Larry Templeton appreciation thread
- Thread starter Drebin
- Start date
I’m glad I missed that thread. Foglesong’s one legacy was getting rid of LT and bringing in Byrne.
Wait, how many times have we been to the CWS since Polk was let go? One! Polk took MSU to four CWS just during Templeton’s tenure. And you want crap on a legend like Polk as being a mistake? Come on! Croom years were bad, but that doesn’t define Templeton. Are we the only school to have unsuccessful coaching hires? Plenty of teams have had their moments at the bottom. As a reminder Templeton gave us a Final Four and an SECC game. Appreciate you Templeton!
[FONT=proxima_nova_ltsemibold]He voted to ban cowbells. From Gene’s Page 8/25/03:
NCAA Sportsmanship Summit
The vote was 12-0 for the rule. Since you represent Mississippi State, did you think it might be best to vote against the rule, especially since it could cause MSU to lose the use of cowbells during games?[/FONT]
[FONT=proxima_nova_rgregular]"I voted for it because I thought it was more important that Mississippi State be supportive of sportsmanship and the code of conduct. And that's what this whole thing is about. Cowbells were never singled out in any discussion about the game management recommendations. It wasn't even mentioned at the summit or the game management discussions. We didn't vote on just one issue. We voted for the entire package. There are a lot of policies that got included into this deal of non-conference games other than just artificial noisemakers. I was not going to let our institution be the only one voting against sportsmanship. If cowbells are bigger than sportsmanship, then I'm sorry, I don't think that's in the best interest of Mississippi State."
So you let 11 other institutions tell you what sportsmanship is and you don’t even question it when it includes our cowbells? And you vote against them so you won’t rock the boat?? Once again...
THANK YOU DOC FOGLESONG!!![/FONT]
NCAA Sportsmanship Summit
The vote was 12-0 for the rule. Since you represent Mississippi State, did you think it might be best to vote against the rule, especially since it could cause MSU to lose the use of cowbells during games?[/FONT]
[FONT=proxima_nova_rgregular]"I voted for it because I thought it was more important that Mississippi State be supportive of sportsmanship and the code of conduct. And that's what this whole thing is about. Cowbells were never singled out in any discussion about the game management recommendations. It wasn't even mentioned at the summit or the game management discussions. We didn't vote on just one issue. We voted for the entire package. There are a lot of policies that got included into this deal of non-conference games other than just artificial noisemakers. I was not going to let our institution be the only one voting against sportsmanship. If cowbells are bigger than sportsmanship, then I'm sorry, I don't think that's in the best interest of Mississippi State."
So you let 11 other institutions tell you what sportsmanship is and you don’t even question it when it includes our cowbells? And you vote against them so you won’t rock the boat?? Once again...
THANK YOU DOC FOGLESONG!!![/FONT]
Heard he was great managing the athletic department dollars but from my perspective (dating to the Charlie Shira era) he had no vision for what we could become and his whole tenure was unremarkable.
An ESPN story about the basketball team back in the Stansbury years (I think the article was about Ben Hansbrough) mentioned the team had to have shoot-arounds the day before the game in semi darkness because Templeton wouldn't let them turn all the lights on in the Hump in order to save some money on the utility bill. Templeton was a penny-pincher, plain and simple.
^^My thoughts exactly. Total skin-flint with the budget.
With today's TV-revenue enhanced budget, LT would have Gorilla-glued dozens of flashing LED message boards atop a still un-enclosed Davis Wade Stadium that had only two multi-color displays: COWBELLS UP/ COWBELLS DOWN
I forgot about that, it did happen seems like it was the guy at co lin. And it was his 2nd choice. He tried to hire our current hc away from Memphis and she was making more than he offered.
"Retiring" Larry Templeton should merit a 10 foot bronze statue of Doc Foglesong in the Junction with daffodils around the base.
How bad was LT? The only good coaching hires he ever made were promoted assistants. Cheap was not the word that man. He sold a home game with Florida to Orlando. The women team in the late 90s got an NIT bid - first postseason bid in their history and he initially wanted to decline it. In 2003 we earned a 3 seed in the women's tournament and he wouldn't move a state convention of SGA officers to host it because it would have lost money.
