And that was my point. Something changed in the 1980s about Little Three football that made it about recruiting bigger linebackers and kids who were willing to specialize in one sport 7x7. By the time my generation was old enough to have college-aged athletes of our own, many of my classmates were already discouraging their sons from “trying out” for football. In fact, by that time, the whole idea of trying out for football and other helmet sports had probably gone the way of working on one’s car on the weekends.
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If that was his signature line, it seems to have worked pretty well. Maybe something else would have worked better though?
“Farley was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2006”
“During that span, he recorded a career record of 114–19–3 (.849) that ranks as the eight best in college football history. His teams regularly dominated the NESCAC and recorded five perfect seasons, including a 23-game winning streak that until 2005 was the longest in NCAA Division III.”
That’s an interesting spin on what was a really crappy way to treat a group of talented and dedicated athletes. I guess just like God calling him away from his supposed mission at Jackson State after 3 years and him just walking out that door.
We have on one hand a coach who stayed with one lower division football program for a combined 32 years as assistant and head coach, and on the other, a coach who abandoned a lower division program and all of his promises to them after 3 years for bright lights and big money. And somehow the first one is the bad guy and the second is “doing things the right way”?
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Yeah, my S24 physically is really made for football, less so his favorite sport. And if he had actually demanded to play football, I guess we might have let him. But we basically did everything possible to encourage his interests in other sports, and never actively presented football as an option.
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Man, I never expected to have to say out loud that I think unprivileged people deserve respect and get into a lengthy debate about whether this guy’s statement to his players is an *** hole move or a brilliant expression of love, or whatever. But here I am.
IDC a lick about how successful he was. If I did, or if that mattered relative to my comment/observation, I’d have looked it up. Maybe other things he did worked so well that his “signature line”, a term I didn’t use, didn’t matter. IDK. It’s still an *** hole thing to say. You’re not going to move me off that mark with his coaching record or a refence to some writer describing him as “beloved.” If there is a context which makes it clear that he didn’t mean it the way it sounds, I’m all ears.
I’m not spinning anything. Everyone knew Sanders wanted to coach P5. The only people who were surprised were those who wanted to be surprised. And J State was left a much, much, better place after he left than it was before he showed up. The instances of program uplift are too numerous to list here.
But of course none of that ^ has anything to do with the discussion here. I didn’t say Sanders was a great guy, or that you should like him, or approve of his career decisions, or anything else other than this one point: one of the greatest athletes to play the sport, ever, who played at the highest levels in cfb (and beyond), coached at the FCS level and didn’t use his platform as an all-time great in the sport to “big time” his player by demeaning the level of play in which they competed. He easily could have, and nobody would have been able to dispute it, but it would have been an ** hole thing to do. Instead, he made J State sound like it was the place to be, so much so that he pulled in Travis Hunter. Nothing else beyond that limited point is relevant. Nobody is saying Sanders is a great person, or that this guy you’re defending so vehemently is a bad person. What I said has been clearly repeated 2 or 3 times, and here again: saying what he is reported to have said to his players is an *** hole thing to say. If the rest of him is that great that it makes up for it, and if in real life I wouldn’t have quit because he would have been so great to play for, then so be it. But mocking their level of play isn’t something with which I’d be cool.
He did this exactly in insulting and forcing out the CU scholarship players. And what does he have to show for it? Exactly one win so far in the PAC-12, just like CU had last year. Maybe he can get another against Wazzu. Woohoo.
Disagree.
Nothing really more to add.
You disagree that he insulted them and got rid of them? Those are facts. He called them “old furniture” that he was replacing, and said “Those of you that we don’t run off, we’re going to try to make you quit.”
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But that was the only win in 2022. The CU football program that Sanders inherited was weak…he did force out many of the existing players, who had ample time to get in the transfer portal. Nothing different than any other new coach does…they clean house, keep guys who fit their offensive and defensive schemes, and jettison the rest. That’s life in P5 football. If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.
