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.....in football. Think about this for a minute, when he was hired as a new AD, he knew he was going to have to hire a new basketball coach. But first, he had to hire a new football coach. Talk about hitting the ground running. But the football hire was/is the tough and important one. We are defending MAC Champions, we have been trending upward for four years and have the pieces in place to make a run at the title again next season and likely will be picked to do so. We have a rich history of success that isn't buried in the 1960's where we made the Top-25 and bowl games in the last decade. He hired Babers to take over a program that doesn't need rebuilt, he just needs to make it better and not mess it up. To me, that was the difficult job. This is the hire I am afraid to see fail because it's completely set up for success.

Then we have men's basketball. We have a program in shambles from what it once was. A program that was a national power, but before many of us on here were even born. This program hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament since 1968 (46 years ago). This program has never ever won the MAC Tournament in the event's 34-year history. This program hasn't won a postseason tournament game since 1975 for a tournament that doesn't even exist anymore. You have to go back to the NCAA Tournament in 1963 or the NIT in 1954 to find a postseason tournament win for BG. It's pathetic. And now you are coming off a seven-year stretch where the latest head coach had one winning season and five consecutive non-winning seasons including the latest 20-loss campaign in which we also had a losing record at home marking just the third time in the last 42 years for BG. Flat out, this program is $hit right now. If Kingston makes a hire and new guy steps in and just makes us a winning team with little postseason success he's already improved us. Any kind of success is new success for this program. I hope like hell Kingston makes a home run hire, but when you look at these two hires, it's not even close to the tougher one to fill. And it's one we already filled.

Babers doesn't need to reinvent the wheel at all. The wheels are in great shape, he just needs to tweak them and not crash his bad-ass ride. The new basketball coach doesn't even have wheels. His ride is sitting on cement blocks in the driveway with a rusted out frame, dents all over the bodywork, and a damn windshield he can't even see through because it's cracked all to hell and is buried in 40-plus years of bug splatter that's never been washed off!!!

How about we bring back Curt Miller and give him full control of the Men's program.

33, I'd love to hear your car analogy for hockey too. And women's basketball.

I'd liken hockey to a rusty old pickup truck, but one that has a brand new engine and runs pretty well.

Women's basketball is the sporty little compact sedan that gets great mileage and never breaks down.

Actually, the Women's program broke down twice, but we had AD's that fixed them with the hire of Fran Voll and Curt Miller and in the second case it didn't take 7 years for the mechanic to make the repairs.

HoopsFan

Neither Voll or Miller needed 7 years. Both had the program winning rather quickly. A good recruiting class with a couple JUCOs and/or transfers sprinkled in will bring a basketball program around a lot quicker than a football program.

bgsufalcon24 wrote:33, I'd love to hear your car analogy for hockey too. And women's basketball.

I'd liken hockey to a rusty old pickup truck, but one that has a brand new engine and runs pretty well.

Women's basketball is the sporty little compact sedan that gets great mileage and never breaks down.

I can agree with those.

I would say the men's soccer team is a GTO. A good muscle car that turned a few heads back in its day (winning the MAC, going to the NCAA Tournament) but when gas prices skyrocketed (and we lost our coach) it got parked out back behind the barn and sat there to collect dust, cobwebs and became home to some field mice. Then one day someone was driving by and noticed it, it made them remember how much fun it was to drive and oh how those 1970's were great, so they bought it and sent it to a restoration shop and it is now an ongoing project. It's back on the road, albeit not like it was in its day, but at least its chugging along and it can still light them up when you step on the gas every once in a while (getting a win over a bigger non-conference foe).

The baseball team is a Delorian. It's odd to look at and for years now it has lacked the loaded option package choices like its peers have (lack of scholarships, lack of stadium improvements - until recently) and no one parked it in the garage (no true locker room until now). When the sun hit it just right, you wondered what exactly you had on your hands. Was it cool that it shined like that, or was it blinding everyone who drove past. This one you parked in the barn and tossed a tarp over the top of (permanent rainout). You'd walk past it sitting there collecting dust and would kick the tires every now and again and notice - hell - they actually still have air in them. Then every decade or so you'd sit inside it and turn the key - and amazingly - it not only still runs, but started on the first crank. So you take it for a spin around the block and it brings you Back to the Future (making an NCAA Regional every decade or so). It's the kind of car that makes you wonder how much better it could have been had it been designed correctly from the beginning instead of waiting all this time to now try and do something with it.

I am now having too much fun with this so why stop, I'm on a roll. I have already touched on what the men's basketball "car" is now, but to add to that while staying on the car theme, this past season (2013-14) was just like a scene out of National Lampoons Vacation.



Just like Clark W Griswald, us BG fans knew what we wanted to take the family across country in this year. We had our hearts set on the Antarctic blue super sports wagon with the CB and optional rally fun pack, and we knew it would go great with our brand spanking new Stroh Center! So we turned in our old beater car and were ready for our new ride. But the BG Athletics Department pulled its best Lou Glutz Motors impersonation and sold us down the river on why we didn't want the Antarctic blue super sports wagon with the CB and optional rally fun pack (it didn't come in yet - but they didn't want to tell us that), but that we should go with the Metallic Pea Wagon Queen Family Truckster instead. We were told it was a "damn fine automobile." But us BG fans weren't falling for that old bid. We were ready to take our business elsewhere...but where??? BG told us "you think you hate it now, but wait till you drive it." We told BG "we didn't want to drive it, we just wanted our old car back (in this case our old program)."

Much to our chagrin, that old beater we had turned in was flattened like a pancake and we couldn't get it back. So now we're stuck. Our old car is toast, there's no chance in hell we're getting the Antarctic blue super sports wagon in time for the 2013-14 season, and the season is about to start, so we take home The Wagon Queen Family Truckster. Oh sure, the Truckster got us through the season alright, but after losing all of our hubcaps (all the games we lost on last second shots), having Aunt Edna die in it (the passing away of the BG fansbase) and jumping the thing 50 yards into the desert (5 consecutive years of irreversible crap), it performed even worse than it looked. And by the time we got to Wally World (the MAC Tournament/NCAA Tournament), it was closed!