one thing is clear... hawkins' safety net is totally gone. there is absolutely no goodwill built up in the program to allow him any benefit of the doubt. every decision the staff makes is criticized heavily.
the media, the fans, the students, the boosters, and, of course, the innerwebs scum, are all ready to jump down hawkins' throat no matter what he decides.
i've seen this happen before in business. the recipe is simple:
1. bring in a new guy.
2. new guy sets high expectations.
3. new guy repeatedly promises to hit the high expectations.
4. new guy fails to hit even a baseline level.
5. new guy gets defensive and starts blame-casting and offering excuses.
6. every move by new guy is criticized and analyzed. new guy has been rendered totally ineffective.
7. absent a hail mary, new guy moves on, voluntarily or involuntarily.
it is a classic case of over-promising and under-delivering. it leads to a lot of anger, which is why this board and others have been so heated lately.
there is only way out for this staff now-- they've got to surprise people in a big way and start to exceed expectations. that means they need to start winning. a 5-2 finish to this year would be the minimum goal for me at this point.
another thing to beware is that, as results continue to disappoint, expectations tend to go down too.
if you had told me, or virtually any other die-hard fan of the program, on the day that hawkins was hired, that he would not have a winning season in 4 years (well, 3 and counting now) and he would still have a job, i don't think many would have believed it possible.
a lot of folks are skipping and jumping because the team looked better than earlier in the year, but they still lost by 4 scores to texas. that's not a metric of success.
on the other hand, not every single decision they make is wrong. the knee-jerk reaction at this point (with the total lack of remaining goodwill) is to presume they are ****ing up. but, that obviously will not prove to be true either.
it is an ugly time to be a Buff fan... maybe brighter days ahead? a win over ku would start the long and difficult process of building up some confidence in this staff again. their margin for error is gone.
the media, the fans, the students, the boosters, and, of course, the innerwebs scum, are all ready to jump down hawkins' throat no matter what he decides.
i've seen this happen before in business. the recipe is simple:
1. bring in a new guy.
2. new guy sets high expectations.
3. new guy repeatedly promises to hit the high expectations.
4. new guy fails to hit even a baseline level.
5. new guy gets defensive and starts blame-casting and offering excuses.
6. every move by new guy is criticized and analyzed. new guy has been rendered totally ineffective.
7. absent a hail mary, new guy moves on, voluntarily or involuntarily.
it is a classic case of over-promising and under-delivering. it leads to a lot of anger, which is why this board and others have been so heated lately.
there is only way out for this staff now-- they've got to surprise people in a big way and start to exceed expectations. that means they need to start winning. a 5-2 finish to this year would be the minimum goal for me at this point.
another thing to beware is that, as results continue to disappoint, expectations tend to go down too.
if you had told me, or virtually any other die-hard fan of the program, on the day that hawkins was hired, that he would not have a winning season in 4 years (well, 3 and counting now) and he would still have a job, i don't think many would have believed it possible.
a lot of folks are skipping and jumping because the team looked better than earlier in the year, but they still lost by 4 scores to texas. that's not a metric of success.
on the other hand, not every single decision they make is wrong. the knee-jerk reaction at this point (with the total lack of remaining goodwill) is to presume they are ****ing up. but, that obviously will not prove to be true either.
it is an ugly time to be a Buff fan... maybe brighter days ahead? a win over ku would start the long and difficult process of building up some confidence in this staff again. their margin for error is gone.