Do you never tire of patting yourself on the back? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, after all.
Tales from the Ash
- Thread starter Randal7
- Start date
How about was the worst HC of all time? Why stop at Rutgers.?
I guess it depends on the timing. If they posted pretty early on in Ash’s tenure, it might’ve been supportive along the lines of: ”he did a great job for us so maybe he’ll do a great job for ya’ll”. But if posted in his final year ot two, then yeah, it could’ve been someone being defensive about him.
For me, it’s the past and I’ve moved on. I’m much more curious to see how we do in this and upcoming seasons. The book on GSII is only in it’s earliest chapters.
And I’m already curious what will happen when GSII either retires or moves on. Will RU go cheap on his replacement again or will they spend big to play big? Will the recent NCAA legal losses regarding players and payment really have much impact?
The future is very exciting to me, being an unknown and all. The past, for me, is a source of lessons, but is otherwise kinda boring.
Trying and failing is different than trying and failing while being an *******.
Finally listening to this and the dude Vinny telling the juggs story sounds sort of ridiculous. So there was faulty equipment (that should be pretty basic at any high school team) and when it repeatedly didn’t work he got pissed at the guy who led the equipment managers? I sort of get that and don’t see much wrong with it.
Don’t get me wrong -- Ash was an incompetent douche. No one agrees with that more than me. But this interview isn’t providing a glimpse into anything all that unusual.
Don’t get me wrong -- Ash was an incompetent douche. No one agrees with that more than me. But this interview isn’t providing a glimpse into anything all that unusual.
Oh he does more than pat himself on the back. That's why he goes through so much screen cleaner.
Ha . Do you want me to clean your screen too “spanky”? Sounds like it
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I never personally saw him as an *******. I have, OTOH, observed how people form extremely negative opinions about coaches when the coach's team is performing badly. It was starting to happen with GS in the last couple years before he went to TB, back in his first stint here. Happened with Flood. Happens with pro coaches.
It's very common and I understand it, even if I don't participate in it. People take this stuff very personally - enough so that they're still bashing the guy a couple years later, right? I don't take it personally.
I just see Ash as a guy who failed at being a head coach at RU. Same as Flood. Same as a whole lot of other guys. I'm sure I could get along with all of them.
He didn't respect RU traditions as much as some people wanted, but I'm not a traditionalist so that never bothered me. He didn't show a ton of respect for the program when he inherited it, and while I think he could've more diplomatic about how he said certain things, the fact was that the program was in shambles and unworthy of any respect at the time. So that didn't bother me either. People say he was arrogant, but he didn't strike me as arrogant, personally.
I'm not telling others how to think about the guy. People can hate away; is none of my business.
I'm just saying that for me, he wasn't an ******* (nor was Flood). They were just guys that were in way over their heads, like so many before them.
Plenty of stories of him being an ******* out there. Just read this thread alone. It sounds like what you are saying is not much is going to bother you when it comes to failed coaches. As I see it, if Flood (incompetent + lazy as he allowed the program to burn to the ground while he went to concerts and players got arrested) and Ash (incompetent + denigrated everything about Rutgers and NJ, while he allowed the program to fall into the abyss) don't move the needle for you, nothing ever will. To each their own I guess.
I'm kind of with @mildone on this. And I shared one of my stories above.
As to Flood, while he may never admit it, he probably realized the deck was stack against him, and he was going to live his life, take on risky kids, and hope for the best. I don't think it is fair to say he "allowed the program to burn to the ground." It was Barchi, Julie and the BOG that allowed this to happen by hiring him in the first place, paying him peanuts, and giving him a worse budget to hire coordinators and coaches. I don't blame him for putting in the effort he did. And the "violations" he committed are the kind of stuff that goes on at all programs and get swept under the carpet as long as the programs are winning. It was actually kind of noble of him to stick his neck out for his player who could not pass dance appreciation. Stupid, but kind of noble.
On to Ash. Webster's defines ******* as "a stupid, annoying, or detestable person."
Stupid? No. He was just in way over his head as head coach of a P5 program in New Jersey. Good DC though.
Annoying? Other than his record on the field, he was not annoying. He carried himself well most of the time and ran a clean program. Where he was annoying as detailed above was in his interactions with subordinates and even donors, which is odd. He seemed to me like a guy who was always stressed out because he realized he was in over his head, and he would take is frustration out from time to time on people that worked in the program. That could make him an ******* from time to time.
Detestable? His W-L record was.
All fans tend to take poor performance of the team they root for personally, the best target for that is the head coach. Doesn't always make the head coach an *******.
Nah, you've misunderstood me. I wasn't happy about what was taking place during Flood's or Ash's terms here. I just don't get emotional about it. It's a sport, not life and death.
Hatred is a very strong emotion. So it takes a lot for me to work up hatred. For example, I hate people who abuse or otherwise knowingly harm children. I hate terrorists.
But sports coaches? Nah. I just want to see them win and when they don't, want to move them along and give someone else a chance. Doesn't call for hatred.
I'm not denying that at all. The personal stories, IMO, is just a little too much to share....
I met Ash once, at the Fiddlers Elbow golf outing before his first season began. I was impressed by his directness if anything. I asked what he thought about the QB competition. He looked me right in the eye and said, "its the the one position group I'm most worried about". How prophetic.
