Flipper wrote:hammb wrote:I The only team that Brandon has ever coached to be even close to what '02 was is the first year he was here in '03. How much of that was the residual effect of Urban, and how much was really Brandon's great coaching?
I have to vehemently disagree with you here. The '02 team had zero wins against teams with winning records. They were every bit the paper tiger people percieve the 04 team to be. The 03 team had wins against ranked opponents in Pudue and NIU and also beat Toledo and Northwestern (NW was a .500 team before losing the MCB)
Folks can massage reality all they want by attributing Brandon's success to Meyer's aura, but the simple fact of the matter is that Meyer's teams were not as successful as Brandon's. GB had more "quality wins" here in his first two years than Urbie did. You can attribute the decline over the last two years to either the team's inexperience and lack of depth or to poor coaching. THat topic has been kicked around ad infinitum. and I'm not engaging in any further mental masturbation along those lines.
I think it is petty and unfair to try to diminish Gregg Brandon's substantial contributions to our athletic history simply to grind today's axe. Simply put, I call bullshit...
This is where we have disagreed for awhile Flipper. I have been less than enamored with Brandon's coaching since his 4th game here. Nearly everybody else thought he was the savior until last year.
The '03 team was the best team in BG memory, for me. Definitely better than the '02 team, but don't sell that '02 team short. They didn't win against a winning team, but they're only chances were huge battles on the road against very good football teams. It was disappointing how we played against USF & NIU, and Urban's biggest choke job cost us the UT game. Still that was a damn good team, and I think without a doubt better than theh '04 team. The offense & defense were both pretty comparable, but the '02 team had dominant STs and a killer instinct that we didn't have in '04.
I think if you put the '02 team against '04, '05, or '06 Urban's group comes out on top. I am not using recent developments to taint the view of the past. I have felt this way for a long time, and have been called an idiot for my POV on numerous occasions. In fact, I think there have been others who have been much harder on Brandon this season than I. My opinions have not really changed much since 2004.
Gregg Brandon has achieved more in BG than Urban in the exact same sense that Larry Coker achieved more than Butch Davis in Miami. One guy builds the plane & gets 'er airborne, the other guy just doesn't puts it on autopilot to get to the destination. I give him credit for not crashing immediately, but it pretty much ends there.
