An Apology to dpodoll68

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golfing18now

golfing18now

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I've thought about making this post a few times in the latter half of the Pitino tenure but never pulled the trigger. In fact, I had to do a search to make sure I hadn't actually posted it (perhaps I don't have JTF's searching skills and I missed it). In any case.....

For anybody that has posted on this site back to the end of the Tubby regime and beginning of the Pitino regime will remember the fervor with which dpodoll68 came to the defense of All Things Tubby. Whether it was Tubby's character (undeniable) or his accomplishments on the court (debatable), dpodoll68 was lethal in his response and left no Tubby criticism unchallenged. Many questioned whether or not dpodoll68 was in fact Saul Smith or somebody else close to the Smith family. His obsession with responding to any poster's criticism of Tubby made any current day combatants (i.e. @BarnBurner vs @builtbadgers) look minor league in comparison. At the core of his criticism was the belief Tubby would accomplish more than Pitino at Minnesota -- a notion that seemed laughable at the time.

I, golfing18now, would like to apologize to dpodoll68 for whatever I contributed to that conversation.
You were right! :((y)
 


Good for you, golfing18now! I hope he responds to your graciousness.

I was sort of in-between on this issue at the time. I first became a Gopher basketball fan during Tubby's run through the postseason in 2012 (I was a dedicated Iowa basketball fan for decades). I thought what he was able to do in the NIT with an injury depleted and young/unproven roster while playing all of the games on the road was inspiring. I was filled with hope for the following season when Mbakwe returned and that hope seemed justified after the team got off to a 15-1 start. Of course, the season largely went to hell after that despite the tournament appearance and first round victory.

So, I had two counterbalancing thoughts at the time: 1) Tubby squandered the promise of his last team and that left me feeling very disappointed but 2) although he may have failed to reach the desired heights, his overall record certainly wasn't bad and definitely better than you would expect for a coach who was fired after 6 years from a program like Minnesota. We weren't talking about Indiana or Michigan here.

Clearly Pitino has taught us that we can do far worse than Tubby. I wasn't paying much attention during Monson's tenure but I do wonder why that period didn't deliver a similar lesson. Right now, a coaching hire who could deliver a Tubby type start would look pretty darn good.
 

Bad Gopher said:
Good post, but in fairness to everyone, Tubby wasn't nearly the coach he was at Tulsa and Georgia by the time he got here. By the time he was dismissed I'd seen enough of his ball line defense and drunk son.
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Tubby was tired, building takes so much out of you. This was just a soft landing. But it was how and who that went about making the change that was as bad as it gets. Norwood was poor at his job and scum as a person. No doubt keeping Tubby would have done better than these 8 years. People would do wise to remember that moving on was not so bad but it always depends on who you hire.
 

No need to apologize. I too defended Tubby and didn't think he deserved to be fired at the time but do see good reasons why he was. I came to accept Pitino and supported him strongly until late this year. Again it's time to move on. No hard feelings towards anyone that supported or hated either.
 


Bad Gopher said:
Good post, but in fairness to everyone, Tubby wasn't nearly the coach he was at Tulsa and Georgia by the time he got here. By the time he was dismissed I'd seen enough of his ball line defense and drunk son.
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Yes, and he's on his third job since being replaced by Pitino. That feels impossible.
 


USAF said:
Tubby needed to go.

Pitino was a bad hire. Terrible hire.

Both of those things can be true.
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In retrospect, I wonder if this could have worked:

Keep Tubby as the head coach, but get him to bring in some younger assistants with better ties to the AAU scene as the primary recruiters. Have one assistant be the "coach in waiting" for whenever Tubby wants to step down, to provide continuity in the program.
 




I hope to god we don't have someone saying similar things about pitino and us having another thread with the same topic 8 years from now...man could you imagine things getting even worse?
 

For what it’s worth, I remember dpodoll68 telling us that Tubby’s tournament win in 2013 was the deepest tournament run for Minnesota since 1990, and he stopped by again in 2019 to credit Pitino for doing the same thing.

