of time and energy. They are a congregation point where ego centric and provincial sports fans that have absolutely no bearing on the performance of the team discuss topics of little or no importance to the greater population of the world. Typically topics fall into one of the following categories:
1. Celebrating wins and praising the teams performance: During these topics posters commonly use the personal noun "WE" in reference to the team, as if they were the 6'3 white kid on the bench that never plays but gets to wear the team warmups and participate in all the bench rituals.
2. Inane strategy talks: During these topics posters frequently ponder what they would do if they were the head coach. All posters have infinite wisdom that no coach of twenty years could ever possess.
3. The prognostication/speculation: These are favorite topics among sports fans, because after all, sports are all about the hope and possibility of next year. During these topics posters speculate the performance of the team next year. These posts almost always feature the words potential, talent, excitement, and best ever. Usually prognosticators will refer to the talent of recruits they have never actually seen play aside from a 2 minute highlight video of said player torching wildly inferior high school players.
4. The Article Commentary: These topics start out with one poster placing the link of a news article on the message board. Depending on the thesis of the article and the message boards perception of a writer they will do one of two things. Praise the writer uncontrollably about his superior knowledge of the team and incredible writing style. Or deride the writer mercilessly about his incompetence and bias towards the home team. The funny thing is these fans know infinitely more about their team then the writers and as a result almost none of the articles actually reveal new information about the team.
5. The Rare Insight: Occasionally an educated or insightful individual will bring up a point of note. After their initial post, a slew of un-insightful posters will follow with their praises of the Insightful one, adding absolutely nothing to the conversation.
6. The Inside Source: Either a student or someone with a connection to the team will post an inside scoop of a player. Sometimes its a cute story about a player signing a kids basketball at the mall, but usually it is something negative like a drug possession, cheating on a test, or an injury. The response of the mass posters is always the same 3 step process. 1. Shock and denial. 2. Expressions of disappointment and a few disparaging remarks about the player. 3. Eventually posters move to acceptance and praise of the program's clean history relative to other evil programs.
7. The Post Loss Melancholy: Although losses are the worst part of being a sports fan, they are peak activity hours for message boards. Posters come from all over to express their pain, and complain about how the team didn't play up to their lofty expectations. Post loss topics usually consist of.
- Beleagured praise of the opponent, and brief compliment to visitors from opposing message boards.
- Scapegoating of players who had particularly bad game and calling out all their mistakes. Ironic considering most posters never even played on their JV team.
- Complaining about the refs and their many terrible calls
- Calling out the opponents and their classless behavior
- Praising the players who had a good game in spite of the loss
- Calling out other posters who are fair-weather for being so negative after a loss
- Rationalizing the loss relative to season performance, or because you are dealing with kids who are 18-24.
- And my favorite calling for the coaches job. Because the players are "amateur" aka they aren't "paid" and therefore cannot be fired. The only people you can really assess blame against are the coaches. And boy do people place blame on the coaches, with their all knowing 20/20 hind sight and their myopic views. Posters call for heads to roll at a rate that dizzies the Mr. Goullitine.
Recently I came across a poster who was calling for Gonzaga coach Mark Few's head. His exact quote was "We have the Horses, We just need a new Jockey!" Below is my response to that post. Larry if you happen to be TacomaZag, well I am not surprised.
TacomaZag: I hear you. These two recent losses are very disappointing. Combined with refreshed memories of a few early tournament exits, and it is enough to raise any Zag fan's blood pressure.
But honestly, you're calling for Few's head because of a couple close losses to "elite" programs? Close losses to good teams in the pre-season is not grounds for firing even among "elite" programs.
In fact, what separates almost all of the elite programs of college basketball is consistency of great coaching. The success of Duke, Florida, UConn, Kansas, UCLA, Arizona, Syracuse, and MSU, can all be attributed to great tenured coaches. Those programs experienced a lot of the same growing pains you referred to, but their patience allowed them to get over the hump.
It's frightening territory calling for coaches heads. Just ask Kentucky, Indiana, and Notre Dame (in football). If historically elite programs with unlimited resources are struggling to maintain, how the hell do you think we are gonna fare? As great of a story Gonzaga is, I don't think you can call us a top tier coaching position. Relative to other top programs we don't pay great, we have a terrible location, we play in a bad conference, and we have mediocre facilities.
We are incredibly fortunate to have stumbled upon a coach who has embraced those challenges and turned them into competitive advantages. You can argue that Few is responsible for poor game management against top level competition. But who are you going to bring to Gonzaga that is going to do better while maintaining top tier recruiting, scheduling, and in conference performance? Not to mention the fact, that Few runs an ethical program that generally has lived up to the mission of the university.
I know that we all want to get to the status where we consistently beat top level competition. But those same factors that prevent us from being elite on the court, are the same factors that prevent us from landing and keeping an no elite coach better than Few. Calling for Few's head is a dangerousgame and could lead us down the road of other small schools that have fallen by the wayside (see San Francisco, Seattle, and LMU).
Go Zags. Take these experiences learn from them and grow as a team.
P.S. Coach K addressed the less than 10 seconds on the clock with a tie game or down by one scenario in his book. Assuming his point guard or star player has the ball and is dribbling down the court he generally doesn't call the timeout. Then again Pargo ain't Bobby Hurley, especially with a bum leg.
