“They’ say that timing is everything and we had a couple of items that couldn’t have been more appropriately timed.
(1) First comes the Greensboro News & Record trumpeting a song that you have heard ad nauseum this year.
On the day after someone actually took the time to crunch the numbers and generate some facts on the topic, the N&R hilariously serves themselves up as a fine example of perpetuating a myth – or is it wishful thinking – while playing the role of the ‘drive-by media’. To be fair and balanced, we should mention that the N&R actually made some really good points outside of the following:
In “Carolina’s Youth Being served”
For much of the season, inexperience was the problem for North Carolina’s football team. Now, without the prospect of a bowl game to keep them motivated, the Tar Heels might find that youth is their biggest advantage. There isn’t much to play for in the short-term, but the long-term goals are still there for most of the squad.
“Every single time that we practice and every single time that we play is an opportunity for this football program to grow and get better,” coach Butch Davis said. “That can’t be lost in spite of the fact that the season is dwindling down and there are two games left. For 95 percent of these guys on this football team, their football careers are actually just getting started.”
I hope that you aren’t too tired of hearing about the youth in Carolina’s football program, because you are going to hear it a lot more over the next couple of seasons. Think about it, you’ve been told for years that the players in the Tarheel program aren’t that good and that Butch will need to get some of his own recruits in there. All that is going to do is mean more ‘young players’ over the next couple of years. Additionally, everyone I speak with in Chapel Hill tells me that Mike Paulus will be replacing TJ Yates next year as the Tarheels’ starting quarterback. So, how will they be getting any more experienced by starting a redshirt freshman over an experienced sophomore?
(2) On the very same day that we ran this entry this entry the NC State women’s soccer program was being ‘featured’ by Technician in this article.
It couldn’t be more classic NC State and Lee Fowler.
With two games remaining, the women’s soccer team is already mathematically eliminated from any chance of advancing to even the ACC Tournament.
That’s never a good sign for a program, especially considering the coach of the team is in her 10th season at the helm. Not once has the Wolfpack gone to the NCAA Tournament with Kerrigan as coach. Just because this year’s team is inexperienced doesn’t explain what went wrong in the other nine seasons.
But instead, it’s year 10, and the Pack sits at 0-7-1 in conference play. Kerrigan’s teams have yet to win more than three ACC games or amass more than 10 wins in a season. She’s won 13 conference games in 77 tries, which equals an abysmal winning percentage of 16.88 percent. Her teams have been average at best, compiling a 79-93-16 record.
“She knows from this point into the future she’s got to show improvement as do all our coaches,” Athletics Director Lee Fowler said.
Fowler said the set goal for the soccer programs is to advance to NCAA Tournaments.
“I couldn’t expect a whole lot more from [the soccer coaches] with the facilities we had,” Fowler said. “So now that we do have facilities, I expect an uptake, and we need to be playing to go to the NCAAs every year — not one out of two or three.”
We’ve hashed through the ridiculousness of the facilities excuse and rationalizations in the past. I guess that all I can say is that the Wake Forest fans are pretty damn happy that Ron Wellman and Jim Grobe don’t consistently whine about facilities or the Demon Deacons could have never won the ACC Football Championship last year.
This is just another of those examples that shows the downside to having a career sports/administration person in an important leadership position that requires a more well-rounded set of experiences to excel.
Could you imagine if the ‘real world’ conformed to the Lee Fowler method of management? Hell, any employee who worked at a company that wasn’t already the biggest and the best would never be held acccountable for anything. If the company for whom you were working didn’t have the “facilities” – replace that term with with “resources”; “products”; “services”; “capital; etc – then you would never be asked to do anything successfully. It would be utopia for lazy losers and miserable for anyone who truly strived for success and the create value.
Think about this. How did the likes of Wendell Murphy, Richard Vaughn, Jim Goodnight and Lonnie Poole EVER build their businesses to the level of success that they experienced? Could you imagine if during the early days of SAS or Murphy Family Farms that Goodnight and Murphy came to work telling the employees that there was no reason for them to succeed and that there were no expectations of the employees until they finally got big enough to face their competition on even terms? They would have NEVER gotten there companies to ‘even terms’ as they would have been dead in the water.
If you work for Capital Bank, or Pargaon Commercial Bank or First Citizens…does your boss and company pay you and allow you to keep your job with no expectations or standards simply because you don’t have the capital base or products that are as good as Bank of America, JPMorganChase or Wachovia?
If you work for one of the hundreds of technology companies in RTP, does your boss and company pay you and allow you to keep your job with no expectations or standards simply because you don’t have the capital base or products and services that are as good as Microsoft, SAS or Oracle?
If you are in construction, do you decide that you will just wait until you magically get as big as Centex, Toll Brothers, DR Horton or Lennar before you start trying to build quality homes?
If you broker commercial real estate, why do you even bother until you can get a job with Steve Stroud at NAI or work for CB Richard Ellis?
I certianly hope that you don’t drink Cheerwine or Sun Drop. How could these companies even think that they could exist and compete without the ‘facilities’ of Coke and Pepsi?
If you work for 850theBuzz, does your boss and company pay you and allow you to keep your job with no expectations or standards simply because you don’t the broadcasting power of an FM station?
If you work for The News & Observer, does your boss and company pay you and allow you to keep your job with no expectations or standards simply because you don’t the money or subscriber base of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal?
…I think that you get the point. Then again, you live in the real world where the point is pretty obvious.
