Tracer Bullet

Count me in as a fan of Andersen, the more I learned he has a dynamic personality that will play well in the state of WI, recruited well nationally at a school not designed to recruit well beyond the mountains and WC. If they had won the WAC again, he raises his value beyond schools like WI and likely into the Urban Meyer range when he was at Utah. Utah was Meyer's second successful HC gig and he was incredibly successful every year (17-6; 22-2). I don't want to bury GA nor promote Meyer but he was not 1 more year at Utah St from being Urban Meyer circa 2002.

Even 40,000 would be ok.

Cubs.com says I'm about 62,000 away. Just about perfect for the next playoff run. According to my earlier post in this thread, I've moved up 10-15,000 spots in 3 years.

Fightfightfight

I guess I would put Wisconsin in the PSU (w/o the current blemish) and Nebraska tier. I don't know that you're losing anything to either of those schools, at least now. Probably right there with any 2nd tier BCS program. So I would have thought you'd be able to get a guy like Strong-3 winning seasons at a BCS school and a great last season. I realize the overall record may not look much different than GA's but the Big East for as bad as it is, carries more weight for me than whoever GA is playing at Utah St. Maybe a guy like Golden who has probably taken a step back since struggling at Miami but could see Madison as a way to get back on the right track toward a true tier 1 gig in 5-ish years and escape the hammer that's likely coming. Those are the kinds of names I would have expected to see, off the top of my head. GA may end up better than either but 1 great year and a 1-1 record in the potato bowl don't give me a ton of confidence. Maybe it's just me.

Bud? I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention. No matter, andy will get me a seat. ndbros4lif

You owe me for the embarrassment

You're really trying to get a lot of mileage out of a couple Jack and Cokes You drank miller lite.

4 straight rose bowls. It's not Texas but it's not Arkansas St either.

You guys should all get seats together and invite all your nsbb friends

Just one great year out of 4. Would have thought BA could get more of a sure thing. I'm assuming that's sarcasm. Utah State was 9-38 the 4 years before him, and he went 4-8, 4-8, 7-6, 11-2 his 4 years there, with the last 2 years being mostly his players. USU's national defensive ranking went from like 115 - 110 -50 -15 his 4 years there as well. Very good hire. If no CP or PC, then he's prob the next best choice. No not at all. He could be a great hire. But he's had 1 great year. Clearly he improved that program and that is a positive but it's not enough to convince me that he's the 3rd best candidate for this job. Let me ask you this: are you happier now than before BB left? I was actually a BB supporter. So I can't say I'm happy that he left out of the blue and our assistant coordinators were forced to accept jobs with 24 hour timelines at other places, more than half with BB. However, I can't say I'm happier with GA compared to BB. I will be happy if GA keeps the team and recruits together and continues to keep Wisconsin in the top tier of the conference. That remains to be seen. What I can say is that I'm happy that after all the events that have taken place since the B1G championship that Barry brought in a coach with experience, with a proven ability to not just sustain a program, but to build it from the ground up, and that seems to fit the Wisconsin philosophy. That 1 great year would be more than if we had hired Diaco or any other top coordinator without head coaching experience, and more than the seemingly other main candidate, Mel Tucker. First, this has nothing to do with Diaco. I'm thrilled that this likely means he's at ND next year. But sustain a program? What part of 4-8, 4-8, 7-6 with a loss to Ohio in the potato bowl constitutes sustained success? Or do you mean sustain as in sustain the level it was already at? Bc that looks a lot like mediocrity before this season. Again, this could be a great hire. I don't have any idea how GA will work out at Wisconsin. He does had 1 great year under his belt. But that's the sort of record I'd expect to land a guy a job at a mid-level BCS program with the chance to jump up if he's successful there. The guy seems to have done well as a DC and has 1 great year as a HC. I'm just surprised that a team like Wisconsin couldn't take a clear step up from BB.

Just one great year out of 4. Would have thought BA could get more of a sure thing. I'm assuming that's sarcasm. Utah State was 9-38 the 4 years before him, and he went 4-8, 4-8, 7-6, 11-2 his 4 years there, with the last 2 years being mostly his players. USU's national defensive ranking went from like 115 - 110 -50 -15 his 4 years there as well. Very good hire. If no CP or PC, then he's prob the next best choice. No not at all. He could be a great hire. But he's had 1 great year. Clearly he improved that program and that is a positive but it's not enough to convince me that he's the 3rd best candidate for this job. Let me ask you this: are you happier now than before BB left?

Did you watch it? Not exactly an ND promo. Let's take the program that's the most divisive and air a lot of content when they're ranked #1 to get as many eyeballs and page views as possible. Taking advantage of ND's season doesn't mean the coverage is favorable. Though it's funny to see some ESPN folks riding ND now after burying the team 3 months ago.

going 0-12 at UW made people think Wilbon's rant about racism may have been unsupported.

Just one great year out of 4. Would have thought BA could get more of a sure thing.

ugh. follow the money, espn

I thought it was Feb?

TT?

