Hugs: More Important Than Coaching Acumen?

It turns out that Gregg Doyel does churn out the occasional college football column for CBS Sportsline. And, well, he’s…not good. The best I can say about him is that he’s better than Dodd, which is damning him with the faintest of praise. I don’t really have anything else to add to that, so let’s get started.

N.C. State will rue the day the ‘Pack passed on Johnson

Okay, it’s not a terrible headline, but why create the ‘Pack-passed alliteration? Alliterations are not required in all headlnes. “Rue the day” seems a little overdramatic too. Oh well, at least there aren’t any puns.

Some mistakes, you get away with. Not because you’re good, but because you’re lucky.

Alright, I’m with you so far. Though I’m unclear on how goodness can compensate for mistakes.

Switch lanes on the interstate without looking first: That’s a mistake. If there’s not a car next to you, congratulations. You just got away with it.

Particularly a mistake like this, but sure, we’ve all done this at one time or another. Though I’m fairly certain my goodness rating got me out of it the times I did so.

Some mistakes, you don’t get away with. And not because you’re bad. But because you’re unlucky.

Au contraire. Badness is the driving force behind traffic accidents.

Don’t hire Navy’s Paul Johnson, when you had the chance, as your football coach. That’s a mistake.

Well, it might be. Depending on who you hire in his place. Passing on him for, say, Bobby Bowden in his prime would be a good decision.

That was North Carolina State’s mistake 21 months ago, and for 21 months, the Wolfpack have gotten away with it.

Wha-huh? You have confused me Gregg Doyel. If it was a mistake to pass on Johnson, how did they get away with it for 21 months and why is it now going to all come crashing down? I think you may have chosen poorly with this whole mistake/consequences angle.

They hired Tom O’Brien from Boston College in December 2006, and there’s nothing wrong with hiring Tom O’Brien. His first year was a 5-7 struggle, but in the long run he’ll win more than he loses, and he’ll do it the right way. Nothing about him foretells a BCS bowl bid, but this is North Carolina State, not Florida State. And for North Carolina State, hiring Tom O’Brien wasn’t a mistake.

All true, which begs the question: Why are you writing this?

As long as Paul Johnson is still stuck at Navy.

Oh. that’s right. You’re saying that passing on Johnson wasn’t a mistake if he were coaching at Navy forever, but that it becomes a mistake when he leaves, because…..[head explodes]

But some mistakes, you don’t get away with. Not because you’re bad. But because you’re unlucky.

Reiterate much?

And North Carolina State was unlucky that Paul Johnson, just one year after being passed over by the Wolfpack in December 2006, left Navy for a new coaching job. And not just any job, but a job in a BCS league.

And not just any BCS league, but in the ACC. At Georgia Tech.

And not just any Georgia Tech, but the one in Atlanta. And not just any Atlanta, but the one in Georgia. And not just any Georgia, but the one not being overrun by Russian troops. And not just any Russian troops, but…Dear God, I beat this and beat this! Why won’t it die?!

He really is padding this mother fucker. I’m guessing he gets paid by the letter.

Paul Johnson just moved in down the street.

North Carolina State couldn’t be more unlucky.

Pad. Ding.

Games start later this month, and Paul Johnson is going to win at Georgia Tech.

This year? That’s not very likely, unless you mean, like, Gaileyan levels of mediocrity.

Eventually he’s going to win big, because that’s what he does.

Big is a relative term I suppose, but it’s not as if he’s going to create a perrenial national title contender at Georgia Tech.

Lots of people will have their doubts about Johnson in the ACC, just as they had their doubts about him at Navy in 2002 when he inherited the worst program in Division I.

And he took them to a respectable 45-29 record over six years. Another gentleman spent nine years at Navy from ‘73 to ‘81, and led them to a 55-46-1 record. That man’s name was Bear Bryant. Just kidding. It was George Welsh, best known for spending nineteen years coaching good, but not great Virginia teams.

Also, I have yet to read a single column doubting Johnson. Where is this cacophony of nay-sayers?

See, Johnson comes from the Division I-AA ranks,

Like the perenially maligned Jim Tressel.

 and he runs a form of the triple-option.

Like the oft-mocked Tom Osborne.

Lots of fullback dives up the middle. Quarterback keepers around the outside. Pitches to a trailing halfback. Check out the terminology. Dives. Keepers. Halfback.

Dives, keepers and halfback? Welcome back to the…um, 2000s if your team runs a variation of a pro-style offense?

That’s old school,

Those terms are not old school. The option kind of is, but let’s remember that the second winningest program of the ’90s ran the option and didn’t scrap it until they unfairly (okay, it was arguably fair) fired their coach in 2003.

and most people are skeptical of old school.

Some people are. Many, many more people are/were skeptical of new school, like the spread option.

They want their coaches to have a BCS or an NFL pedigree, and they want newfangled offenses with no fullbacks and four receivers and lots of vertical, vertical, vertical.

I’m sure he conducted a very scientific survey to determine that most people feel this way.

The only thing vertical about Paul Johnson is his winning percentage.

Ugh.

In that way, he’s a lot like Jim Grobe at Wake Forest.

He’s like the guy with the 78-72-1 career record? Really? Johnson’s career winning percentage is .729 by the way.

People think Johnson won’t be able to recruit NFL athletes to operate his small-college system?

Well, probably not at receiver or QB probably (at least no someone who will play QB in the NFL). Does anyone think he’ll have any trouble finding a fast guy to run the option? That he’ll not attract top-notch running backs? Linemen? I mean, he’ll have the normal issues of recruiting at Georgia Tech, but his system isn’t going to be the problem. And who the fuck thinks that it will? Show me that man, so I can pummel him (metaphorically).

