how to lose every fan in 10 days

I was prepared for a loss.  I mean, with a Mike London-coached team, that's a given.  You live in Oklahoma, you have a tornado shelter.  You root for a team coached by Mike London, you take nothing for granted in the win column.  I wasn't at all prepared to be slapped upside the face by our own administration.

The idea behind that somewhat controversial countdown clock was simple: X days until we know whether we had a successful season, in which case, good, or we had a bad season but could look forward to a better day ahead with a better coach, in which case, good.  Either way, things were going to look up.

So much for theories.  Leave it to this administration to screw up a good thing.  I suppose they had their reasons and the chances are good that they go beyond the public blather they put out last week.  Maybe it's money, in which case they're being cheap.  Or maybe Craig Littlepage just doesn't have the guts to fire someone he personally likes, until circumstances force him over the edge.**  Regardless of the reason, it makes all this talk about competing for ACC championships just that - empty talk.

A few people theorized that the reason I was asked to take down the old site banner for "copyright reasons" (despite the fact that the picture of Tony Bennett was from his time at Washington State and could not possibly have been owned by the University of Virginia) last year was because of the countdown clock.  I'm not sure that's true, but I'm not sure it's false, either.  Well, there's no clock anymore, and there's not going to be one, and in case the administration really is paying that close of attention to the goings-on at a tiny little 200-readers-a-day blog, here is the exact reason for that: I have less than zero faith anymore in their rational decision-making or the standards they claim to set for the football program.  From where we sit now it's no stretch to imagine they'll let London bumble along and win four to six games for the next ten years.

We've all heard since we were four that actions speak louder than words, and the actions here say that:

-- it's OK to never beat Virginia Tech
-- it's OK to never beat North Carolina
-- it's OK to go 11-29 in conference play
-- it's OK to go bowling once every five years or so, and when you do,
-- it's OK to get your ass kicked
-- it's OK to win one road game in three years

Uncompromised Excellence my ass.  The only thing uncompromised is the rotting stink of a losing atmosphere emanating from the McCue Center.  That's coming through loud and clear.  So is the message that a losing program is acceptable.  Standards have sunk that low.  Teams all around the country fire coaches every year when they don't perform; UVA is happy to keep the one they've got because he's a nice guy.  So we're stuck, for at least one more year, with our offensive-line-neglecting, no-accountability-having, clock-management-fumblefucking, nice guy for a head coach.

Amazingly, there are still apologists for this performance.  A lot of them suit up in uniform on Saturdays, which is understandable considering London's charisma.  You'd think if they wanted to play for and win for their head coach, they'd stop doing incredibly stupid shit like roughing the passer on the Hokies' last-chance drive, or watching the senior captain of the offensive line haul ass downfield on a pass play as if he were an eligible receiver.  But then, the coach doesn't hold them accountable for that kind of thing, and in the game they stay, so why should they ever change?

As for the people in the stands making excuses, you have to admire their creativity.  First it was that the coordinators were all wrong, so they changed them.  Then it was that the team was just too young.  Then it was the fact that we just didn't have an experienced quarterback.  And through it all, the schedule is too hard.  So I guess if we have a senior quarterback leading a team full of seniors, coached by really awesome coordinators, and playing Tulane, Troy, and VMI, we'll win football games.  And in every other year, when adversity reality occurs, well, the head coach can't be blamed for that stuff.  Never mind that the head coach created his own damn adversity by recruiting no offensive linemen and screwing up the quarterback situation beyond recognition.  Never mind that every head coach has some version of these problems.  Most successful head coaches can spell WINNING without being spotted W-I-N-N-I-N.

Now that we've made this very stupid decision, we're basically stuck with it.  I know nobody's all that happy with Steve Fairchild.  Lord knows I was furious at the decision to keep running smack into the middle of the line against VT when it was obvious our offensive line was piteously overmatched.  Hell, I'm sure most people within hearing distance could tell.  But if you fire him now, who do you get?  The rest of the country assumed London would be fired this year, and you can bet they assume he'll be fired next year.  Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to sign on for what they figure is a one-year gig with a dead-man-walking for a head coach, unless that person is thoroughly unqualified, destitute and begging, or both.  And it's certainly not a good idea to put our quarterbacks through the old three-OCs-in-three-years trick, which is quite likely should Fairchild be shown the door.  The administration has made the decision to ride or die with London - they need to realize that extends to the staff too.

