This is a pretty serious medical situation – I mean, you don’t have to be a doc to know that keeping the blood flowing to your brain is pretty damned important. Remember Al McGuire’s anecdote about playing defense in basketball… “Kill the head and the body dies.” This was before the days of the equalizing 3 point shot, though.

Anyway, it would provide a very graceful way for him to bow out of his contract with ample facesaving for both sides and a negotiated buyout. If he’s really not well enough to coach long-term, its in his best interest to step down.

I too would prefer to see him succeed and do well, he seems like a decent guy, and winning cures a lot – even a boring style of basketball, if we were winning, Hawk fans wouldn’t be bitching up a storm.

OTOH, if we really tank (even worse than we think we will) this season and there continue to be lingering questions about his health, lets go ahead and commit to the do-over now. I tend to believe that a coach that will modify his approach to fit the talent he has would do a lot better at a school like Iowa where the quality and type of recruits you’re going to get in basketball can be all willy-nilly.

Overwhelming vote of “No Confidence” in TIMMAH B! So classic to see 10.5% of people supporting him staying right now. He’ll be laughing all the way to Mangino’s favorite buffet in Lawrence at this rate.

But when it comes to TCU and Boise, FUCK ‘EM! Put them at the kids table and let them piss and moan all day long. Simple fact is, if it weren’t for the BCS getting guilt tripped into carving out a mid-major exception a few years ago, none of these teams (TCU, Boise, Utah) would even sniff one of the BCS bowls.

This was a crazy year with 5 teams finishing undefeated. Probably has never happened before, at least in my life time, in D-1A. But its happened before, and before the BCS, and it didn’t cause the end of the world, so it will here again.

Don’t get me wrong, I think TCU is better than Texas and should be the team playing Alabama for the MNC. But since that isn’t happening, both teams (mainly Boise who seems a lot more obnoxious about the “snub”) need to shut the fuck up and take the huge payout.

/elitist rant

Social surgery.

That’s ready to shove Brewster out the airlock, sans spacesuit?

When KF rebuilt, the first year was pretty much a throwaway and the fans, used to Hayden, were getting restless (including me) during the rebuilding process, but we got there, and you could see even when we were losing games, the team was working hard to be competitive.

Injuries, especially widespread ones, can tank a season though and you guys suffered that this year. Even the so-called “elites” can tank if enough key players go down and the backups don’t/can’t perform.

Kidding aside, its better for the Big 10 – although not necessarily Iowa – for the league to be strong and competitive top to bottom.

But was it a toxic wasteland before Brewster came aboard? I’ve been bored off my ass at work today – it must be the snow, wind and HOLY FUCK IT’S COLD OUT – so I did a little digging at some assumptions I had about Glen Mason to look more into the state of the program at the time when Mason was canned:

 - Glen Mason’s winning percentage at Minnesota (over the course of ten years, which was the longest tenure of a Gopher head coach since some chap named Murray Warmath from 1954-1971) was .535, the highest winning percentage since some guy named George Hauser (who only coached for three years in the 1940’s and only came in at .577).

 - Glen Mason won ten games for the Gophers in 2003, the first time the program won ten games in a season since 1905.

 - Glen Mason took them to five straight bowl games, from 2002-2006. This is the longest streak of going to a bowl game for the Gophers in the history of the program (yes, I realize the last game of that streak was one of the bigger epic meltdowns in bowl history).

So…although I have zero access to the daily ins-and-outs at the U of M and am going on complete assumption, it is my belief that the challenges Brewster faced when he first came to the program wasn’t nearly the same sort of empty cupboard that we saw when Ferentz arrived in 1999. Losing the experience of the players who were arrested, and rightfully kicked off the team, for sexual assault didn’t help Brewster in his first year with a new system on both sides of the ball, but that one instance certainly didn’t affect his next two mediocre years either.

Maturi made a phenomenal hire in Tubby Smith and almost instantaneously changed the direction of the basketball program. He also was in charge of the program when they got the funding for The Bank. But as much as he is quitely and discreeting making overtures about Brewster being a piece of shit coach, he needs to admit his own failings first – one glaring one would be his wanting to hold accountable Mason for the Insight Bowl Disaster while forgetting the relative success Mason brought in over the course of his time at the U of M (per Wikipedia – always trusty – Maturi was quoted, after firing Mason, as saying “If we had not lost the way we lost, we probably wouldn’t be here today.”

blunt trama or it is hereditary.

last night’s game was in the McLeod Center in Cedar Falls, so let’s hope UNI made it their home (because it is their home).

They announced a sellout (roughly 6500), and I would say the place was about 7/8 full. There were plenty of good seats to be had, but chalk that up to the horrendous weather. There were probably about 1/8 or a little less Hawkeye fans. The UNI students filled up the general admission bleachers (which is about 1/4 of the seats in the place) and had good spirit all night.

In the second half, when UNI was re-establishing its lead after Iowa played within 6 points, the crowd was really loud, maybe the loudest I have ever heard it in the McLeod Center (I have been to about 10 or 15 games in the place, mostly Missouri Valley games).

If by some miracle Lickliter had been ready for the game, it was a no-win situation. So it is good that Walthall got another game of “interim experience.” I think Lickliter is wise to take this next weekend off, and let Walthall either take the ISU beating or pull off a “miracle” in Ames.