Question about a past coach?

[augustabuzz]

If that is true, then you had literally the worst fanbase in the country at that time.
I can't stand Bronco Mendenhall, but I hope like heck he succeeds. I can't imagine wishing failure on my own team, much less actively contributing to it.

You should've seen the letter. You have no idea how accurate is your assessment!

 

[Gtyellowjackets]

Ilovetheoption: I don't want to derail the thread and I know you are a UVA guy, but I thought Mendenhal was a good hire at the time. His guys manhandled PJs guys (maybe that's because they were 25 years old+) when he was at BYU.

Against GT this year his offense looked like Chan Gailey's with handcuffs on. Horribly unimaginative.

What's his deal?

 

[SolicitorJacket]

If there's one thing I know about my Tech friends (granted they're much younger than those being talked about) is that as long as they are correct the world could burn around them. I love my wife but she'd let the house burn down to prove I left the oven on.

Here endeth the lesson.

 

[augustabuzz]

If there's one thing I know about my Tech friends (granted they're much younger than those being talked about) is that as long as they are correct the world could burn around them. I love my wife but she'd let the house burn down to prove I left the oven on.

 

[croberts]

Odd that you mention recruiting because on one hand, it seemed that we had as much NFL talent as any coach has ever had at Tech...think Drew and Kent Hill (who both had noteworthy careers in the league), Besselieu, Lucious, Al Richardson, David Sims,Sugar Bear Simmons, Reggie Wilkes, and I am sure there are others who I am forgetting. Going into Athens in '78 (perhaps the most painful GT loss I have ever witnessed) Leonard Postoasties said that Tech would be the most physical team on the field. How often has that been the case?

OTOH, the second string guys were abysmal and should have been playing intramurals. You knew back then if a starter got injured you were in deep trouble. Pepper's top guys were as good as any Tech coach in my life but after the first 15 -20 guys there was a tremendous dropoff.

I was there. That game alone has made me a huge PJ fan. I have not witnessed 3 wins in Athens more painful to the dogs than the last 3. Payback for the 29-28 killer.

 

[Andrew]

Good gracious Glenn! I knew,even then, that things were bad but I had no idea. How did the coaches manage to convince anyone to come to Tech? I was at another college in those days and would come home to Atlanta and go to every single home game. My mother and dad had season tickets in the west stands and bought me a season ticket in the north stands. Dad thought I would get too excitied and wanted me to sit away from them. We would go to the Varsity afterwards. Fun times but it was obvious we were a little bit outmanned against good teams.

It's probably a bit of a stretch, but Coach Rice said that back before we did all the upgrades in the early 80's, if a recruit came, they would show him around campus and the stadium, and when it came time to look at the locker rooms, the GA who had the keys would be conveniently out of the office for the day.

 

[ilovetheoption]

Ilovetheoption: I don't want to derail the thread and I know you are a UVA guy, but I thought Mendenhal was a good hire at the time. His guys manhandled PJs guys (maybe that's because they were 25 years old+) when he was at BYU.

Against GT this year his offense looked like Chan Gailey's with handcuffs on. Horribly unimaginative.

What's his deal?

Whoooo, depends who you ask (as with most things in life). Different groups have different thoughts.

Group 1) He inherited a team that simply could not be expected to be anything other than awful. The OL had fallen into a shocking state of disrepair, and Mike London's complete lack of competency had rendered the team with a mindset and culture of losing, a lack of accountability, an overall softness, compounded by having not had solid coaching had hindered their development. The program was at nothing better than ground zero, and perhaps worse. A complete, head to toe overhall is required, and frankly, it may be a few years before we approach competitive.

Group 2) Mendenhall's a good coach, but he stepped into a WHOLE different world from what he's used to. He has no recruiting connections in the area, he's used to a bunch of 24 year old dudes who are married, and who want nothing more than to play for the Notre Dame of their faith. He may eventually get his guys, and make it work, but he showed up thinking he was going to turn the ship around quickly (he said he thought the team would be bowl bound this year) and got a hard slap in the face. He's a systematic guy, and we have confidence in the dude to make changes, but, he's going to have to make changes if this is going to work.

Group 3) Guy's an assclown. He speaks in corporate catchphrases to hide the fact that he really doesn't have much to say. He's a corny, phony balogna doofus who wants to have some 80's sports movie idea of being a team where a bunch of white (and, randomly, polynesian) farmboys come together and go to church and do community service and learn the value of sticktoitiveness and in the end win the title before going off to be missionaries in Brazil, only this isn't the 50's in Indiana, it's 2016 and your main areas of talent are A) the DC area, and B) Hampton Roads, and to quote drexl Spivey, IT AIN'T WHITEBOY DAY. It worked at BYU because BYU recruits itself, and he got EXACTLY those sort of dudes, and all he had to do was show up and say "ok men, try harder than everybody else, because you're playing for the pride of your faith".