Bednarik and Maxwell make six. No college player has ever won more in one season. Sucks to have to fight against that anti-ND bias like that. Held that in as long as you could

The Cubs getting close to signing and then losing out on a major free agent isn't a non-event. And where was the drama? It's a message board for discussing a professional sports team. None of us should care at all about anything they do, but the fact is we do care or else we wouldn't spend any time on here in the first place. If you want to ban sarcastic comments that express the disappointment in seeing your team fail to improve then go right ahead. I don't see the point of such an endeavor. "No hope for you." Again with the piety. So impressive. How is anything being said pious? Were asking people to stop freaking out about everything great or small. You have a very low threshold for declaring a freak out. People made smartass comments and were criticized for it, as though this forum should only be reserved for serious discussion. It wasn't freaking out, it was smartass comments in response to a disappointing situation. Telling people not to respond negatively to this specific situation isn't just asking them to stop freaking out about "everything great or small". It is telling them not to have a negative feeling about anything at all. And you know damn well that this is the latest in a long line of such responses. You may spin the requests however you like.

The Cubs getting close to signing and then losing out on a major free agent isn't a non-event. And where was the drama? It's a message board for discussing a professional sports team. None of us should care at all about anything they do, but the fact is we do care or else we wouldn't spend any time on here in the first place. If you want to ban sarcastic comments that express the disappointment in seeing your team fail to improve then go right ahead. I don't see the point of such an endeavor. "No hope for you." Again with the piety. So impressive. How is anything being said pious? Were asking people to stop freaking out about everything great or small.

Same as all along: The right time to trade him was in the spring of 2012. Holding on and hoping to get more value out of 48 starts to trade than 64 was a sucker's game from day one, and they got burned on the risk they were taking. It didn't make sense from a "only employing professional baseball players who are good at baseball" perspective. Major League playing time always has value. Significant value. Maybe even more value than money. Wasting half a season of it on a guy who is bad is always a wasted asset. I'm simply going to have to disagree with the idea that they haven't tried. I would call yours overly apologetic. Interesting since I haven't apologized for anything that the FO has done. I just haven't seen a ton of moves or non-moves worthy of freaking the [expletive] out.

Frankly I find the piety to be laudable. Repetitive tripe is annoying even when you think you're better than everyone else, guys. Clearly, anyone who isn't responding to what is transpiring with acerbic, sarcastic cynicism (as the enlightened do) is an Theo worshiping sucker, Bukie. Any pretense of optimism is a sure sign of indoctrination. You can respond to the disappointment in whatever way you prefer. So can others. What shouldn't happen is the holier than thou BS whining about other people's reaction to the disappointment. Actually, you can't. At least not here. There is a point at which it becomes too much (I'm not necessarily saying we're at that point but you could argue we are). If you truly believe that TT's responses to some of the drama in this thread is "holier than thou BS whining" then there's simply no hope for you. Asking that every non-event not be met with a hundred overly dramatic posts is not holier than thou nor BS.

I'm saying a significant number of things have happened in the last 18 months that negatively impact the organization's chances of winning the World Series in the future. I'm not sure whether it being part of their plan or not is relevant. Pretty much that entire wave of "near-ready useful parts" that we were supposed to have turned out to either suck or got shipped elsewhere for little or nothing. The most valuable trade chip in the organization was overplayed and lost probably half his value, maybe more, in Matt Garza. The 2011 draft class bats had a great showing, but a lot of the lower minors pitching got hurt or had setbacks. We proved we were capable of major scouting fails with the Concepcion debacle. We got destroyed every which way on the Ian Stewart trade both in foresight (Ian Stewart is awful) and hindsight (Colvin and LeMahieu aren't bad). In 1.5 offseasons, we've added precisely one significant long-term piece above A-ball. The dumpster diving skill seems to have left them. In that first year in Boston, Epstein and Co. famously picked up for scraps or nothing David Ortiz, Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar, Bronson Arroyo and Javy Lopez, and I'm probably missing a few. With the same effort this year (and even more opportunity because of the sorry state of the roster), we got Shawn Camp and Arodys Vizcaino. There's simply no way they can be completely happy with the way the last 18 months have gone. Sure, they piled up a lot of prospects. It's pretty much impossible not to when you throw the kind of resources they have at it. But a lot has gone wrong. Can you clarify what you mean when you say Garza was overplayed? The Colvin for Stewart deal still makes sense at the time from a positional scarcity perspective. I don't believe anyone thought Stewart had to be around in 2014 on for the deal to be a good one. He sucked last year but we were trying to compete last year so that is not a significant loss. LH corner OFs that hit RHP aren't something you cling to. They added Rizzo, signed Johnson and Maholm and swapped them for useful parts. The Cubs weren't in a position where Theo needed to add one or two ML pieces that others had cast off, so I'm not sure they've tried (other than the Maholm and Johnson examples) to make a determination that they've lost something. Your characterization is simply overly dramatic.

I'm not sure it's the same thing. I'm quite sure it's not the same thing. When you're paying Soriano a billion dollars more than anyone else is offering, you can definitely say "I need an immediate answer" and you will obviously get one bc people like money. But you can't make a perfectly reasonable offer to a guy that would prefer to sign with a team that was just in the WS and say the same thing. You'd lose credibility and not get the deal done anyway. The Soriano contract was signed before Theo and Jed came along. I'm well aware of that.