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Auburndawg - I want to buy some
creepycoug
Member Posts: 23,262
of what you're selling. Money, Tradition and Location - The Iron Laws. I want in. But before I emotionally invest in a point of view, I need to do some due diligence. So as the current vendor of the Iron Laws, please answer these questions for me:
1. Does UW really have all 3? Are you sure?
2. Did UW have all 3 back in the 80s and 90s? Are you sure?
3. Specifically What makes you think we have Location? Recruiting base? Scenery? Medium-sized city? What is it about Seattle that you think gives us a leg up on the competition?
4. How have Oklahoma, Penn State, Nebraska, Michigan, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama and other programs pulled it off?
5. Why was Miami a doormat for so long before they blew up in the late 70s? South Florida has been producing NFL talent since long before Miami showed up ... they just used to head north to Michigan and South Bend before someone gave them a home town program to play for. Lack of tradition? How'd they get around that? Because on almost any measure of cfb success, it's hard to argue any program has had more tradition than they have over the last 30 years. They also didn't have any $$ then, and often struggle to compete with the big programs even today on that measure. Seems Miami has 1 out of 3. Seems few programs have all 3.
before anyone points it out, I need more attention than I can get on the back end of a two-page thread. i need my own show.
1. Does UW really have all 3? Are you sure?
2. Did UW have all 3 back in the 80s and 90s? Are you sure?
3. Specifically What makes you think we have Location? Recruiting base? Scenery? Medium-sized city? What is it about Seattle that you think gives us a leg up on the competition?
4. How have Oklahoma, Penn State, Nebraska, Michigan, Georgia, Auburn, Alabama and other programs pulled it off?
5. Why was Miami a doormat for so long before they blew up in the late 70s? South Florida has been producing NFL talent since long before Miami showed up ... they just used to head north to Michigan and South Bend before someone gave them a home town program to play for. Lack of tradition? How'd they get around that? Because on almost any measure of cfb success, it's hard to argue any program has had more tradition than they have over the last 30 years. They also didn't have any $$ then, and often struggle to compete with the big programs even today on that measure. Seems Miami has 1 out of 3. Seems few programs have all 3.
before anyone points it out, I need more attention than I can get on the back end of a two-page thread. i need my own show.
Comments
2. The tradition was ok. Kind of like Oregon's now.
3. Great contradiction as always. If you had a large recruiting base, you wouldn't need to get kids to come to Seattle. Kids come from all over the country to Eugene, and its location SUCKS.
4. Oklahoma's location is ok. Penn State, Nebraska, and Michigan have shitty locations in relation to where the talent is. Then again, the B1G as a whole has fallen on hard times in the last 10 years.
5. Miami finally got good coaches. They were a fucking dreckfest before Schnellenberger.
Tallahassee sucks monkey ass.
They still don't have money. Very cash poor for a major program.
1 - 3. Puget Sound Area - but for a curiously high number of QBs RELATIVE TO THE POPULATION of this area back in the 80s and 90s, Puget Sound area recruiting has been mediocre at best over the years. This is not a hotbed of cfb talent by any stretch of the imagination. The truth is that I could rattle off many, many areas with much better historical and current recruiting. If it's about "kids wanting to come here," then why do they also want to go to College Station, Lincoln Nebraska, Happy Valley PA, Ann Arbor Michigan, Norman fucking Oklahoma (have you ever been there? I have. Talk to me), Gainsville Florida, Trailerhassee Florida, Athens Georgia, etc. etc. You seem to be confusing concepts. Is it the recruiting that the area offers? Or the attractiveness of the urban setting? Which is it?
4. Really? Norman Oklahoma? Tuscaloosa Alabama? Are you saying that a kid from urban Miami will gladly go to Baton Rouge (and they do) and a kid from Compton will sneer at Eugene, Oregon? You're high, and 0 for 4 so far. I'm still not buying, but I'm still interested.
Truth is here that either way you fail. If it's recruiting, then Norman doesn't have its own talent base. It recruits from Texas. How is that different than Oregon recruiting from California? It's not. If it's attractiveness, you fail again. Norman is a shit hole. Lincoln is a shit hole. A lot of places are shit holes. Next.
5. Are you telling me that Miami became the Miami we know today because they went to the fucking Orange Bowl in the 1930s and beat (or lost, who can remember) Bucknell? Come on man. Nobody ever said Miami had tradition before 1979. They produced some players over the years, but that is not tradition. You're playing in my sandbox now. That is simply not the reason. The reason is because they caught lightning in a bottle during the 1970s. Lou Saban somehow got Jim Kelly to sign there (it helped that Paterno recruited Kelly to be linebacker at Penn State, which turned him off), a few locals were there to help too and they started winning some. Then Schnellenber came, they started beating highly ranked Penn State and Notre Dame teams, cranked it up another notch, and wound up winning one of the most improbable national championships in history against one of the best Cornhusker teams of all time. More local talent started signing, then JJ showed up and BOOM. What we know today happened. $$Money$$? They didn't have it then, and they don't have it now. Miami's athletic budget is a fraction of what Texas', USC's, Michigan's, Ohio State's, etc. etc. They have actually been somewhat well known for what they DON'T have in facilities, with a few upgrades made just recently. It aint' the money either, trust me. Truth is, Miami's "tradition" was no more or less than Oregon's tradition at the start of their current run, and they don't have a lot of $$. They have location.