So, next year.  We'll probably go through this whole thing again.  This team is talented enough to win a few games.  There are eight Hoos on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-team all-ACC groupings.  That's more than all but two ACC teams.  (And we go 3-5.)  They're likely going to beat Cuse and W&M, and there are about seven games on the schedule where the opponent is at least beatable enough that the team ought to be able to pull a few wins out of that bunch.  6-6 is an awfully likely outcome.  Bowl game in sunny Shreveport.  And with the shit-for-standards set by this administration, can you say with absolute certainty that that won't earn London an extension?  For the sake of the future, this team needs to either win 10 games or lose 10 games, and nothing in between.  And if you think London is capable of winning 10, look up - I can see the word "gullible" written on your ceiling from here.

**I will offer one possibility that - sort of - exonerates the administration.  Rumors abound that Craig Littlepage will be retiring soon, possibly as soon as this summer.  It's somewhat plausible that Littlepage is thinking in the very long term, and allowing his successor (who had damn well better not be Jon Oliver) to hire a head coach.  If Littlepage hires a coach this winter and then does retire this summer, that coach will have the specter of working for a boss who didn't hire him - which is usually a difficult situation that doesn't work for more than a couple years.  And of course, Littlepage can't just come out and say all this.  If you held a gun to my head, I'd grudgingly admit that I prefer to have a new coach and new AD all at once for the long haul, than to have a new AD come in and be more or less held hostage for a few years with a coach he may or may not want to keep.  But this situation basically depends on Littlepage retiring this summer.  If he doesn't, the whole program is going to be one big ball of dysfunction for years to come.

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With the football season over, it's about time to transition this thing to Monday postings.  But I'm probably not going to be 100% strict about it.  What I will do is make sure there's a nice, long column to go up on Monday mornings.  But the possibility exists that things will happen midweek, too.  For example, I fully intend to at least finish writing about the recruiting class of 2015, and I want to write some basketball game previews too, this week especially since there are two pretty big games.  The "new era" of FOV isn't defined in stone yet, but it's going to start happening more or less this week.

weekend review

So, the more astute members of the audience, and the less astute ones too, should notice a new addition to the blog.  I figure it this way: Al Groh was let go the very same day in 2009 as the season-ending loss to VT.  That was November 29.  By Gregorian coincidence, next year's Thanksgiving Saturday is also November 29, and if things go as everyone fully expects, five years to the day of Groh's sacking, UVA will fire another football coach.  And the team will be freed from the yoke of pathetically undisciplined, aimless coaching.  Maybe that'll only be for a week - we have no idea who'll take London's place - but there's no way the replacement can be less adept at obnoxiously basic crap.

This year's edition of the VT game was London in a nutshell.  He did a great job at firing the team up and getting them ready to play; I certainly did not see any of the quit that was hinted at in the Clemson game and seemed more than evident against UNC.  He also did a shit job at preparing them.  As ever.  We didn't do anything different like you'd like to see against an archrival; we just did a few things better.  And most things just the exact same as always.  The unused first-half timeout can be sold to raise money for the program, of course, but the chance to score off of an opponent's turnover is lost to the wind forever.

I'll probably write a position paper or something on the coaching staff later on, but the cliff notes here are: we're stuck with them; fire all or fire none but don't make any more piecemeal changes; Steve Fairchild comes in for some unfair criticism at times but lots of perfectly good criticism too; whatever the conventional wisdom is about who the next coach should be, I don't want it; and there's not a single coach including alums Dex and Biscuit that I'd shed a single tear over losing.

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Basketball was much more entertaining, wouldn't you agree?  In fact, I have the games downloaded and will spend time this week chopping them into highlights - and not only that but the very first HD highlights I've done.  I expect so, at least.  They're very worthy games.  The Fightin' Smoos put up a real scuffle and a scare into the Hoos; that looks to be a pretty darn good frontcourt they have there, and hopefully they put it to good use in the newly-constituted AAC.

The SMU game was a great time for the free-throw shooting to come alive (if only temporarily) as the refs called well over a foul a minute.  Even more so, it was a great time to shoot 10-for-14 from three-point range, which ultimately is what sank the Mustangs.

Interestingly, though, I think I found the Missouri State game more educational, despite the carpet-bombing the Hoos delivered.  It was 11-3, bad guys, at one point, and then an 80-45 run squashed flat any hopes of a Bears upset.  UVA has made a bit of a pattern this year of going on a long, morale-crushing run in the latter part of the first half, clamping down on defense to hold the opponent scoreless for long stretches.  At some point there, Tony Bennett yells something in Russian, and the pack-Drago defense unleashes its cold, calculating fury.

What I think is happening is that opposing coaches are scouting the pack-line a little harder, and finding a couple ways to attack it, and the UVA players need a few passes against whatever the opponent is bringing to adjust.  It helps if the opponent starts the game 4-for-5 beyond the arc.  Then an adjustment is made, and the opponent goes poof.  Against Hampton, the frontcourt guys worked a little harder on denying entry passes, because the Hampton forwards were catching the ball in good position.  Against Missouri State, the guards helped a little less down low and stayed home a little more so as to make those threes just that little bit harder to shoot.  And voila: game over.