Rewatching his initial press conference was prophetic as well.
"Our mission statement is not going to be about wins and losses".
He actually said that Day 1!
Compare that to Schiano who said our goal is to win a National Championship.
Rewatching his initial press conference was prophetic as well.
"Our mission statement is not going to be about wins and losses".
He actually said that Day 1!
Compare that to Schiano who said our goal is to win a National Championship.
Just listened to this episode (almost fell off the treadmill laughing). Listened to the @SF88 episode,Toure episode & the Tverdov episode. Very well done. I'm now a subscriber.
Tales from the ash pt 2 is out. Stories start with about 12 min left in the episode
you were a douche, his logic and reasoning was sound so more than a 'broken clock' but as a douche, you won't see that. Many of you owe him an apology for being a......douche
Too many unnecessary f bombs by Vinny.
That’s the thing here, even when logic is sound people go against it for simply not liking the poster or point of view.
I said that exact thing to myself as I was listening to part 2.
Thats his authentic self. I'll tell him to be less authentic
LOL. No, sorry. You have it entirely backwards and the fact that you're being so aggressive in your wrongness isn't helping him at all here.
All he did was guess at an extremely predictable outcome with overwhelming odds of being right. Which anybody could do, but most of us were well-adjusted enough not to dwell on, out loud at least. Hiring a first time head coach with a low assistants budget to take over a foundering RUFB program from Flood, while competing against strong Big Ten competition, ALWAYS had a very low probability of success. Duh.
That left us forum members, who were facing several years with the new coach hire and no way to change anything, three basic choices of how to behave going forward. Our choices were: (a) remain as optimistic as we could, keeping positive and supportive, (b) be mostly neutral and take a wait and see attitude, (c) endlessly posting extreme negativity, basically pissing all over anybody's attempt to maintain any level of hope for all the years it would take before we could get a new coach.
Options (a) and (b) are what reasonable people do in such a situation. Because they understand there's no point in obsessively whining about stuff we cannot control. It only makes others miserable.
Option (c) is nothing more than situationally-ignorant douchebaggery.
It wasn’t a guess . It was a prediction. And people were jerks because they didn’t agree with the prediction. Board cred was earned!!
Alternatively, perhaps people were jerks likely because they don't like your form of constant trolling and patting yourself on the back as you obsessively seek that elusive "Board Cred" trophy.
They were jerks before I earned the Board Cred trophy .
The probability of success with Ash and Flood was very low. Recognizing such a thing was never any kind of intellectual, or logical, challenge. Claiming credit for seeing the obvious is very lame.
And what you continue to fail to understand is that there was absolutely nothing any of us could do to change the coaching situation. And there wouldn't be for years to come.
So most people preferred to maintain some level of hope and kept most of their negativity to themselves. Whereas you seemed hell bent on crushing everybody's hope all in the pursuit of being loudly "right" about the obvious.
Of course people aren't going to give you respect for that behavior. It's lame.
Ever consider that's a you problem? .......I'll apologize in advance - noting that narcissists may have some trouble making that connection
the problem here is too many think they have a clue when all they have is hot air and empty space between the ears. No one should give anyone a pass and the notion it takes years to right a ship is nonsensical. I couldn't stand reading, 'he needs at least 5yrs to address what Flood did this program' lol....
c'mon you know that's a disingenuous retort filled with 'diamonds in the sky' view of things. Did you read that thread, others at the time? c'mon, you are better than that
I've explained that several times. You keep not understanding it.
What is the value, to our online community here, of any of us repeatedly being negative about something we're stuck with for 3-5 years minimum? People chose to be positive about it for as long as possible because that's better than being miserable all the time.
It's that simple.
Nah.
People would rather be positive for as long as possible rather than be mired in misery for 3-5 years. Nobody likes people who are endlessly negative. It doesn't matter if the negativity is "correct" or not.
Either you understand that or you don't. But it's not complicated.
It didn’t have to be repeatedly . The original post and comments were made the Saturday BEFORE ash was officially hired . No one was “miserable”. It’s college football , at the end of the day it doesn’t matter in most of our lives . Have fun with it , make predictions , that’s what I do . It’s fun to be right , but would have been more fun to be wrong in this case. I much rather ash had “got us smashing success”
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Like I said, pretty much everybody knows that hiring a first time head coach to lead an RU program in the Big Ten has a low probability of success. But they also know that there's no value, at the start of a new coach's term, of belaboring that negative point. The only substantive impact will be to irritate people.
If one defines success as winning a Big Ten championship, hiring GSII has a low probability of success. Look at the Big Ten's history. Most teams in the bottom half of the Big Ten have a low probability of that sort of success, right? And RU is most definitely in the lower half of the Big Ten at the moment.
However, rather than start threads posting about that low probability, and pissing off my fellow forum members, I'd rather post about the positive stuff, whatever it may be. Because, right or wrong, it's a lot more fun having hope and being positive than rubbing people's noses in negativity.
The most fun is winning and going to bowl games . Greg will get us there soon enough . Winning is fun.
@NickRU714 - you might enjoy the McNulty story in the podcast if you can wade through 150 f-bombs. Go to 9:40 remaining for some McNulty talk. You might look at him in a new light.