So you don't really need all 3. Tradition is the weakest among those factors. Miami proved that. Oregon is proving that.
Take another run at me. I'm still in the store.
Location:
1. Lots of kids want to stay home. Having a large local population nearby ups the odds that great football players live near you.
2. Most kids at least want to stay in the same region. Schools in the south have great locations just by being in the south. Ditto OK and Neb. because the SW and Texas love football
3. If you're school is in a city that makes going to school fun, that's a bonus.
So if you are located in a cool city, in a large population center, in a region of the country that cares about college football, you have an ideal location.
Money: Money to build stuff and hire coaches. (Ask Cal about this)
Tradition: the most important Iron Law.
1. If a school and its boosters perceive itself to be a football school, then they will spend the money to rebuild stadiums and steal other school's coaches.
2. Kids know which schools are football schools and which ones aren't, and they want to play for the schools they see on TV
Oregon has money. Eugene sucks, but it is on the west coast. And they are building a tradition.
Washington has money. Seattle is a fantastic location. We see ourselves as a traditional power. Clearly kids like Shaq Thompson, ASJ, Kasen Williams, John Ross, etc., also see UW as a football school, but more winning is necessary to fully reestablish the tradition that has been lost the past 10 years.
Doogs gotta Doog.
Let me try it this way:
Location:
1. Lots of kids want to stay home. Having a large local population nearby ups the odds that great football players live near you.No shit. But you don't have the built-in "location" advantage of Florida, California, Texas, the southeast or the mid-atlantic, and in any event, Oregon is close enough to be "near". If Puget Sound area recruiting were the deciding factor, the Washington and Oregon schools would never be worth a shit.
2. Most kids at least want to stay in the same region. Schools in the south have great locations just by being in the south. Ditto OK and Neb. because the SW and Texas love football
Football players want to be at a program, be it in hot, flat and humid southeastern US or Texas, the rainy PNW, LA or the miserable midwest. They don't care. It's the program, which is what we're trying to get to the bottom of here. Once I say, "Norman, Oklahoma", the discussion is over.
3. If you're school is in a city that makes going to school fun, that's a bonus. We are talking about Iron Laws, not bonuses.
So if you are located in a cool city, in a large population center, in a region of the country that cares about college football, you have an ideal location. the location here is, at best, mediocre and not enough to base a nationally prominent tradition. when people talk about location, they are talking about a program's backyard as being full of sought after and elite d1a recruits. they are not talking about here.
Money: Money to build stuff and hire coaches. (Ask Cal about this)
Miami hasn't had it; Miami doesn't have it now. You can get around money if you have a program kids want to be at. Facilities seem to matter more these days, so I concede that you had better have a helluva lot of the other stuff if this one is missing.
Tradition: the most important Iron Law.
1. If a school and its boosters perceive itself to be a football school, then they will spend the money to rebuild stadiums and steal other school's coaches.
2. Kids know which schools are football schools and which ones aren't, and they want to play for the schools they see on TV
Oregon has money. Eugene sucks, but it is on the west coast. And they are building a tradition.
Washington has money. Seattle is a fantastic location. We see ourselves as a traditional power. Clearly kids like Shaq Thompson, ASJ, Kasen Williams, John Ross, etc., also see UW as a football school, but more winning is necessary to fully reestablish the tradition that has been lost the past 10 years.
what we see ourselves as is meaningless. who is really to say, but my sense is that we're not perceived as a national power, and I'm not sure we were ever perceived as an elite national power. I think all those names mean is that the staff can recruit well at times (and at other times not so much).
Eugene is Olympia but a little bigger. All the rivalry shit aside, I've been there and it doesn't suck. Norman Oklahoma sucks. Gilroy California sucks. Aberdeen Washington sucks. Moses Lake sucks. I'm not sure Eugene actually sucks. It's not a metropolitan city, but if that were relevant, there would be more great programs on the east coast and about 3/4s of the eltite programs today would not be. The truth is, having your school in a metropolitan area is a detail. The proof is in the pudding. Just look at the top 25.
FInally, if tradition were the most important variable, again, how did Miami or Florida State get here? How did Florida, a perennial sleeper in the SEC, become a national force? Hell, how did Oregon do it?
If you haven't figured it out yet, it's coaching. If your program doesn't have the cache to attract a an established guy, you need to get lucky and grab someone under the radar who is doing it at a lesser program and is open to a promotion. About 98% of the successful programs did it that way. Has nothing to do with manifest destiny. That's for the dreamers.
No argument there.