Next up is the toughest remaining non-con game: Wisconsin.  The Badgers have remained perfect against some very decent competition: St. Louis, West Virginia, St. John's, and the apple of the bunch, Florida.  On the plus side for UVA: Their defense isn't as elite as it's been in recent years, and they run with a very thin rotation.  Eight players get 97.8% of their minutes, and their five starters get 78.4%.  As you'd expect from a team like that which also hasn't lost a game, they're among the very best in the country at staying out of foul trouble.

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Recruiting board needs an update due to commitment today:

-- Added DE Michael Biesemier to orange.  I know I shouldn't talk down about a recruit who just committed like six hours ago and who I haven't even come close to profiling yet, and I know I'm still grouchy about a two-win season, and I know we needed to find a defensive end somewhere in this recruiting class, and commitments are supposed to be exciting, but.... I still have an awfully tough time getting fired up over stealing a recruit from James Madison.  This is what you reap when you sow a 2-10 season.  Eventually we'll have a closer look to see what we see.

-- Added TE Blake Whiteley to yellow.  Whiteley is - brace yourself - a JUCO player, certainly the first I've ever put on the recruiting board.  (UVA's transfer-credit policies tend to rule out most JUCOs.  It's different sending someone to Piedmont to get re-eligible, because the school can tell them what to take.)  Texas will almost certainly snap him up if they offer, otherwise it looks like Arkansas is the main competition.

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Elsewhere news:

-- The David Teel interview of Craig Littlepage ruffled a lot of feathers.  Count mine as not among them.  Nothing there came as a surprise; the fact is that once the statement is made that London isn't going anywhere, Littlepage has to back that up with all his guns every time he's asked.  It's a lose-lose proposition, because the tiniest crack in that facade is met with huge headlines all but officially proclaiming the end of the London tenure.  Hell, I've gone and done it myself without Littlepage's help.  The only thing is that Littlepage ought to know it's a lose-lose proposition and politely decline the interview, because now he sounds like a clueless bumbler who takes a 2-10 coach and says, yup, what a great job he's gonna do, I just know it.

The other problem I have is that the transcript there only stokes my fears that Jon Oliver, far from being next to face the firing squad, is actually being groomed as Littlepage's successor.

-- Oval-football season is over, but Euro-football rolls on smartly.  The men's team was shown a red card 57 seconds into the game against Marquette, and so played damn near a full game a man down, and still stomped the Golden Eagles 3-1.  And then received a fortuituous bit of news: as the 8th seed in the tourney, UVA would've had to play #1 seed UCLA in the quarterfinals, but unseeded UConn put a stop to that.  Which means one more game at friendly Klockner.

That will not be televised, but the women, in the women's College Cup against UCLA, will be.  Friday the 6th at 7:30, ESPNU.  Going to be on the TiVo for sure.

-- Alabama fans are officially horrible people.  Not content with killing mere trees, Alabama fans have graduated to actual human murder, the motive being: not being upset enough over the loss to Auburn.  In recent memory, Alabama fans have:

- Publicly teabagged a passed-out LSU fan
- Destroyed a popular monument at Auburn
- Sent death threats to the kicker who missed the field goal this week - and the kicker's family.
- Murdered a fellow Alabama fan because that person joked about the loss.

At some point there - it might've been after the 100th death threat, or when some crazy bitch pulled a gun and started popping caps - Alabama fans lost the right to whine about judging the whole fanbase by a few bad apples.  If you are an Alabama fan there's a smallish but reasonable chance that you're a sick fuck, and a 100% chance you take football far too seriously and need to get a damn life.

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Senior Seasons feature as a few of our players move closer to state titles.

Centennial 86, Upland 56: Jeffery Farrar obviously didn't do anything special here, I just felt like pointing out the 909 yards racked up by Centennial.  Farrar's Upland had 557.  Defense was not something anyone was interested in, apparently.

Clearwater Central Catholic 7, Miami Westminster Christian 0: And Caanan Brown could not have played a more different game.  CCC will play for the state championship next week.

Oscar Smith 40, Forest Park 7: The actual notable thing is that the big Smith-Ocean Lakes matchup was derailed, and Oscar Smith will now play Colonial Forge in the semifinals next week.

Salem 42, Woodgrove 25: J.J. Jackson's season ends this week as well.

pay this man

So here is a USA Today table of the compensation (pay, for the back of the class) brought in by the various athletic directors around the country.  I'll save you the looking through the table: Craig Littlepage makes $350,000 a year, with no bonuses.

