Penn State basketball troubles me.
Watching Penn State lose yesterday made me think about what needs to happen for the program to move forward. Obviously Ed is part of this problem but to me the root of the problem lies at a much more basic level. It's you and I. Penn State has no pressure to change. The program brings in a few more million than it spends, nobody cares that it's bad, and we're employing a Penn Stater in the process. Minus winning, there isn't a whole lot more this "business plan" needs to do. Sure students and alum might boo the team a few times a year, but they'll graduate, pay their NLC fees and never care again. Bring in a new crop and it's a brand new cycle.
"I'll go when the recruits come, Get somebody like Bruce Parkhill, I'll go when they have a winning team, I'll go when they have a vision"
Really? When Ed DeChellis was hired more people showed up to see what a "not-enough-men-to-fill-the-roster" team looked like, not the bald spot. There is something to be said about the athletic department bringing in a new exciting coach to get people going to games, but in all likelihood that isn't going to happen
As far as recruiting. What's the gameplan? Find a top-50 recruit and tell him he can play in the Big Ten on a 11th place team? There seems to be some group of people expecting Ed to turn around tomorrow and say "Ok enough 3 stars, lets go grab a class of Top 50's" it's not as if DeChellis doesn't try hard, he just can't work magic.
But back to you. Penn State athletics in large part is a reflection of its fanbase. When the Dark Years were here Joe almost got the boot, not because Tim Curley was like "Listen Joe, I need wins because I love winning" but because the fans cared. In wrestling the boosters put their money together and bought a coach. Hockey is somewhat due in large part to a desire to have a program. If there is one thing Penn Staters are good at, it's jumping up and down and stomping their feet. Except for basketball. We're ok with a bad program, but we wish we had a good one.
You and I, we can't fire Ed, we can't burn down Tim Curley's office and pick a new coach ourselves but we could start to care, we get what we put into this.
So how do you fix it?..
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Oh yea, almost forgot about this.
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6th game scoring 90 or more points.
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All aboard the stuggle bus.
*If you found any missing "G"s or "N"s today you win 100 BSD points. Key is messed up.
**Thanks to AdamShell for the late night peer-review.