Some perspective on Coach Carlson's challenge

[vu72]

With all the discussion on our record and struggles I thought I'd look back in history to see whether or not we have have similar problems. The history of futility for Valpo football is not just near term, but goes back many years.

Do you remember the Bill Koch years?  Actually his record isn't all that bad.  during his first 11 years his overall record was 43-62-1 with 4 winning seasons.  It was 1981 (his last) that things kind of got out of control.  That season, when we finished 0-9-1, we had a stretch of 6 games where we were out scored 278-36 including a 56-0 loss to Butler! (Ugh!).

Koch was replaced by Tom Horne who proceeded to go 0-10 in 1989, 1-9 in 1990 and 1-8-1 in 1991.  so over the four year period 1988-1991 we were 2-36-1.  Oh yeah, during 1989 we had a stretch of four games where we scored a total of 7 points.  Talk about ugly.
So many would have called for Horne's head and probably did.  Still, by 1994 we were 7-4, by 1999 we were 9-2 and we won or tied for the conference title in both 2000 and 2003.  2003 was particularly impressive because we were 1-10 the previous year.

So what happened in 2003?  Well, we found a kid named David Macchi.  All Macchi did was to pass for over 7000 yards in two seasons, have total offense of over 4000 yards in 2003 and throw 5 TDs 3 times during that season.  Oh yeah, he also had a receiver named Rob Giancola. Together they hold a bunch of school records.

My point is simple.  A couple of stars can turn thing around VERY quickly and second, the history of futility is long and deep.  Not continuous but fairly regular.  Coach Carlson has a REAL challenge culture wise and we all know it.  We didn't get where we are over night and it will take some time to get turned around.  Think of Coach Horne. It took him 5 years to get a winning record and 11 to get a conference championship.  I don't expect it to take nearly as long with Coach Carlson.  

[sectionee]

Getting two stars to come and pay their own way isn't going to be an easy task.  Valpo football may stink and may continue to stink for some time, but the guys are getting an opportunity to play a sport they love at the collegiate level and no one can take that away from them. 
You can't coach talent and without scholarships we might not be able to recruit a lot of talent either, but as long as the players are giving their all thats about all we can ask for. 

[agibson]

What can I say, jj?  Hear, hear.

[setshot]

I guess my frustration can be attributed to the fact that when my wife and I were on campus the football team's overall record was 34-7-3. Hell, we won 21 games in a row. Football was king. Now, what else can I say but: Go Valpo!