I don’t think he had an axe to grind against Pitino as much as he felt Tubby was excessively criticized for not terrible results, and that based on the historical success this program has experienced, of course ignoring the vacated Clem years, we shouldn’t be expecting significantly better than what Tubby did.
 

tmvander said:
I hope to god we don't have someone saying similar things about pitino and us having another thread with the same topic 8 years from now...man could you imagine things getting even worse?
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If you've waited long enough for your frog to turn into a prince, and he hasn't, do you keep waiting or kiss another frog? There's lots of frogs in the...swamp.
 

We need a Dick Bennet or Bo Ryan type of hire. No nonsense coach who has a system/style and recruits players that fit that system. Simple.
 




Bad Gopher said:
If you've waited long enough for your frog to turn into a prince, and he hasn't, do you keep waiting or kiss another frog? There's lots of frogs in the...swamp.
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Hoping to find a Shrek in the swamp instead of more frogs
 


If the interview Pitino could talk to the coach Pitino that would help. He makes Sybill sound normal.
 


Cayman said:
For what it’s worth, I remember dpodoll68 telling us that Tubby’s tournament win in 2013 was the deepest tournament run for Minnesota since 1990, and he stopped by again in 2019 to credit Pitino for doing the same thing.

I don’t think he had an axe to grind against Pitino as much as he felt Tubby was excessively criticized for not terrible results, and that based on the historical success this program has experienced, of course ignoring the vacated Clem years, we shouldn’t be expecting significantly better than what Tubby did.
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His unwillingness to acknowledge the 1997 team was extremely annoying and looks far more stupid in these times - given what we now know about other programs and how they have cheated, skirted the rules, yet ignored the NCAA sanctions since ours. He would definitely attack anyone who wasn't willing to erase the Final Four run and experience from their memories.
 



WriterGoph said:
His unwillingness to acknowledge the 1997 team was extremely annoying and looks far more stupid in these times - given what we now know about other programs and how they have cheated, skirted the rules, yet ignored the NCAA sanctions since ours. He would definitely attack anyone who wasn't willing to erase the Final Four run and experience from their memories.
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They were talking about that on one of the broadcasts the other night (maybe it was the Gopher game): how silly it is to pretend games or seasons never happened. That nonsense is dpodoll's religion.
 

WriterGoph said:
His unwillingness to acknowledge the 1997 team was extremely annoying and looks far more stupid in these times - given what we now know about other programs and how they have cheated, skirted the rules, yet ignored the NCAA sanctions since ours. He would definitely attack anyone who wasn't willing to erase the Final Four run and experience from their memories.
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Each person can decide for themselves how to remember it. I personally am thrilled that the University wanted no part of cheating to win. Very proud that we are not a UNC etc... of winning by cheating. All cheaters should be punished but when they are not then i do not want to support cheating in a program i follow and support. I went to all those games with friends. Some of them still remember them fondly, some of us do not but we are still friends.
 

builtbadgers said:
Each person can decide for themselves how to remember it. I personally am thrilled that the University wanted no part of cheating to win. Very proud that we are not a UNC etc... of winning by cheating. All cheaters should be punished but when they are not then i do not want to support cheating in a program i follow and support. I went to all those games with friends. Some of them still remember them fondly, some of us do not but we are still friends.
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Not all cheating is the same. Not all crimes are the same. There's a reason shoplifting a candy bar is prosecuted differently than stealing a car.

You are, of course, free to feel however you want. With the sliding scale of infractions, however, and the knowledge of the enormity of what other programs have done in succeeding decades, there's no reason at all why Minnesota's Final Four team should continue to be stigmatized.
 

builtbadgers said:
Each person can decide for themselves how to remember it. I personally am thrilled that the University wanted no part of cheating to win. Very proud that we are not a UNC etc... of winning by cheating. All cheaters should be punished but when they are not then i do not want to support cheating in a program i follow and support. I went to all those games with friends. Some of them still remember them fondly, some of us do not but we are still friends.
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Life is too short to let hypocrisy ruin the things we cherished.
 

