Cincinnati Reds: Farm System Champions 2022
I tend to agree. There is still a lot of talent coming back for next season and with the quality of the past few recruiting classes you'd think there is a very real opportunity to have another good season and parlay that success to an even better job offer.
It isn't like any of the jobs that he is being mentioned for are plum jobs. UCLA and Illinois strike me as the kind of situations where expectations exceed reality, making them dead-ends jobs for a coach looking to move higher up the ladder.
As I said before, I'd like for Butch to stick around but I don't think his departure would be a massive blow to the program.
I generally cheer for UC, but as a Card fan I have to be a HUGE UConn fan on Saturday! Go Huskies!
Just wish the Cards had taken care of business at home against Pitt!
I'll also add that it amazes me that a guy with a 12-11 record at UC is a serious candidate for anything.
How do we know he's not Mel Torme?
I really wish the Big XII would take 2 other Big East teams so the Big 12 would actually be the BIg 12!
The 2 best programs from the Big East that would fit in nicely with the Big 12 are Cincy and USF.
I believe UofL fits better than UC or USF, but especially better than USF. UofL has top quality facilities and top programs other than just football and men's hoops. It is much closer geographically than USF and has fans that show up for games, unlike UC (UofL has had over 20,000 at every home basketball game this year with a schedule that includes Arkansas State and the Ohio Bobcats).
What if this is as good as it gets?
There's no disputing that UC's basketball attendance has been awful of late, but a little context helps. Run Pitino out of town with pitchforks and torches and see where your basketball attendance/program is then.
Rant aside, I agree with you - Louisville is a much better fit than USF. WV, Cinci, and Louisville make sense geographically, and have a lot to contribute in both football and basketball.
How do we know he's not Mel Torme?
How do we know he's not Mel Torme?
Believe me, there are a lot of Card fans who would love for Ole Tricky Rick to be run out of town. The difference is Tom Jurich would NEVER hire Andy Kennedy.
Also, the only reason UofL isn't #1 in attendance is Frankfort wouldn't allow (help pay for) Louisville to build an arena with more seats than Rupp.
What if this is as good as it gets?
I doubt Louisville is in danger of falling to the level of UC's current attendance situation any time soon. I'll use Dayton as an example, Jim O'Brien took them from 2nd round of the NCAA his first season to near the bottom of hell to the point where everyone from the Great Midwest EXCEPT Dayton was included in the reformed C-USA. Can't hardly blame them when UD was failing to win double digit games a couple of years in a row. Yet, UD still managed to average over 10k in attendance every season.
similar to UD, Louisville basketball is the king of the town. The nearest pro teams are an hour + away, making basketball the place to be, the place to be seen wednesday nights during the season, especially with a program with such a long history of success. Louisville loves its cardinals.
UC is different, not only does it compete for eyeballs w/ those more interested in the Bengals and Reds, but it also competes in its own city for attention with Xavier. They both get the pull of UK directly to the south, both have B10 basketball powers taking some pull to the north (IU & OSU respectively), but UC has additional competition for eyeballs w/ UD's 10k+ in the territory.
On top of the increased competition, UC had a fairly large down period IIRC. Prior to Huggins, UC wasn't UC pretty bad for a fairly long time? That kind of down period creates an entire lost generation of graduates and people growing up in the area who found other teams to root for. They were Huggins fans primarily, not UC fans. Thanks to Denny Crum, there isn't a generation of Louisville graduates or locals who turned to other teams b/c Louisville was hopeless.
I would have thought UC's basketball attendance would have come back a bit, I'm surprised its so down, seems like once people figured out they could live w/o going, they haven't been enticed to come back. Mic's done a solid job, but its not like he's blowing the doors of the place like Huggins did his first couple of years. I'm not a fan of either UC nor XU (UD grad), but I get the sense that it was "cool" to be a UC fan in the mid 90s. Now its more "cool" to be an XU or UK fan in the area. The Bengals have been respectable more or less since the turn of the century, UC didn't have the competition w/ the putrid Bengals of the 90s at Huggins peak.
On top of that, 5/3 arena in my opinion, is a terrible place to watch basketball. UC could benefit greatly from a basketball 1st arena the way Xavier has.
FWIW, Kennedy wasn't hired as head coach, he was just the interim coach for '05-06 when Huggins was let go.
As to your original point, UC will never approach what Louisville draws in basketball attendance, but it is still an attractive basketball program. Although football is driving the conference realignment bus, UC's basketball program has to be a check in the plus column.
Last edited by wolfboy; 11-30-2011 at 01:25 PM.
How do we know he's not Mel Torme?
The reason people stopped following UC is simple.... Nancy Zimpher. She ruined a great basketball program because Bob was fooling around with someone's wife and that someone had a lot of money and influence at UC. What happened was a large chunk of the fans stopped following and caring until she was gone, and while she is now gone, those fans have long since found another team to root for or simply don't root for anyone at all. They aren't going to get those fans back. Toss in several below standard years after Kennedy was run out of town and you lost some more fans.
Cincinnati fans are fantastic about making excuses -- but the reality of the situation is that a public university w/ an enrollment of 31,000+, in a metro area of 2.1 million people should be able to sell a lot more tickets than they do.
Huggins has been gone for 6 years. It's time for people to start getting over it.
Cincinnati Reds: Farm System Champions 2022
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