We're a pretty divided fanbase, and it's made worse by the fact that Fuente came in at VT and had them looking fantastic in HIS first year. Yeah, we know, bud foster, and they were better to begin with, and etc. etc. but they beat us 52-10, and it could have been 80. They took it easy on us. We were probably the 4th best team in the state this year behind Richmond and JMU and THAT, my friends, burns when you're the flagship university in your state, founded by Thomas Jefferson and view yourself as among the elite of the elite.

 

[FredJacket]

Whoooo, depends who you ask (as with most things in life). Different groups have different thoughts.

Group 1) He inherited a team that simply could not be expected to be anything other than awful. The OL had fallen into a shocking state of disrepair, and Mike London's complete lack of competency had rendered the team with a mindset and culture of losing, a lack of accountability, an overall softness, compounded by having not had solid coaching had hindered their development. The program was at nothing better than ground zero, and perhaps worse. A complete, head to toe overhall is required, and frankly, it may be a few years before we approach competitive.

Group 2) Mendenhall's a good coach, but he stepped into a WHOLE different world from what he's used to. He has no recruiting connections in the area, he's used to a bunch of 24 year old dudes who are married, and who want nothing more than to play for the Notre Dame of their faith. He may eventually get his guys, and make it work, but he showed up thinking he was going to turn the ship around quickly (he said he thought the team would be bowl bound this year) and got a hard slap in the face. He's a systematic guy, and we have confidence in the dude to make changes, but, he's going to have to make changes if this is going to work.

Group 3) Guy's an assclown. He speaks in corporate catchphrases to hide the fact that he really doesn't have much to say. He's a corny, phony balogna doofus who wants to have some 80's sports movie idea of being a team where a bunch of white (and, randomly, polynesian) farmboys come together and go to church and do community service and learn the value of sticktoitiveness and in the end win the title before going off to be missionaries in Brazil, only this isn't the 50's in Indiana, it's 2016 and your main areas of talent are A) the DC area, and B) Hampton Roads, and to quote drexl Spivey, IT"S NOT WHITEBOY DAY. It worked at BYU because BYU recruits itself, and he got EXACTLY those sort of dudes, and all he had to do was show up and say "ok men, try harder than everybody else, because you're playing for the pride of your faith".

We're a pretty divided fanbase, and it's made worse by the fact that Fuente came in at VT and had them looking fantastic in HIS first year. Yeah, we know, bud foster, and they were better to begin with, and etc. etc. but they beat us 52-10, and it could have been 80. They took it easy on us. We were probably the 4th best team in the state this year behind Richmond and JMU and THAT, my friends, burns when you're the flagship university in your state, founded by Thomas Jefferson and view yourself as among the elite of the elite.

I graduated from Tech and circuitously ended up in Virginia after a Navy career about 15 years ago. In about 1.3 days living here among what seemed to be "a Hokie on every corner"... I decided emphatically I will be a UVA guy until I find a Hokie that's not an idiot. That hasn't happened.

Fast forward to these days as the proud father of my oldest child who matriculated at UVA last fall (2015), I now send a HUGE portion of my well-earned pay to Charlottesville; and therefore, even have more invested in seeing UVA do well in all things. The good news... UVA does well in all things (EXCEPT football). I consider @ilovetheoption one of the better members of this forum...no offense to the rest of you fine Americans. I suppose its because 1) I like UVA...so, my default setting is to like him; and 2) posts like this where he makes me 'feel better' about our football program when compared to what's going on in Charlottesville. Very entertaining breakdown here with the groupings. Very accurate from my more distant emotional perspective. I hope Bronco gets things turned around just enough to start picking off teams like VT, Miami, and UNC...giving us some help in the Coastal.

 

[B Lifsey]

If there's one thing I know about my Tech friends (granted they're much younger than those being talked about) is that as long as they are correct the world could burn around them. I love my wife but she'd let the house burn down to prove I left the oven on.

My wife doesn't need to go to such drastic measures...she KNOWS its my fault and promptly tells me so

 

[northgajacket]

I graduated from Tech and circuitously ended up in Virginia after a Navy career about 15 years ago. In about 1.3 days living here among what seemed to be "a Hokie on every corner"... I decided emphatically I will be a UVA guy until I find a Hokie that's not an idiot. That hasn't happened.

