topdawgnc
New Fish
That's a great post ...
I don't think that upper campus is as against football success as others want to believe ... but at the same time, I absolutely do think that they want to win "the right way." Most of the power brokers look at the UW as a world class institution (and rightfully so) and they don't want the football program to be full of thugs and messing up that image. It's far better when the program is full of good kids that keep their name out of the police blotter.
Thinking back how everything went down with (praise be to) PatHadenFS thinking he pulled the wool over our eyes by taking Sark, the thing that never gets talked about enough in my mind is how Pool Boy never publicly worked hard to try to get him. In fact, what came out publicly right after the firing was Pool Boy telling the team that it was his job to go get them a CHAMPIONSHIP level coach. Behind the scenes, there's been a lot of (alleged) feelings that the Athletic Dept (and I'm assuming as a by product upper campus) was getting very tired of Sark's act of having to cover up his indiscretions, used car salesman tactics, and in general keeping him from making the school look like an ass.
Pool Boy used to be a strong spokesperson where you saw him in the news all the time talking about the football program, etc. Now? Haven't really heard much from him at all since Petersen's been here. It's as if he's comfortable with the fact that he has a grown up in charge of the program that he can just turn the keys over to and know that his vision and values match those of the University of Washington and as a result, he can go back to his cabana and get some R&R in.
The other thing though that was missing from the post though was that it was Petersen who pursued this job as much as anything else. Pool Boy (probably rightfully so) didn't even think about Petersen given the number of jobs that he had turned down. The perception was always that Petersen was never going to leave Boise. But in listening to Petersen talk, it seems quite clear to me that THIS was the job that he wanted because he knew it had the perfect mix of expectations combined with values of any job that he could have (save for maybe a place like Stanford).
In the end, we're lucky that we have Petersen as our coach and absolutely agree with the notion that there's a greater than 81% chance that this will be his last job in college football.
You really think that we, as in UW, has higher values than other institutions in the conference? And that Peterson was attracted to said values.
Oh my goodness. I always underestimate how naive people can be.
Based on more than I could ever recount that is just such self-serving made-up bull shit. It's leftover garbage from the days when we had to hang out hats on something because wining football seemed a million miles away.
I don't necessarily think that we have higher values than some of the other institutions (speaking mainly about Stanford, Cal, UCLA, and USC), but I do think that we in the Northwest tend to suffer a bit from an inferiority complex and as a result we try to pop off and puff out our chest when we have good things to brag out so that we can pull out the "I told you so."
We also have a massive perception issue where we are very concerned in this area about being PC about everything. It's not so much that the 12's won the Super Bowl, but it's how great of people the 12's are ... that Russell Wilson goes to the Hospital every week, that they tend to stay out of the police blotter, etc. etc. etc. (even though they continually forget about the drug-related suspensions 12-18 months ago).
I think Cal just sits back and worries about their academics. They've never been serious about sports in the grand scheme of things. Stanford pushes their other sports as much as football but even with all of their success you never get the impression that they are going to get all concerned when they aren't good in the future. If anything, they're happy that they've found a secret sauce that works for them that allows them to be consistently competitive instead of being on/off.
UCLA cares far more about basketball than football and anytime you get ads on TV about UCLA it's always promoting either their academics or how smart their athletes are from an academic standpoint.
USC is able to sweep a lot under the rug as a private institution so they normally give the middle finger to anybody that calls them on their BS. While SC is strong academically, they could care less if they are known for that globally and are far more concerned about how their football program looks.
UW is somewhere in the middle. We want the academic reputation of the UC schools, to be compared on a similar level as Stanford ... but we also want the football success of SC. I always get the impression that we want to win at the SC levels but be viewed as a great academic institution on top of it. We definitely don't have the win at all costs mentality that SC does ... but probably moreso than anybody else in the conference that mixes academics with athletics (a school like Oregon doesn't really count to me because their academics suck in comparison).
@Tequilla
creepycoug stole your password