That sounds like an OK chunk of change.  I sure wouldn't mind $350,000 a year.  But here are some quick facts about where that ranks, out of the 111 listed salaries (all 120 I-A football schools minus the nine that didn't respond because either they're private schools or they're Penn State which isn't required to):

-- Tied for 64th in the nation
-- Tied for 9th in the ACC (of 11 - Miami doesn't answer)
-- Tied for 54th among BCS schools

The gentleman that Littlepage is tied with is Florida State's Randy Spetman, who also makes $350,000, but with the potential for a bonus of as much as $190,000, so Spetman really counts as better-compensated.  Littlepage is also tied with UNLV's Jim Livengood, whose maximum bonus is even bigger.

The ADs on either side of Littlepage are Memphis's R.C. Johnson at $332,500, and - get this - the AD at East Carolina, who the astute will remember is Terry Holland.  Holland makes $363,400.  Our former AD, at a school that the ACC turns its nose up at, makes more than our present AD.

(Disclaimer goes here: this is where you might as well stop reading if you're the football-and-basketball-only type.  Please come back tomorrow for the recruit profile on Anthony Cooper.  But do keep in mind that UVA, when choosing a direction for its athletic department, commendably decided to try and shoot for the moon in everything, and that is the mission by which we must judge Littlepage.)

UVA is getting great value here.  But you know me, I like numbers with my value.  After Holland was nudged gingerly yet respectfully aside, Littlepage was charged with creating excellence in every facet of the athletic department.  Of course, the best indicator of that is the Director's Cup, which awards points based on how well you do in every NCAA championship.  UVA has finished in the top 10 in the Director's Cup in the past I dunno how many years - 3rd two years ago, 7th last year.  Consider excellence achieved.

ADs must also managed the business side of the department, of course.  It's about the profits.  Profits mean more money you can sink into creating excellence.  Who makes the most ducats in the conference?  Why, the University of Virginia.  Hell, that kind of profit means that if they wanted to, they could almost fund the planned new indoor practice facility in one year of operation.

So, Littlepage is a success in the money department.  Being the best in the conference at bringing in the bux is as good as you could hope for.  He is also a big success in the performance department.  I will admit there have been missteps here and there, like the sign ban in Scott Stadium, but that pales in comparison to the fact that he's delivered in spades in the two areas he's charged with.

Now for that numbers with my value thing.  First, I took the total compensation of the nation's ADs, except for the ones that weren't given.  I decided "total" should be the "total pay" column in the database, plus 1/4th of the "max bonus" column.  Divide the number by Director's Cup points to get dollars per point.

UVA is getting great value, remember?  The third-best number in the country, in fact: on AD compensation, UVA spends $320.51 per 2011 Director's Cup point.  Only UNC and TCU spend less, and UNC's number isn't necessarily valid any more because of the resignation of Dick Baddour.

(Please take this as the rough approximation of value that it's meant to be.  I realize there are numerous flaws.  Like the fact that Debbie Yow is barely responsible for last year's numbers at NC State, Baddour is no longer at UNC, small sample size of only one year of Cup points, etc. etc.  The fact that UVA is so low - or high - on the list, though, is still significant.)

In order to bring Littlepage to the median level of dollars per point nationally, he'd have to be paid almost a million and a half per year, which I don't think anyone is proposing.  To get to the same median, but in the ACC, his pay would have to be about $730,000, which I still don't think anyone is proposing.

But.....would it kill us to take some of those most-profitable dollars and redirect them to the man who's making it possible?  Understand, I'm not trying to call our administration out for being cheap or any such thing.  I have no idea how Littlepage's compensation schedule has been laid out over the years.  Perhaps he just got a raise.  I don't know.  On the other hand, here are some schools that pay their ADs more than we do:

Buffalo
New Mexico
Florida International
Iowa State

Why do we pay our athletic director less than Florida International pays theirs?  (I suppose you could say that they have to or else never win anything, but c'mon.)  Virginia Tech pays Jim Weaver close to $600,000, plus bonuses, and for what?  VT doesn't give a horse's butt about anything else.  The trophy case is still empty.  UVA has won, I think, four national titles in Littlepage's tenure.  I dunno what Tech has achieved in Jim Weaver's tenure, but it ain't "winning."  Except in football, and Weaver's main contribution in that regard is not firing Frank Beamer.

If UVA gave Littlepage a raise of $100,000, it would drop us from third nationally in dollars-per-Cup-point all the way to.....fourth.  Perhaps Craig Littlepage feels he is perfectly well compensated for what he does and happy about everything.  I don't know.  But here's one fan who thinks he's been doing a bang-up job and ought to be rewarded.  You know, toss a bonus or two into his contract.  Maybe give him that hundred grand or hundred-fifty raise.  If not for his sake, then for the next guy that'll one day take over and who we'll want to be as high a performer.