If you are not familiar with the culture of message boards stay away while you are ahead. They are God awful places that are a complete waste of time and energy. They are a congregation point where ego centric and provincial sports fans that have absolutely no bearing on the performance of the team discuss topics of little or no importance to the greater population of the world. Typically topics fall into one of the following categories:
1. Celebrating wins and praising the teams performance: During these topics posters commonly use the personal noun "WE" in reference to the team, as if they were the 6'3 white kid on the bench that never plays but gets to wear the team warmups and participate in all the bench rituals.
2. Inane strategy talks: During these topics posters frequently ponder what they would do if they were the head coach. All posters have infinite wisdom that no coach of twenty years could ever possess.
3. The prognostication/speculation: These are favorite topics among sports fans, because after all, sports are all about the hope and possibility of next year. During these topics posters speculate the performance of the team next year. These posts almost always feature the words potential, talent, excitement, and best ever. Usually prognosticators will refer to the talent of recruits they have never actually seen play aside from a 2 minute highlight video of said player torching wildly inferior high school players.
4. The Article Commentary: These topics start out with one poster placing the link of a news article on the message board. Depending on the thesis of the article and the message boards perception of a writer they will do one of two things. Praise the writer uncontrollably about his superior knowledge of the team and incredible writing style. Or deride the writer mercilessly about his incompetence and bias towards the home team. The funny thing is these fans know infinitely more about their team then the writers and as a result almost none of the articles actually reveal new information about the team.
5. The Rare Insight: Occasionally an educated or insightful individual will bring up a point of note. After their initial post, a slew of un-insightful posters will follow with their praises of the Insightful one, adding absolutely nothing to the conversation.
6. The Inside Source: Either a student or someone with a connection to the team will post an inside scoop of a player. Sometimes its a cute story about a player signing a kids basketball at the mall, but usually it is something negative like a drug possession, cheating on a test, or an injury. The response of the mass posters is always the same 3 step process. 1. Shock and denial. 2. Expressions of disappointment and a few disparaging remarks about the player. 3. Eventually posters move to acceptance and praise of the program's clean history relative to other evil programs.
7. The Post Loss Melancholy: Although losses are the worst part of being a sports fan, they are peak activity hours for message boards. Posters come from all over to express their pain, and complain about how the team didn't play up to their lofty expectations. Post loss topics usually consist of.
- Beleagured praise of the opponent, and brief compliment to visitors from opposing message boards.
- Scapegoating of players who had particularly bad game and calling out all their mistakes. Ironic considering most posters never even played on their JV team.
- Complaining about the refs and their many terrible calls
- Calling out the opponents and their classless behavior
- Praising the players who had a good game in spite of the loss
- Calling out other posters who are fair-weather for being so negative after a loss
- Rationalizing the loss relative to season performance, or because you are dealing with kids who are 18-24.
- And my favorite calling for the coaches job. Because the players are "amateur" aka they aren't "paid" and therefore cannot be fired. The only people you can really assess blame against are the coaches. And boy do people place blame on the coaches, with their all knowing 20/20 hind sight and their myopic views. Posters call for heads to roll at a rate that dizzies the Mr. Goullitine.
Recently I came across a poster who was calling for Gonzaga coach Mark Few's head. His exact quote was "We have the Horses, We just need a new Jockey!" Below is my response to that post. Larry if you happen to be TacomaZag, well I am not surprised.
TacomaZag: I hear you. These two recent losses are very disappointing. Combined with refreshed memories of a few early tournament exits, and it is enough to raise any Zag fan's blood pressure.
But honestly, you're calling for Few's head because of a couple close losses to "elite" programs? Close losses to good teams in the pre-season is not grounds for firing even among "elite" programs.
In fact, what separates almost all of the elite programs of college basketball is consistency of great coaching. The success of Duke, Florida, UConn, Kansas, UCLA, Arizona, Syracuse, and MSU, can all be attributed to great tenured coaches. Those programs experienced a lot of the same growing pains you referred to, but their patience allowed them to get over the hump.
It's frightening territory calling for coaches heads. Just ask Kentucky, Indiana, and Notre Dame (in football). If historically elite programs with unlimited resources are struggling to maintain, how the hell do you think we are gonna fare? As great of a story Gonzaga is, I don't think you can call us a top tier coaching position. Relative to other top programs we don't pay great, we have a terrible location, we play in a bad conference, and we have mediocre facilities.
We are incredibly fortunate to have stumbled upon a coach who has embraced those challenges and turned them into competitive advantages. You can argue that Few is responsible for poor game management against top level competition. But who are you going to bring to Gonzaga that is going to do better while maintaining top tier recruiting, scheduling, and in conference performance? Not to mention the fact, that Few runs an ethical program that generally has lived up to the mission of the university.
I know that we all want to get to the status where we consistently beat top level competition. But those same factors that prevent us from being elite on the court, are the same factors that prevent us from landing and keeping an no elite coach better than Few. Calling for Few's head is a dangerousgame and could lead us down the road of other small schools that have fallen by the wayside (see San Francisco, Seattle, and LMU).
Go Zags. Take these experiences learn from them and grow as a team.
P.S. Coach K addressed the less than 10 seconds on the clock with a tie game or down by one scenario in his book. Assuming his point guard or star player has the ball and is dribbling down the court he generally doesn't call the timeout. Then again Pargo ain't Bobby Hurley, especially with a bum leg.
P.S. Coach K addressed the less than 10 seconds on the clock with a tie game or down by one scenario in his book. Assuming his point guard or star player has the ball and is dribbling down the court he generally doesn't call the timeout. Then again Pargo ain't Bobby Hurley, especially with a bum leg.Labels: Gonzaga Basketball, Mark Few, Message Boards
posted by IrishZag at 7:37 PM
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