I used to get worked up about Benedict Arnold/Judas/turncoats, particularly when defecting to a rival program. But in today’s college football landscape, the way the system is setup, I can’t really get too worked up about it. This isn’t the old days anymore. I accept that it’s a major business now and the whole “student athlete” monicker, at least when it pertains to DI football, is just a formality. So loyalty and love of team and school and all of that, shouldn’t be expected of these guys nowadays. Those are just counterintuitive platitudes to the way the game has been transformed into a major billion dollar industry.
Plus, in the case of Ivan Pace at least, his brother already plays for UC, so it makes sense for him and his family from that perspective as well. Beyond the financial and more eyeballs aspect, I mean.
Randy was the better coach, but I would have been willing to trade in some of those power 5 wins for a few MAC championships. He also had assistant coaches that read like a Hall of Fame. Guys like Terry Hoeppner, Sean Peyton, Dan Dalrymple, Kevin Wilson, Aaron Kromer, and Bob Hitchens are just a few of the names at the top of the list.
The only one I’m still mad about isn’t even a player. It’s Pat Narduzzi telling Terry Hoeppner he took the UC job by not showing up in Oxford one day and calling him from his new office in Clifton.
I paid close attention to Pace. He always seemed to extend his hand to help up one his former teammates after each tackle Saturday. He’s cool. I also kept waiting for him to commit a mind-numbing penalty AGAINST us instead of FOR us but that never happened.
He obviously had mixed emotions about leaving his Miami brothers to play alongside his real brother at a higher-profile rival program. I thought everyone handled it well. It’s just too bad his brother didn’t follow him to Miami.
Spanks is right, and we all know it. Miami has done little to advance their programs after the Sweet 16 run (look, new seat colors!!) and the Roethlisberger era and it shows.
