BlueIsBetter wrote:
I have a really hard time taking anything serious from a user that has "Pitbull" as his icon.
Heh. It's a joke. Me and some friends got sick of seeing that commercial every 5 minutes during football season and "let's have a real good time" morphed into an inside joke. And I'm seriously considering removing it now that somebody has seen it and thinks it means I like Pitbull. ;)
That notwithstanding, your post is absolute conjecture and reeks of straw man. I didn't put anywhere that I loathe Bronco in my post, and I do not like being represented as such. To say that someone does not have the success as someone else isn't tearing someone down. They might still have room for you at an "occupy" something or other if that is really how your emotions operate.
It's possible I straw-manned you. If I did, I'm sorry. I just saw that you were essentially calling Bronco a liar (claiming to turn down a job you claim he was never offered), said stuff like "many of the struggles BYU has had, and are having under his tenure, are Bronco's fault on and off the field" (which is true of ANY head coach, really), and had an overall aggressive tone. I guess I inferred a tone of animosity in your posts. If you didn't intend that, apologies.
I don't know if you spend much time in Cougar-dom outside of Cougar Corner, but on CougarCorner/Twitter/other forums, there is a sizable faction of BYU fans that legitimately hate Bronco Mendenhall. It's been annoying - I'm admittedly a fan of Bronco, and it sometimes strikes me as petulant and taking for granted what Bronco actually has accomplished. If you don't find yourself among that demographic, I'm sorry I lumped you in with them.
The MWC (along with USU) has been a solid conference in basketball since it's inception. It has also been one of the worst football conferences since its inception -with the top performers pulling all of the weight. The MWC was in football what the WCC is in basketball. Did you just start watching BYU basketball, or something?
Well, I did start watching BYU baskeball around 2004 (my freshman year), so yes, its entirely possible your bona fides as a fan are stronger than mine.
The MWC, to me, was pretty dang similar to MWC football. Yes, between BYU, UNLV, UNM, SDSU, and Utah, there were usually 3 or 4 good teams. But I don't think we should falsely remember it as a power conference. It wasn't. It was the best western conference, and it routinely placed in the 5-7 range among conference rankings in its better years, which, unsurprisingly, is about where the football side of the conference performed in its better years. Outside of those teams, I don't remember a lot of challenge. AFA had a good year in what I think was Rose's second year, but they were a dumpster fire for much of that time. Ditto for Wyoming and TCU. CSU was just barely beginning to heat up when we left.
The MWC was closer to the A-10 than it was to the Big East. That's not a slight (A-10 basketball is great), but in talking about Rose I think it's important to properly frame his level of competition.
How many of them ended the 2009 season ranked?
I think BYU had like 5 or 6 opponents either ranked or in the "also recieving votes" category that year. Nothing to sneeze at.
Scheduling? On top of a decent MWC schedule, BYU has played:
2008
6 Louisville
1 N. Carolina
9 Michigan State
Boise State
Wake Forest
Texas A and M
(UNLV 3 times, SDSU 2 times, and UNM a couple)
2009
USU
ASU
Nebraska
Arizona
UNLV
UTEP
SDSU
UNM
SDSU
UNLV
Florida
Kansas State
2010
USU
USF
St Marys
UCLA
SDSU
UNM
UNLV
UNM
SDSU
UNM
SDSU
Gonzaga
Florida
A few of those teams are NOT good teams, but bad bball teams from good football schools (BSU, Nebraska). But yeah, in a roughly 30+ game schedule, that's 8-10 good teams before tourney time. I think that's pretty equitable to a football schedule that had Utah, TCU, usually at least one (sometimes two) marquee non-conference opponents, and a bowl game.
What is anyone's win loss record at the Thomas and Mack? Good teams win on their home court in basketball. They just do. You will rarely ever see a good team like UNLV. SDSU, or NM, or USU lose on their home court. It just doesn't happen.
Yeah, and that's a factor that further complicates comparing a football coach and basketball coach. UNLV losses were pretty easy to shrug off because it always seemed like forces were conspiring to make us lose (reffing, crowd, bad shooting nights, etc.) There's really nothing similar to b-ball home court advantage in football. But they're still loses.
I don't like where our exchange is heading, because frankly the idea of picking apart Coach Rose's credentials sounds about as appealing as hitting myself in the head with a hammer repeatedly. I love Coach Rose as our basketball coach. I merely suggested that his performance as a coach is pretty similar to that of Mendenhall's. I don't want to have to trash Rose to build up Mendenhall. Like declocoug said, I think they're both terrific coaches. I don't want either to go anywhere anytime soon.