If We Do Not Make The NCAA Tournament In 2010, Craig Littlepage Must Be Fired.

That's the long and short of it right there.

If you're reading this, you probably already know what it's about, but just to maintain some pretense of journalistic integrity, here's what I'm talking about. So that being said, please do not take this post as an indictment of our new coach Tony Bennett. I'm not pissed off that we hired Tony Bennett. I welcome him with open arms to the UVA community and as a UVA fan, I wish him nothing but the very very best. ACC and national titles galore, all the money Paul Tudor Jones can shove at him, a statue on the Lawn next to Homer, and seven-foot tall recruits with 4.0 GPAs that fall all over themselves to come to Virginia and stay for four years - five, if the NCAA lets them.

But, again:

If UVA does not make the NCAA tournament in 2010, Craig Littlepage must be fired.

I don't need to tell you that this is the ACC. Basketball is king. Football is great, and success in football is a must, but it's ultimately not what this conference is known for. You have to do well in basketball. I also don't need to tell you about our general suckitude in this area. But I will. Since I showed up on Grounds as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed first year, we have achieved precisely one victory in the NCAA tournament. This puts us even with Virginia Tech and Miami this decade, and that's unacceptable, which is why two coaches have been fired in that time frame. In that time we are 58-86 in regular season ACC play. Also terrible. Being hired at UVA is enough to get Bennett onto the front page of ESPN.com, right above the latest idiocy about Chad Johnson, so it's not like we're a Baylor or a Northwestern struggling to stay afloat in a league that keeps us only because it's tradition. There's visibility here, which is a nice way of saying the whole world can tell we suck. You absolutely cannot fail twice in ACC basketball when it comes to picking coaches.

But, you say, Bennett will have been on the job only a year. Not making the NCAA's in one year can hardly be considered failure. He'll have a team full of sophomores and as likely as not, no recruiting class. I expect this to be a common sentiment. If you feel this way, tell me: what would have been success for Dave Leitao? NCAA? NIT? Or a lesser tournament like the CBI? Myself, I expected that Leitao would have this team back to postseason play, likely in the NIT. Most of the team and pretty much all the important parts were returning. All would be a year older. A solid recruiting class was coming in. Most of the really good players in the ACC (Toney Douglas, Tyrese Rice, Jeff Teague, Tyler Hansbrough, etc.) would be gone, out of eligibility or to the draft early anyway. This was ours for the taking. I didn't agree with Leitao being fired because the results this season actually mildly outperformed expectations and because of this window of opportunity to succeed. The timing was wrong.

But Leitao is now gone, and this is not only the second coach Littlepage has hired but the second time he's gone off the beaten path for it. Hiring Tubby Smith or Jeff Capel would have been the easy route, the safe route, and the one that earned Littlepage a feather in his cap as far as the fanbase was concerned. That's not to scoff at the idea, it's to encourage it. There's a reason they were considered the slam dunk, home run hires. They're excellent coaches and they would have listened to our sales pitch. And they would have brought instant credibility. This is different. This is going to take some convincing. Littlepage is going to sit at that press conference tomorrow and tell us he hired the best coach for the job, just as he did four years ago. Nobody's going to believe it, because the folks considered the best for the job are still coaching at the places they coached at last week. The one person who will believe it, who has to believe it more than anyone else in the world, maybe even more so than Tony Bennett himself, is Craig Littlepage. (If he doesn't, then he's a puppet who needs to go anyway.) So the fate of this basketball team is on Craig Littlepage.

The window, however, is now poised to slam shut. How many transfers will there be? No offense to Tony Bennett, but this is a coaching change. There are always transfers and decommitments. If there are not, then hats off to Tony because he will have managed to pull off an unprecedented sales pitch. What kind of a team will we have next year? Who will wear the uniform? Nobody can say for sure right now. But Bennett no doubt was brought in, at least in large part, because he took a previously pathetic Washington State squad to a shock-the-world kind of tourney season. My baseline expectation for Leitao was the NIT, as mentioned above. If Bennett is not an improvement over that, then Littlepage should be fired for overseeing a full decade of basketball failure at UVA.

We're at a tipping point. The fans wanted Tubby. The fans wanted a splashy hire. They didn't get it. The fans also want a good basketball team. If they don't get that either, support will dry up. Nobody's going to drive an hour from Richmond or 90 minutes from DC or two hours from Hampton Roads or donate any money for a bad basketball team coached by a nobody. Bennett has to be a somebody or this team is going to be at least five years from relevance.

