The question now arises "are we better off now than we were before DM accepted the job at TU?" and I think there's a good argument that we may actually not be any better off. DW was a disaster and has shown that he never was a particulalry good coach to begin with now that the CofC fans are saying the same things we did.

But DM coming and quickly jumping ship is either an indictment of our program or an indictment of him being very deceptive with the fans and more importantly, the players. Did he have it in the back of his mind to leave as soon as he could? Answer: Maybe!

But now the players that remain will be asking themselves a lot of questions about how hard they'll play for the next coach or even if they want to stay in a program that this happens to. Its a terrible scenario.

I know one thing, a lot of fans that were ready to jump on board are now ready to jump back off.

You know, I've always thought some things were providential. An example may be the hiring of Dr Gragg whos track record of running successful asthletic depts is somewhat suspect to begin with. EMU was one of the worst programs in all DI. He took over a program at TU that was successful in about everything they tried. Now all those programs have, in some way, crashed. And all those great things we thought were going to happen haven't yet occurred and obviously there is trouble in "River City". Is it the coaches? The players? The administration? Or the captain of the ship? And what ever happened to the girl he hired from EMU to increase ticket sales?

You sit back and think about it. If Manning wanted to move up in the next 5 yrs or so this was it. You could see this coming. The fact that Wake over paid well that's their problem. Wake wasn't just looking for a coach though. They needed a name that everyone knows to get the big donors excited. Also whoever Manning's agent is, did an outstanding job. Should think he will be getting a lot of calls in the next few months.

(04-04-2014 01:10 PM)TulsaEye Wrote:  You sit back and think about it. If Manning wanted to move up in the next 5 yrs or so this was it. You could see this coming. The fact that Wake over paid well that's their problem. Wake wasn't just looking for a coach though. They needed a name that everyone knows to get the big donors excited. Also whoever Manning's agent is, did an outstanding job. Should think he will be getting a lot of calls in the next few months.

I agree that Wake over paid. The only way I would agree with you on the timing ( best chance in the next 5 years) is if Manning didn't have enough confidence in himself or his current team. I think they would've made the dance the next 2 years if he had stayed.

Manning may be closer to a Steve Robinson than a Bill Self, only time will tell.

If our current players stay, we are definitely ahead of 2 years ago, IMO.

The big "if".......the players stay. I think you will see some defections, it just depends on who the guys are who stay. If anyone was even the slightest bit unhappy with, the team, the class work, the social life, whatever, this is their opportunity to pack up and leave and have a good excuse!!! Hopefully they will stay long enough to see who we hire.......and that hire better be a good one or we may not just lose a few players, we might lose more than a few fans. Depending on the player situation, the new coach might have to look into the JUCO ranks, just to fill out the team......and I'm not sure there are many JUCO stars still running loose out there. By this time next week we had better have signed a coach.........and he has been introduced to the players.....the longer you give the players to think about it, the worse the results could be. As soon as we made the NCAA tourney, our illustrious AD should have been putting his short list together then. We are going to be in one of the top BB conferences in the country with a team that made the tourney, we don't need to be looking at some off the wall candidate......whether Manning thinks so or not, we are big time now!!!! We need to act like it!!!

Listening to AD Gragg's interview on 1430 today. Doctor Gragg said he didn't even think Manning's accepting the Wake Forest position was even really about the money. Manning told Gragg before he left that he wanted to coach in the ACC. That's it. Manning was already set financially from his NBA days. He wanted the bright lights and the prestige. Manning grew up in that area so its no wonder.