Fast forward to these days as the proud father of my oldest child who matriculated at UVA last fall (2015), I now send a HUGE portion of my well-earned pay to Charlottesville; and therefore, even have more invested in seeing UVA do well in all things. The good news... UVA does well in all things (EXCEPT football). I consider @ilovetheoption one of the better members of this forum...no offense to the rest of you fine Americans. I suppose its because 1) I like UVA...so, my default setting is to like him; and 2) posts like this where he makes me 'feel better' about our football program when compared to what's going on in Charlottesville. Very entertaining breakdown here with the groupings. Very accurate from my more distant emotional perspective. I hope Bronco gets things turned around just enough to start picking off teams like VT, Miami, and UNC...giving us some help in the Coastal.

He is right. Hokies are idiots.

 

[Sideways]

Whoooo, depends who you ask (as with most things in life). Different groups have different thoughts.

Group 1) He inherited a team that simply could not be expected to be anything other than awful. The OL had fallen into a shocking state of disrepair, and Mike London's complete lack of competency had rendered the team with a mindset and culture of losing, a lack of accountability, an overall softness, compounded by having not had solid coaching had hindered their development. The program was at nothing better than ground zero, and perhaps worse. A complete, head to toe overhall is required, and frankly, it may be a few years before we approach competitive.

Group 2) Mendenhall's a good coach, but he stepped into a WHOLE different world from what he's used to. He has no recruiting connections in the area, he's used to a bunch of 24 year old dudes who are married, and who want nothing more than to play for the Notre Dame of their faith. He may eventually get his guys, and make it work, but he showed up thinking he was going to turn the ship around quickly (he said he thought the team would be bowl bound this year) and got a hard slap in the face. He's a systematic guy, and we have confidence in the dude to make changes, but, he's going to have to make changes if this is going to work.

Group 3) Guy's an assclown. He speaks in corporate catchphrases to hide the fact that he really doesn't have much to say. He's a corny, phony balogna doofus who wants to have some 80's sports movie idea of being a team where a bunch of white (and, randomly, polynesian) farmboys come together and go to church and do community service and learn the value of sticktoitiveness and in the end win the title before going off to be missionaries in Brazil, only this isn't the 50's in Indiana, it's 2016 and your main areas of talent are A) the DC area, and B) Hampton Roads, and to quote drexl Spivey, IT AIN'T WHITEBOY DAY. It worked at BYU because BYU recruits itself, and he got EXACTLY those sort of dudes, and all he had to do was show up and say "ok men, try harder than everybody else, because you're playing for the pride of your faith".

We're a pretty divided fanbase, and it's made worse by the fact that Fuente came in at VT and had them looking fantastic in HIS first year. Yeah, we know, bud foster, and they were better to begin with, and etc. etc. but they beat us 52-10, and it could have been 80. They took it easy on us. We were probably the 4th best team in the state this year behind Richmond and JMU and THAT, my friends, burns when you're the flagship university in your state, founded by Thomas Jefferson and view yourself as among the elite of the elite.

Gee, I wish I could break down a complex situation like this one into three easily understood paragraphs that pretty much explain the problem and why people are thinking the way they do. I had no idea that UVA was in such bad shape. It sounds like "Hokie Mania" is widespread and they have taken over the state. Do you think the talent difference is greater than, less than, or equal to the difference in talent that Georgia Tech currently faces with UGA. Recognizing that there are pretty big differences between the respective pairings, I can see why UVA alumni and fans are in a uproar.

 

[ilovetheoption]

Gee, I wish I could break down a complex situation like this one into three easily understood paragraphs that pretty much explain the problem and why people are thinking the way they do. I had no idea that UVA was in such bad shape. It sounds like "Hokie Mania" is widespread and they have taken over the state. Do you think the talent difference is greater than, less than, or equal to the difference in talent that Georgia Tech currently faces with UGA. Recognizing that there are pretty big differences between the respective pairings, I can see why UVA alumni and fans are in a uproar.

Smaller difference in talent than GT and UGA. I would say there's a massive talent difference between GT and UGA. There is a material talent gap between VT and UVA, but they just have a heckfire of a coaching staff in the suburbs of Christiansburg. Here's the thing, Hokie fandom is a relatively new thing. Before Vick, being a hokie fan was like being an ECU fan. You had your diehards, but you never like saw people wearing Hokie gear around. The problem is that UVA has just had SUCH a string of crapsackery since Welsh that we have completely squandered the state.

Groh, who you know all about. What you DON'T know is that Groh's manner and preference for leaning on his NFL roots to recruit NY and NJ heavily REALLY turned off a lot of H.S. coaches in the state, and resulted in a lot of good players going to Tek. He actually won at a decent rate at first, but under him, VT began to feel like the "real" VA state school in football, and recruiting fell apart.

London. Mike London is a fantastic human being. Like, the kind of guy you want to marry your daughter. The man was an AWFUL coach for UVa, though. He won 28% of his ACC games in 6 seasons, and was allowed to hang around for FAR too long.