This means he needs to be all in. Not "all in" as in the cheesy motivational slogan employed by Dabo Swinney. Really all in, with a sprinting head start and a cannonball off the high dive. He needs to call the players. Tonight. He needs to call the recruits. Tonight. (Assuming, that is, he is officially no longer employed by Washington State.) He needs a whole wardrobe full of Virginia Cavaliers schwag. He needs to have the Good Ol' Song memorized by tomorrow's press conference. Orange and blue need to be his favorite colors, Thomas Jefferson his favorite President, and Edgar Allan Poe his favorite poet. Coach Bennett needs to be a 'Hoo, not just be employed by the University.

It's the only way to save Craig Littlepage's job.

soapboxing: the Dave Leitao Fired edition

Let's get one thing straight first: Dave Leitao did not resign. Not in your humble blogger's opinion. For a college basketball coach, few jobs are more prestigious or pay better than an ACC head coaching position. You get one of those, you're in like Flynn. What coach alive would go to his boss and say, hey, I don't think I'm earning my paycheck here and I'd like to quit and by the way yes I would like that $2.1 million buyout also? I don't for a minute believe that this was Leitao's idea. So this post is written with that in mind.

And I don't agree with the firing. At all. As I've said repeatedly in the past, Leitao's had to try and deal with having three freshmen playing all the key minutes at all the key positions, as well as the ice-cold shooting touch from players who were supposed to be shooters, and a bunch of players with more minutes than their talent would indicate because of poor play from those that should have been higher on the depth chart.

I'm fully aware of the criticisms, by the way. Leitao's a drill sergeant. He refuses to talk to his players. He can't coach offense. Can't develop players (except for that Singletary guy who managed to become an NBAer under his tutelage.) I'm also fully of the belief that practically all of these are overblown to some extent. Not nonexistent, but overblown. Even in the slamjob WaPo article where Mamadi Diane's father ripped Leitao left right and center, Mo himself seemed to try and back away from those comments.

As for coaching offense, there's no denying it stunk, but the players couldn't shoot. They just could not shoot. Shooting is something you teach to 6th-graders. By the time you get to college, you can either shoot or you can't. Leitao didn't come in to practice with a Shot Sucker and suck the ability to hit a three-pointer out of guys who previously could. The inability to hit a jump shot doomed the offense from the get-go. Unless Leitao actively coaches poor shooting techniques - unlikely, as his DePaul squads improved their shooting while he was there - he's not the primary culprit in the poor offensive performance.

I'd have liked to see a postseason-or-bust ultimatum given to Leitao for next season. The pieces are there for us to take a tremendous leap. Sylven Landesberg returns, or at least was going to when last asked. He's not so happy about the firing and while I still think he stays (his game isn't quite NBA-ready yet and he could really help his draft position with another year or two of seasoning) it wouldn't surprise me if he at least had a second thought or two. The kids have been through the gauntlet once and will be veterans. I expect Zeglinski to still be up-and-down at the point, but more up than down instead of vice versa like we saw this year. So many ACC teams will be rebuilding in '09-'10 and we won't be.

Leitao ought to have been given the chance to see it through. Because the question for me is, other than a couple unimportant nonconference losses, what about this year failed to meet expectations? I'd love to see the answer to that. What couldn't we see coming? Would 12-16 instead of 10-18 have been enough to save Leitao's job? Was this supposed to be a team good enough for the NIT? No. 4-12 is about what we guessed we might see once we decided to be honest with ourselves. If that's bad enough to fire the coach, then it should have happened before the season. If the difference is we weren't supposed to lose to Liberty and Auburn, then it should have happened then. After a bad season that was supposed to be bad but before one with realistic expectations of improvement is not the time to fire the coach.

But, he's fired and that's that. So where do we go? For starters we have to do damage control with the current players, who are "kind of in a haze." Not a good reaction if you're hoping to avoid transfers and/or leaps to the NBA. Second, we have to do damage control with Tristan Spurlock, whose relationship with this staff went back a looooong way. Jontel Evans is likely to stay but Spurlock is the prize of the class. They've signed their LOI's, of course, but they can always request a release. Third, we have to do damage control with the 2010 recruits. I'd like to think we looked good for the services of Eric Atkins and Mychal Parker. All in all though I think our recruiting just got sent to jail without passing Go or collecting $200. Fail to roll doubles on the first try as we do our coaching search, and we're in trouble.