Who knows if Sanders will be able to make a big impact record wise during his time at CU, but 4 wins so far this year is a big improvement. Playing in the Big12 should also help. The 4 wins also don’t accurately reflect the millions of dollars that are pouring into the school, the athletic program, the football program, the players via NIL deals, and the community. That’s what a big name coach can bring a school and why CU (and other schools) wanted Sanders.
Nobody had ever “cleaned” house on that scale before. Literally unprecedented.
I’d like to see you tell players to their face who were recovering from injuries and weren’t even given a chance before being forced out that that they “couldn’t stand the heat.” Wow.
It’s ok though as long as the $ is flowing in though, right?
It’s different now because there is no required redshirt year for transfers, so coaches don’t have to consider that…how that would impact leaving players, and more importantly how that impacted their ability to bring in new guys. Student athletes can now transfer and play right away.
Today’s situation is apples and oranges to coach practices before the transfer portal changes were made in 2021. With that said, plenty of coaches prior to transfer portal changes would regulary cut loose all senior year recruits when they took on the new job (too many examples to list) so they could bring in their own recruits, and benched players that didn’t fit their schemes. They wanted their own guys as fast as they could get them. Same as now. Only the transfer redshirt year isn’t standing in anyone’s way. Oh, and the transfer portal changes have made it MUCH more difficult for high school football players to garner recruiting interest.
Money drives P5 revenue sport decisions. Full stop. I don’t like it, but I’m not in charge.
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Yeah, I’m very familiar with all of that. It’s still unprecedented what Sanders did. Even in the sociopathic world of big money D1 college football, no one else has been sociopathic to such a degree as to wipe out all but a dozen or so scholarship athletes from a roster.
It’s pretty wild that this thread has gone from bemoaning a coach’s running joke that was apparently too much for the delicate sensibilities of the caliber of athletes at a top D3 school, to openly praising a coach ripping away scholarships from almost an entire team of D1 athletes who were high-caliber enough to be recruited into a P5 school in the first place.
I never would have expected these twists and turns!
You’re taking this too far and are now taking my comments out of context.
If I’ve offended you in some way, please accept my apologies and let’s move on. I never said Sanders was a saint, and if this guy’s comment to his players was generally understood as tongue-in-cheek, then I’m happy to stand corrected on the point. It still wouldn’t be my cup of tea as comments go, but I’m really not trying to get the guy burned at the stake. It was just an observation about a rather unusual - in my experience - remark that a coach would make to his or her athletes. Happy to leave it alone now.
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It’s only unprecedented because the rules have changed within the last 24 months. If we had always had no redshirt penalty for transferring schools, many many coaches would have jettisoned lots of the team when they took the job. Instead, what they did (prior to the changes) was jettison all the committed seniors as soon as they took the job, even if they had signed LOIs in place. Not much different, IMO.
All coaches want their chosen athletes, not someone else’s.
Going forward, assuming the new transfer rules stay in place, I expect we will similar behavior to Sanders’. There were hundreds of guys in the transfer portal who wanted to go to CU and play for Sanders, and there are lots of reasons for that.
The transfer changes have brought significant consequences that many predicted (with the exception of NCAA leadership.) Were the transfer changes worth these consequences? IDK, I see both sides. But what a nightmare for HSers, and not just those in football.
We can add in the consequences of the extra COVID year - several classes of HS recruits were negatively impacted.
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Right, and things (HS recruiting, transfer portal) still are being impacted, many current senior college athletes still have an extra year of eligibility. Some have two.
That’s where we differ. I don’t think we’ll see anybody else do that kind of “old furniture” replacement at that level. There are very specific circumstances where he was able to get away with that at CU.
On a side note: even with player flexibility to enter the transfer portal, once they do so, their scholarship at CU would have been no longer guaranteed. So if they didn’t get any interest or an equivalent offer somewhere else, they’re screwed financially.
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Not offended and no apologies needed. We should move on anyway, though! There are more interesting things to argue about (er, I mean “discuss”) like campus layouts and such 
Also, NCAA soccer (“the other football”) tourney brackets are out and I need to study up!
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Delete
Wrong. But not for the reason you might think.
There’s a whole thread de ited to the topic, so let’s post there and not muddy the waters here.