When you live outside one of the handful of markets that actively covers UVa athletics, you become painfully aware of the football program’s current state of insignificance. Tim Tebow has garnered more attention on one play than Virginia's football team has all season.Could the Cavalier football program prove any more irrelevant?While some members of the 7even Win Society are not “huge fans of Al Groh,” others have been overcome with a feeling of apathy that far exceeds like or dislike.Virginia football isn’t vanilla – it’s completely invisible.Does anyone outside of the Virginia circle even care?Better yet, do the majority of those in the circle still give a hoot – the well documented lack of attendance at this year’s home games points to a severe wane in interest.
Without a doubt a true lack of passion has started to take hold within the Cavalier faithful.Barring a major turnaround, the end of the 2009 season will almost certainly mark the third sub .500 season out of the last four, and Virginia has not posted back-to-back losing seasons since combining for only three wins over the '81 and '82 campaigns.Sadly, things have come full circle back to the early days of the Welsh era, and arguably at no time since Welsh’s second season as head coach has the program proven less relevant.
It wasn’t all that long ago that preseason talk centered on the belief that if things really fell into place for the Cavs, they could certainly make some noise on the national scene – maybe a big upset, maybe a nice bowl run, and maybe a conference championship.UVa has not cracked the top-10 or finished the season ranked since 2004.Entering this year, even the most optimistic members of the 7even Win Society thought if the stars aligned and Virginia caught some breaks, they might be able to eke out 7 wins.
ACC COY chronicled the intriguing scheduling during the Groh era, yet this year it really does not matter who Virginia plays. Any Cav victory this season will likely be deemed an upset.How relevant can a team be if the odds makers pick them to loose every time out, or better yet, if every team on the schedule would classify falling to the Cavs as a “bad loss?”Furthermore, Hoo fans set the all-time football attendance record in an effort to cathc a glimpse of the mighty Trojans - not because there was thought of an upset or even promise of a good game but for the mere fact it served as a chance to see a national powerhouse.Does this mean Virginia has assumed the role of the Washington Generals when entertaining the Globetrotter du jour of college football?
Virginia Football currently stinks – everyone gets that.But it goes beyond just a few off years - good, bad, right, or wrong, those are likely to be expected.Even some of the nation’s premier programs are struggling or have recently struggled through some off years – just ask any Tennessee, FloridaState, or Michigan fan.Yet, while those programs are down, they’re not completely out.The minute they show signs of life, everyone is proclaiming “they’re back.”The expectations for success at those programs never truly disappear.For Virginia, the expectations are all but gone, and even when the team finds success as it did in the 2007 season, it’s viewed as a fluke and a record-setting display of barely surviving.At this point, success on the football field isn’t seen as the program’s perseverance through some trying times in a return to its former glory, but instead, an aberration from a team and a program that truly doesn’t factor into college football’s national landscape.
So when red4z asks if Virginia could have done/can do better, that’s a loaded question.Can Hoonation expect more than Al Groh – depends on which Al Groh.Lots of evidence points to Al being a good hire initially, and he exhibited many of the very qualities fans are calling for in the coach that is to be his successor.He was a name guy that helped keep Virginia football relevant – he wasn’t a former college coach chewed up and spit out by the NFL looking to find a soft landing spot, but instead, a head coach in the NFL who voluntarily resigned to take the job at his alma mater.In the early years, he regained some of the glory and accomplished some things that had not been done in a while, but, then, somehow the wheels fell off along the way.
Virginia can do better, and should expect to do better, than utter obscurity and complete irrelevance. As someone living out of state, It would be nice to walk into work and have a co-worker say, “hey, I saw your Hoos pull of a nice little upset over (insert good team here),” or, “big game coming up this weekend for the Cavs.” Expecting national title runs or consistent top-10 finishes is too much. However, registering, not dominating, but merely registering on the national radar and making it into the general college football conversation on a fairly regular basis seems reasonable. It's been done before, so why expect less?
I like that UVA simply didn't chase names (although I'm sure they made a run at Tubby). Bennett comes from good coaching pedigree, was coach of the year just two years ago (sound familiar?), played in the league, which should help with recruiting, and was chased by much bigger names than UVA in the past few years. And he won in Pullman, a dumptruck of a college basketball town, so you know he can coach.
But I do have concerns:
(1) Bennett has never coached east of Wisconsin, and thus will have to develop from scratch the recruiting contacts on the East Coast (specifically in Hampton Roads and the I-95 Corridor) that he will need to succeed at UVA.
(2) His teams play SLOW. Now maybe that was dictated by personnel, but his Dad's teams played the same way at Wisconsin. 62-57 games don't usually fill up 15,000 seat stadiums and draw top level recruits.
(3) If they were looking for a big name to create buzz (although I personally thought this was an overrated criteria), they didn't do it. While Bennett is well-regarded within basketball insider circles, he does not bring the instant cred that a Tubby Smith or Jeff Capel would have brought. Whether they could have gotten the buzz-worthy coach is another matter, but the fan-base was looking for a big name. At the very least, the administration did a poor job of managing expectations.
(4) I feel like I've seen this movie before. Despite all of the talk I heard from some about not wanting to go the mid-major route again, UVA never actually has. Instead, they've hired from major conference schools, albeit traditionally smaller players in those major conferences: Gillen from Providence (Big East), Leitao from DePaul (Big East), and now Bennett from WSU (Pac-10). In the first two cases, Virginia saw a modest improvement by year two, but three or four years in, it was clear that the improvement was not sustainable. So let's assume Bennett can coach. He takes Leitao's players, gets to a tournament or two, and then when forced to play with his own kids, he takes a step back, just like Leitao did when he didn't have Gillen's players.
(5) Is this a long-term solution? Even if he's great, you're talking about a guy with midwest roots whose only head coaching job was on the left coast. I know its sacrilege to suggest that someone would leave the vaunted ACC, and for us east-coasters who grew up on ACC basketball, it doesn't make sense to do so. But his dream conference/job might be somewhere else. Who's to say he doesn't leave for a big-time job in the Big Ten or Pac-10 somewhere down the road? I don't think anyone wants UVA to turn into a stepping-stone job, but by picking a guy with no links to the University, much less the East Coast, we might have set ourselves up for that possibility.
In the process of searching for news about UVA's search for a new men's head basketball coach, I discovered that there is very little out there in the way of really good UVA sports blogs. So I figured I'd take my shot. With all due respect to the Sabre, which requires you to pay for content, and the print media, some of whom I worked alongside many moons ago and very much respect, I was looking for some intelligent insight on UVA basketball, and most (but not all) of the time, found it lacking.
My intent is not to replace the Doug Doughtys and Jerry Radcliffes of the world, nor is that a realistic goal. Both are very good at what they do, and are more plugged in than I will ever be. But I did want to provide a forum for those of us UVA alums that are looking for another voice discussing UVA sports. I hope to provide a jumping off point for that discussion, starting with UVA's search for a new men's head basketball coach.