Speaking of coaching searches....yes, we're going to have to put ourselves through that. The top three names bandied about today are Jeff Capel of Oklahoma, Tubby Smith of Minnesota, and Sean Miller of Xavier. The common thread there is that all three of them are coaching in the tournament and the NCAA says hands off until they're done. That's well and good - we want coaches who can get to the tournament after all - but the problem is that Craig Littlepage has just done something rather impetuous and needs to hit a quick grand slam with this hire or be known as the guy who sent UVA basketball into a decade-long downward spiral with his coaching hire-and-fire patterns. And of those three, I think the only one we have a real shot at is Tubby. It's well known that it wouldn't be the first time we'd talked with the man. Not only that, but his Minnesota squad, which he's done an admirable job of resurrecting, is the lowest-ranked and the likely earliest exit. Capel and Miller head up a 2-seed and 4-seed, respectively; at first glance I'd have to say they'd both be crazy to leave for a reconstruction job, ACC or not. Oklahoma is a relative newcomer to the powerhouse game, but to many eyes Xavier would be considered a bigger-time program than we would despite the conference affiliations; Xavier's been to eight NCAA tournaments this decade and two Elite Eights, and it's not all Sean Miller's doing.

To my mind, the best-case, pie-in-the-sky scenario would be for Texas to dispatch Minnesota on Thursday, freeing up UVA's reps to go have a chat with Tubby Smith the very next day and get a deal done by the end of next week. If Tubby really is the guy they want, would we be willing to wait if Minnesota upsets the Dookies and makes it to the Sweet 16 for another week of tournament play? That's why Littlepage makes the big bux. If no Tubby, then my best guess is we'll be forced to take another chance on a coach from a lower-profile school (and by "another" I mean "DePaul is not a big-time high-profile place I don't care if they are in the Big East.") Perhaps Siena's Fran McCaffrey or BYU's Dave Rose, though I'm just tossing out names of coaches who've brought success to their programs and not out of any real connection with the ACC or the state of Virginia.

Regardless, one last word remains: Thanks. As in, thanks Coach Leitao for your service to the University. In my opinion Leitao's a stand-up guy - let's not forget his trips to the war zone to entertain the troops, nor the fact that he worked his tail off for four years for this team. It should have been more than four years, but it's water under the bridge now. Time to roll up the sleeves and get busy rumormongering and tracking plane flights.

the dreaded vote of confidence

"Vote of confidence" and "kiss of death" are synonyms in the crazy world of sports. Secure coaches don't need votes of confidence, they're implied. Votes of confidence often turn coaches into lame ducks because votes of no confidence make for even worse situations, and thus are never spoken publicly.

So why do I now feel like when Craig Littlepage says "Al Groh will be our head coach in 2009," he means it?

Loyal readers (yeah, both of you) may recall that when Peter Lalich was booted from the team, I opined that it was the beginning of the end for Groh and that the decision had already been made. In fact, I stand by that. Littlepage went on to say: "Coach Groh and his staff have done a good job bringing the team around over the past six weeks. Clearly, the team has responded." Six weeks ago....that would be four days after the Duke debacle, and two weeks after Littlepage overruled Groh's authority and sent Lalich packing. Many fans felt there was a "magic number" of wins that Groh would need to reach in order to keep his job; going by that theory, the magic number is apparently five, which is one short of a bowl. So I don't really buy that. What I do believe is that Groh's job, if not already gone, was in serious jeopardy following the Lalich debacle and even more so (if that's possible) after Duke. Groh, however, apparently has the magic touch in keeping the team from completely collapsing (and a pretty nice recruiting class to boot) and that's convinced Littlepage to keep him around at least another year.

So I believe Littlepage when he says Groh will coach the team next year. Believing Littlepage shouldn't be a yes or no proposition, but unfortunately, such is the nature of pronouncements like this. ADs and GMs all too frequently fire the coach anyway. But this means a couple things. One, Littlepage seems like a frequent guest at practices. I don't know how much Littlepage, or ADs in general, hang out at practice. I'll bet old-ass Bill Martin over at Michigan doesn't do it much. But it doesn't seem like an ideal situation for a coach's job security. Two, unless we go to a bowl next year, get ready for obsessive flight-tracking and all the other trappings of insanity that go with the words "coaching search."

Booted

The Peter Lalich era is over before it really began. And for what?

Starting QB Lalich dismissed by Virginia

It's all there, and despite the occasional tabloidishness of Rivals, it's all true. Lalich's court date was today, having been rather conveniently (were he still on the team) bumped up from next Friday.

The official statement from Il Duce Littlepage:

"Peter Lalich is no longer a member of the University of Virginia football team. We have supported Peter, but believe today a point has been reached where it's best for all concerned that he no longer participate on the team. This is my decision and it has the support of head football coach Al Groh. We wish Peter the best in the future. We will have no further comment."

