Fired Bill Carmody: May 2008

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Ryan Field or Dyche Stadium - either way it kinda sucks

a penn state blog is ranking the big ten football venues, and not surprisingly we came in last. grammatical errors aside, i can't really argue with anything in this summary.

Friday, May 09, 2008

Good NU sports news (not basketball, of course)

always nice to see NU getting pub. obviously the spring women's teams have been dominating, and this week SI did a feature story on the lacrosse team. and, of course, there was the announcement that Pat Fitzgerald made the college football hall of fame.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Who's next?

as at least two readers have pointed out, the women's coach is stepping down. given the program's recent struggles i'm not surprised, but i do find the timing somewhat curious.

excerpts of the article include "which went 5-26 overall and finished last in the Big Ten this past season" and "whose teams have gone 24-95 in her four seasons with the program."

Carmody went 8-22 and finished last in the Big Ten this past season, and although his record the last four seasons is not as bad (50-71), is it so much better that he gets twice as long to try and fix it? Beth Combs went 8-22 before the 5 win season this year, so clearly there were no signs that the program was improving. but i don't think we can discount the fact that Mark Murphy hired Combs out of Colgate. clearly her biggest (and most important) supporter within the athletic department was gone while Carmody's good ole buddy Hank Bienen is still around.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Good news and bad news

over the weekend NU picked up a commitment from Kyle Rowley. he appears to be a legit 7 footer who had drawn at least cursory interest from big-time programs. and he plans to graduate early so he should be joining NU this fall. his skills are still pretty raw, but at least theoretically we now (finally) have some hope of getting rebounds. although i must add that my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that Kyle credits much of his recent development to one Dickey Simpkins. i don't understand how he just throws his name out there with no explanation.

oh yes, the bad news. i figure Carmody's "best" recruiting class of the last eight years will extend his shelf life at Northwestern by at least two seasons. if he were smart, he'd redshirt Rowley to buy himself even more time.