That hasn’t stopped Grobe from dominating in the ACC — and it won’t stop Johnson, either.

Look, I like Grobe. He has turned a doormat into a competitive program and even managed to win the conference title one year when the ACC was down. But: He has dominated to the tune of a 24-32 ACC record. I predict that Johnson will have won more than 24 conference games by the end of his fifth season.

North Carolina State didn’t see it that way, though to pin the Paul Johnson oversight on “North Carolina State” is unfair to the school at large.

You mean there wasn’t a referendum to decide who would be the new coach? What kind of fascists run that University.

Passing over Paul Johnson after he had interviewed for the position in late 2006 wasn’t a North Carolina State decision.

You’re getting confusing again.

This one is completely on athletic director Lee Fowler.

Oh, but it was the decision of the guy who was given the responsibility for making these kinds of decisions by the people who run North Carolina State. Jesus Christ, Gregg. You’re fucking killing me.

Sources high up the Wolfpack food chain tell me the headhunter hired by the school, and the board of trustees who oversee the school, wanted Johnson.

Good for him?

Wolfpack fans wanted Johnson, too.

Evidence please? I didn’t follow the hiring of O’Brien, because I find nothing so boring in college football as middling ACC teams, but does he have any reason to just throw out this statement as if it is fact? I’m going to assume no, because this is column is way too long to bother with more research.

Fowler wanted O’Brien.

For clarity’s sake, I broke down the paragraph preceding this one sentence paragraph in the sections above. So, you had all of those people who wanted Johnson, then dramatic pause. And BOOM! that one sentence piece of dramatic tripe follows. It’s downright Plaschkean.

Fowler also wanted Sidney Lowe. We know how that’s working out.

BUUURRRN!!!!11!!!1!1!!!

OK, that’s not fair.

At least you’re self-aware enough to recognize that, if also enough of a dickhead to write it in the first place.

O’Brien won’t be the colossal failure that Lowe has become.

Probably not.

And since we’re already meshing Wolfpack basketball and football, let’s mesh some more and acknowledge that O’Brien has much in common with former Wolfpack basketball coach Herb Sendek.

Yeah, let’s mesh this shit all up. Lay these similarities on me.

Sendek won more than he lost, won the right way, graduated players and declined to reveal too much of himself to the media. O’Brien is a lot like that.

Cool. Sounds like my kinda guy.

Which is ominous for O’Brien, when you think about it.

How’s that?

Sendek won 105 games and went to five NCAA tournaments in his final five seasons at North Carolina State, and fans made his life so miserable that he left for Arizona State, one of the hardest jobs in the Pac-10.

Again, didn’t follow the whole Sendek thing at NC State, but is this actually so? Also, they tend to take their basketball a little more seriously at NC State than their football. As you said, it’s not like it’s FSU. But wait, it’s about to get huggy up in this bitch.

But I understand Wolfpack fans. I really do.

I tend to not believe you.

They want to win, but they want to be able to embrace their coach — like they could embrace former basketball coach Jim Valvano and, until his 3-9 season in 2006, former football coach Chuck Amato.

I’m just guessing here, but I think would embrace anyone who took them to a national title in basketball. And are you really holding up the fact that they liked Amato until he started losing as some sort of sign that they really liked his personality or something?

I’m just not sure they can embrace Tom O’Brien. He’s a good man, but he’s not … embraceable.

It’s true. He scored a mere 56!!!  on the Holtzman Embracability Profile.

Paul Johnson, though, would have been perfect.

Seriously, he scored a remarkable 231 on Holtzman.

He’s a winner, and he’s a good ol’ boy from North Carolina. To make the perfect hire in college sports, you have to know who you are.

Jim Valvano: Good ol’ boy.

Kentucky basketball, for example, knew itself when it hired a drawling workaholic named Billy Gillispie to run its basketball program.

Rick Pitino: Drawling workaholic.

Southern California knew itself when it hired a laid-back dude named Pete Carroll to run its football program.

I can’t really argue with the fact that Pete Carroll personifies the whole LA thing pretty well, but John Robinson enjoyed both success and failure at USC. Was he a laid-back dude the first go ’round and a hardassed shitkicker when he came back? (Answer: No)

North Carolina State didn’t know who it was when it hired a former U.S. Marine from the Midwest named Tom O’Brien. He’ll win more than he loses, and he’ll do it the right way, but Tom O’Brien isn’t North Carolina State.

A campus-wide identity crisis is truly tragic.

Paul Johnson is. Or was. But now he’s at Georgia Tech, and while the fit there isn’t perfect — a physical education major from Western Carolina at an academically elite institution — Johnson will win enough to make it work.

Fucking Fuckabees, the logic is all over the Allah cursed place in this column. O’Brien is fucked because he isn’t NC State (whatever the fuck that means) and Johnson will be fine despite not being Georgia Tech (however one might define that nebulous trait). Fuck!

Because that’s what he does. At Georgia Southern he inherited a program coming off a 4-7 season, and within four years had won two national championships. At Navy he inherited a program that had been 1-20 over the previous two seasons and within three years was 10-2.

Impressive, though he wasn’t going up against the toughest competition on the planet at either location. (And the ACC will provide that?) Shut up voice in my head.

Imagine what he’ll do now that he can recruit Division I athletes to a BCS school. For 21 months, North Carolina State has only been able to imagine. For North Carolina State, it was probably better that way.

Probably pretty well, but he’ll also consistently be playing BCS competition, so it will balance out to some degree. I can’t comment any more. This column has sapped my brain-power.