Spaceman Spiff wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:56 am
zonagrad wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:52 am
84Cat wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 10:06 am
If they fuck this up and the BB cash cow dies, shit is going to hit the fan. What will happen to the athletic dept? We have relied on that money for decades to keep the ad afloat. These guys are playing with fire. Could we ever get the BB cash cow back again? Doubtful in my mind
You obviously aren't aware of the Ben Lindsey era at Arizona and the handful of sub-par years that preceded that rock bottom season.
I don't know. It took a HOF coach to create what we look at as Arizona basketball, and that was a very different era in terms of player movement and roster stability.
I'm not totally saying it isn't possible to recover from a hit these days, but HOF level coaches aren't commonly available and this era has unprecedented challenges for coaches.
I mean I look at UCLA. They arguably had the best coach ever. They had the greatest dynasty ever. And I wouldn't say they've been consistently the banner carrier for the pac12 over the past 30 years. That's been us. They've had final fours and maybe even an NC, can't recall. They've been maybe as good as us, if you compare resumes. But really it was UA/Furd, then UA/UCLA with some UA/UW and UA/UO mixed in. Right? And that's in part because we've had two major eras. Lute/Miller. They've had 11 coaches in that time frame it seems.
So what I'm saying is that even UCLA, which is a blue blood, is in California, has the love of the conference and the love of the media and the love of the refs and everything going for it, had the best coach ever and the best history ever, and even they haven't been back to greatness in a consistent enough way like I'd want for us.
If they can't just get back on top like it's no big deal, then how hard is it going to be for us?
We feared we might become irrelevant after Lute. Maybe it was only while we had him. But Miller saw something in the fanbase and the passion of the community and made it work, blending old with new and it was as good as you can ask for in that situation.
And now... Man. I don't know. Maybe now all the "it was nice while it lasted" fears I had for the "what will happen when Lute retired" threads are going to have to be dusted off.
It's not something to take for granted, especially when you aren't kansas, kentucky, duke, ucla.
Remember how Maryland was always relevant. Georgetown? We won't be the first team to drop out of relevancy. We'd be lucky to have a UCLA style 20-30 years. And that's so much less than I expect for us.