I call bullshit. I don't believe for a minute that this has the support of Al Groh. If Littlepage had said, "This is my decision and it has the support of head football coach Al Groh, who really likes his job and realizes that I have the power to change his employment status," then yes, I'd believe it. But - hell - I don't even believe 100% that this is Littlepage's decision. If it is, shame on him. If not, shame on whoever made the call, and more so for making Littlepage take the heat.

Because this is crap. And no, not just because we're losing the Quarterback Of The Future. Because Lalich is taking a fall for underage drinking, and then being honest about it. If he had just lied to the probation officer, we wouldn't be here. Am I suggesting that's what he should have done? No. That's what I'm suggesting that the UVA admin is suggesting he should have done. I realize the single sanction is controversial, but I didn't realize you could have it applied for following the honor code. Even if Lalich really is dumb enough to believe that it took an arrest to break his probation.

But you know what? There's something bigger afoot. The administration, whether it was the decision of Craig Littlepage, or John Casteen, or some other pointy-headed policy-making doughbag, just undermined the coach in a BIG way. BIG. Groh was doing everything in his power to minimize the effect of this on Peter Lalich, from playing him against Richmond AFTER the initial arrest, to avoiding use of the word "suspension" when he didn't play at UConn. You hire a football coach to coach his team and to put such players on hit as he sees fit. You endow him with the power to hand out millions of dollars worth of scholarships. Tens of millions. To make the personnel decisions for him is to show a lack of confidence in his ability to make those decisions himself. How soon til he's fired, then? In my opinion, his time is short. You don't undermine your coach like that, so publicly and so brashly, if you have full and complete confidence in his abilities.

I could probably go on. This is a stunning decision. I'll hold back, some, because there has got to be more to this that I - we - don't know, and never will. At least, there had damn well better be. If Will Barker can stay on the team, let alone at a school with a strict honor code, after stealing his beer, surely Lalich must have done something above and beyond breaking his probation that doesn't show up in police blotters.

So take a bow, Marc Verica. You're the quarterback, now and for the next two years unless Jameel Sewell returns.

from the desk of craig littlepage

So like a lot of irritated fans, and like any good blogger should when there is an Issue to resolve, I emailed our intrepid AD, Craig Littlepage. The subject: the onerous sign ban, and why I don't like it, and would you please get rid of it?

Here is the reply.

It is good to hear from you and thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding your reaction to the ban on signs. Your concerns are appreciated.

The ban on signs was implemented out of concern for sportsmanship at all of our athletics contests and the concerns expressed by fans who didn't like having their view of the competition obstructed.

In addition it is not possible to have the event staff make consistent decisions about what crosses the line and what is in good taste when you consider the number of events that we host in a given year.

There are numerous ways our fans can demonstrate their support and sentiments. My hope is that those actions will help our efforts to promote the program so that everyone that attends these events can enjoy them.

Thank you for your sharing these thoughts.

CL

Not surprisingly, nothing about this even remotely indicates a possibility of a return of signs to sporting events. In fact, I've half a mind to think it's a form response, though I won't go so far as to make that accusation since I've got no way at all of knowing. Still, it's the same rationale as when they announced the ban. So-called sportsmanship, and fans can't see. Really now. I'm not privy to the inbox of Craig Littlepage, but I would stake A LOT of cash on betting that the number of complaints about not being able to see around someone's sign is not greater than the number of complaints about this dumb policy.

Whatever though. I could rant a long, long time about this. You can read the email yourself and probably come to the same conclusions I did. You don't need me to tell you that nobody with a sign wants to hold it up the whole game and block someone's view, especially on 3rd and 2 inside the 15; or that it's perfectly possible for civilized adults to come to an agreement if someone can't see. (Even though I just did tell you, in that clever way writers do.)

You can check out the Week 1 Blogpoll here. Biggest movers are Alabama, which went from lurking toward the bottom all the way up to #12, and Clemson, which crashed out of the poll entirely and is now "ranked" 26th. I have to wonder why Alabama moves up so high if Clemson is really that bad, but whatever.

A quick soccer break: if you were hoping that our nontraditional sports could make up for the football failure, think again. The Virginia Soccer Classic was this past weekend, and like gracious hosts, we lost both games. So, 0-2 to start the season, and just one goal, scored by reserve forward Chris Agorsor. This is an extraordinarily young squad, and will struggle.

the man speaks

Linky link provided to an interview in the CDP with Craig Littlepage. There is nothing that will forever change the face of UVA sports as we know it, but he talks of such things as U-Hall, a possible new field house for the field teams, and the ongoing reseating, which is so important that everybody's new seat requires a new TheSabre thread.

Part 1

Part 2

In blognews, posting may be sporadic this week, while I entertain distinguished and honored guests. If I were 13 years old I'd say the 'rents were here, but I'm not, so I won't.