Imagine my surprise when I open my Google reader this morning, expecting most of my news to be about the exceptionally high amount of sports figures leaving this world far too soon, when I see none other than our once proud head coach, Brady Hoke, staring back at me from my screen.Like many BSU fans, when HokeManBeast left for the sunnier pastures of San Diego State, he stopped being relevant to me. He was just any other coach. I didn't feel the need anymore to defend him, praise him, celebrate him, or make excuses as to why transient hobos just kept disappearing whenever Hoke was around.
However, this morning's piece on the ManBeast by Jay Christensen, otherwise known as the Wiz of Odds, leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. The Wiz infers, through his opinion and others', that Hoke is simply going about it all wrong out in SDSU. He isn't playing nice with the media, shutting them out of practice, and generally running his program the way he wants, without a lot of outside consulting and influence from those who may, or may not, matter.
There are some statements made regarding the floundering economy, the "value hire" of Hoke, and the fact that were it not for a general craptacular financial situation right now, Hoke wouldn't have even been considered.
What The Wiz, and others fail to realize, is that the fact that Hoke was a "value hire" is totally coincidence and an end result of a piss poor approach and funding from Ball State. Even though his annual salary is only 7th out of 9 in the Mountain West Conference, that would put him in the upper third of the MAC. Additionally, in real dollars and cents, you're looking at several hundred thousand dollars in his pocket.
SDSU got a slam dunk grand slam homerun insert other cliche here hire when it comes to Hoke. The guy built a winner in Muncie. IN MUNCIE. In post-Lynch Muncie to boot, which is somewhere akin to building the Empire State building out of a box of half shredded lincoln logs. And newsflash to the SoCal beat writers and people who think they are in the know in San Diego... the one thing your team is going to have with Hoke at the helm is toughness. It's heart. It's his ability to demand excellence on the field and off, because there is only one king in a castle occupied by the ManBeast, and that's the ManBeast himself. And no amount of open practices is going to help foster that image.
So yes, beat writers, time to actually dig for stories. Sorry alums who hang out and get feel goods from hearing the whistles and the contact. Your time is done. It's time for something new. Something different. For the last dozen years, SDSU has been on a backslide from mediocrity to general irrelevance and failure. Maybe it's time for change.
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2 comments:
Bam. You nailed this one. The ridiculousness of media members getting multiple bees in their bonnets over *GASP* closed practices is growing to epic proportions. Hoke will now be disliked by everyone who can possibly dislike him because he's treating this job how it should be. This isn't a publicity stunt, he wants to turn this into a winning program. He might be able to do so, if isn't run out of town for not being a judge in the Little Miss San Diego State Pageant.
what Hoke is doing is terrible, and will ruin SDSU. . .
that is until he starts winning and then he is a genius, who always knew what he was doing, and everyone was always behind him and his tough attitude.
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