How bad was LT? The only good coaching hires he ever made were promoted assistants. Cheap was not the word that man. He sold a home game with Florida to Orlando. The women team in the late 90s got an NIT bid - first postseason bid in their history and he initially wanted to decline it. In 2003 we earned a 3 seed in the women's tournament and he wouldn't move a state convention of SGA officers to host it because it would have lost money.
This should be the one thing that pisses off any Mississippi State fan nowadays. And this is just a prime example of the BS State had to deal with.
I seriously wonder how we did anything in any sport with this dumb@$$.
I bet we see a few National Titles under Cohen. Cann and Schaefer look to be HOFers so far. And it appears that Howland and Moorhead look like good coaches as well. Probably not been a time where we have been happy with all 4 of our major head coaches.
All these reasons you listed and more that I can't think of made us think less of ourselves and helped give us a ****** rep with the other schools that we are still fighting against today.
Hammer meets nail.
The inferiority complex that infests our fan base became a virus under LT.
I honestly think he meant well and tried to do what he thought was in our best interest, but his perspective of what MSU was and could be was flat wrong.
I once saw Larry Templeton in the Orlando airport, sometime after the great Doc Foglesong handed him his walking papers.
I had just disembarked from my Southwest flight into town, and apparently he was headed to a gate to fly out, and I walked right past him. I've never wanted to suckerpunch a man more in my life than at that specific moment.
I had just disembarked from my Southwest flight into town, and apparently he was headed to a gate to fly out, and I walked right past him. I've never wanted to suckerpunch a man more in my life than at that specific moment.
He did what he thought was right. He thought keeping us in the black was good, because he did not feel we could increase revenues that much. He was wrong on the second part for sure, we all know that, but the man did care about MSU. He sincerely thought Croom and Polk 2 were right for MSU at the time. Nothing he did was out of malice.
He also got us in the NCAA baseball tournament in 2006. Missed Hoover and became the unprecedented first time to make it in as the 9th team from the SEC.
He also got us in the NCAA baseball tournament in 2006. Missed Hoover and became the unprecedented first time to make it in as the 9th team from the SEC.
Didn't Michigan State do pretty much the same thing year before last when we had the regional games here instead of in Michigan? Still not a lot of respect for women's sports, even the major ones.
There's soooooooo much wrong with this post.
I would say that bringing Ron Polk back was possibly the single biggest mistake in MSU baseball history. It set our program back 10 years and allowed Ole Miss AND USM to catch up to us for a little while. Cohen's tenure was vastly superior to Polk's- remind me of that time when Polk took us to the National Finals? Cohen won the SEC and SEC Tournament and essentially rebuilt our program into what it is at the moment and allowed for a seamless transition to one of the best head coaching prospects in all of baseball which also negatively affected LSU at the same time. Cohen also built the interest in baseball back up to where we could build the new baseball stadium.
Bringing Polk back created apathy followed by decline. And while the CWS appearance and SEC Tournament Championship were nice reminders of what we could be and were at that point in time bringing Polk back tarnished Polk's legacy and ultimately led to division amongst our fans that Cohen had to fight and overcome his entire career at MSU. Our recruiting in baseball became a total joke- you had to go to the camp and be deemed not quite good enough to be drafted because we weren't going to deal with that whole draft thing. And this is only after your junior year in high school at a time where baseball recruiting at that point was already moving in a direction where relationships were built by a prospect's sophomore year if not earlier.
All because LT decided to do the easy thing a please some cronies and Ron Polk- when he could have VERY easily hired Paul Manieri from Notre Dame at that time who was literally begging for our job with a phone call.
I still personally don't blame Polk for Polk II as much as I blame LT. Sometimes you have to say "no"- and that's what LT's job as the AD was.
And don't worry about us going back to Omaha- I suspect we're about to become mainstays there based on what I saw Cann do last year without a pitching staff. In fact going there this year wouldn't shock me at all. And once Cann starts bringing in his recruits starting next year it's going to blow Polk's tenure away.
Cann has been a HC for a single season and looks like a HOFer? I like him a lot, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.