And then they hire Mendenhall who has this sort of odd manner about him, with NO connections to the area, who brough his WHOLE staff from BYU, meaning that NOBODY knows anybody, and so recruiting has been a bear for him.

We have shot ourselves in the foot for 15 straight years, and that's a whole generation of kids who have never known anything but "VT is almost always tough, and UVA almost always sucks". We've had 2 winning seasons in the last 11 years. That means high school juniors, who we're recruiting now have had 2 uva winning seasons since they were 6 years old.

All that said, I prefer our position to yours, at least in terms of potential. You guys can't hide kids, we can. We have anthropology and a couple of other crib majors where we can recruit, if not blithering idiots, at least kids who aren't interested in working as hard as they possibly can in college (which, if I'm to be honest, describes me at that age ). There's no reason we couldn't recruit at a sub-elite level, like a Penn State, or Michigan State. There is plenty of talent in Virginia, and VT is no UGA. UGA is always going to be the right coach away from a national title. VT is always going to be the wrong coach away from being Wake Forest. Structurally, UVA has a much better position than GT does. You guys just have had much better coaching.

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

I wonder if the UVA fan site members respect the observations of @ilovetheoption as much as we do here. Assuming he participates in same of course.

 

[ilovetheoption]

lol, tbh, I don't as much. I love the guys at the sabre, but the format is really really bad, and good discussions cycle off the board too quickly, so I tend to just stick to reading mostly. Anyhow, sorry for the sidetrack. Back to Pepper Rogers!

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

Pepper was before my time. He sounds of, questionable, morals off the football field. I have a hard time placing a ton of blame on him from what I've heard so far though. Bear Bryant couldn't have had much more success here with the same level of support, or rather lack thereof.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

Pepper was before my time. He sounds of, questionable, morals off the football field. I have a hard time placing a ton of blame on him from what I've heard so far though. Bear Bryant couldn't have had much more success here with the same level of support, or rather lack thereof.

He initially had great fan support, but that dwindled. Support from the school, at least based on facilities, was abysmal.

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

@Supersizethatorder-mutt
I was referring to support from the school.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

@Supersizethatorder-mutt
I was referring to support from the school.

Back then, I don't think support "from the school" or lack thereof was as significant as it is now.

 

[Whiskey_Clear]

I agree it's sub par today but at least our facilities aren't so embarrassing we have to hide them from the recruits. The current lack of institutional support is not so obviously visible.

 

[PBR549]

Smaller difference in talent than GT and UGA. I would say there's a massive talent difference between GT and UGA. There is a material talent gap between VT and UVA, but they just have a heckfire of a coaching staff in the suburbs of Christiansburg. Here's the thing, Hokie fandom is a relatively new thing. Before Vick, being a hokie fan was like being an ECU fan. You had your diehards, but you never like saw people wearing Hokie gear around. The problem is that UVA has just had SUCH a string of crapsackery since Welsh that we have completely squandered the state.

Groh, who you know all about. What you DON'T know is that Groh's manner and preference for leaning on his NFL roots to recruit NY and NJ heavily REALLY turned off a lot of H.S. coaches in the state, and resulted in a lot of good players going to Tek. He actually won at a decent rate at first, but under him, VT began to feel like the "real" VA state school in football, and recruiting fell apart.

London. Mike London is a fantastic human being. Like, the kind of guy you want to marry your daughter. The man was an AWFUL coach for UVa, though. He won 28% of his ACC games in 6 seasons, and was allowed to hang around for FAR too long.

And then they hire Mendenhall who has this sort of odd manner about him, with NO connections to the area, who brough his WHOLE staff from BYU, meaning that NOBODY knows anybody, and so recruiting has been a bear for him.

We have shot ourselves in the foot for 15 straight years, and that's a whole generation of kids who have never known anything but "VT is almost always tough, and UVA almost always sucks". We've had 2 winning seasons in the last 11 years. That means high school juniors, who we're recruiting now have had 2 uva winning seasons since they were 6 years old.

All that said, I prefer our position to yours, at least in terms of potential. You guys can't hide kids, we can. We have anthropology and a couple of other crib majors where we can recruit, if not blithering idiots, at least kids who aren't interested in working as hard as they possibly can in college (which, if I'm to be honest, describes me at that age ). There's no reason we couldn't recruit at a sub-elite level, like a Penn State, or Michigan State. There is plenty of talent in Virginia, and VT is no UGA. UGA is always going to be the right coach away from a national title. VT is always going to be the wrong coach away from being Wake Forest. Structurally, UVA has a much better position than GT does. You guys just have had much better coaching.

Thanks for that insight. I appreciate your candid opinions on this board and always look forward to seeing your posts.