builtbadgers said:
Each person can decide for themselves how to remember it. I personally am thrilled that the University wanted no part of cheating to win. Very proud that we are not a UNC etc... of winning by cheating. All cheaters should be punished but when they are not then i do not want to support cheating in a program i follow and support. I went to all those games with friends. Some of them still remember them fondly, some of us do not but we are still friends.
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I respect your experience and opinions, but with the way the 1-and-done rule changed the college game, most of these teams were skirting the academic side of things as players who weren't coming back didn't even attend class during the spring semester. Not sure how that is better than having someone write your papers. Melo, Kansas, Derrick Rose, UNC, Duke, Kentucky, Arizona, etc all benefitted from this workaround. You could make the argument that Wisconsin, Nova and UVa did not, but things have changed A LOT since 1999. It's time to celebrate what Clem put together on the court.
 

WriterGoph said:
I respect your experience and opinions, but with the way the 1-and-done rule changed the college game, most of these teams were skirting the academic side of things as players who weren't coming back didn't even attend class during the spring semester. Not sure how that is better than having someone write your papers. Melo, Kansas, Derrick Rose, UNC, Duke, Kentucky, Arizona, etc all benefitted from this workaround. You could make the argument that Wisconsin, Nova and UVa did not, but things have changed A LOT since 1999. It's time to celebrate what Clem put together on the court.
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Urbandale said:
Not all cheating is the same. Not all crimes are the same. There's a reason shoplifting a candy bar is prosecuted differently than stealing a car.

You are, of course, free to feel however you want. With the sliding scale of infractions, however, and the knowledge of the enormity of what other programs have done in succeeding decades, there's no reason at all why Minnesota's Final Four team should continue to be stigmatized.
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I never said that stealing a car a shoplifting a candy bar is the same thing. What we did was truly horrific, flat out cheating. UNC was perhaps far worse but they decided to handle it how they did and we took the high road and for me that was the right way. We raised all our kids and grand kids and now great grand kids on right and wrong and consequences for doing things like cheating to win. Cheating to win is losing of the highest order. Selling your character is far worse than losing a game or games. In our family, honor is the highest order. I have lost the club championship to a cheater. He never gave the trophy back but everyone knew who won and who could walk with his head up. Clem was cheating low life and so were many players. The program suffered but the University retained a high standard of ethics in this case.
 


builtbadgers said:
I never said that stealing a car a shoplifting a candy bar is the same thing. What we did was truly horrific, flat out cheating. UNC was perhaps far worse but they decided to handle it how they did and we took the high road and for me that was the right way. We raised all our kids and grand kids and now great grand kids on right and wrong and consequences for doing things like cheating to win. Cheating to win is losing of the highest order. Selling your character is far worse than losing a game or games. In our family, honor is the highest order. I have lost the club championship to a cheater. He never gave the trophy back but everyone knew who won and who could walk with his head up. Clem was cheating low life and so were many players. The program suffered but the University retained a high standard of ethics in this case.
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So how do you recall the memories of the 1997 season?
 

builtbadgers said:
I never said that stealing a car a shoplifting a candy bar is the same thing. What we did was truly horrific, flat out cheating. UNC was perhaps far worse but they decided to handle it how they did and we took the high road and for me that was the right way. We raised all our kids and grand kids and now great grand kids on right and wrong and consequences for doing things like cheating to win. Cheating to win is losing of the highest order. Selling your character is far worse than losing a game or games. In our family, honor is the highest order. I have lost the club championship to a cheater. He never gave the trophy back but everyone knew who won and who could walk with his head up. Clem was cheating low life and so were many players. The program suffered but the University retained a high standard of ethics in this case.
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Oh, come on. Don't parse words by saying that in a literal sense you didn't say that stealing a car and shoplifting a candy bar are the same thing. Of course you didn't. But that's figuratively exactly what you were saying.

If you're using words like "truly horrific" for what happened at Minnesota, then what words are you using to describe what happened at places like Louisville and Baylor and North Carolina and Kansas and Arizona and on and on and on and on and on and on?

I'm very interested in knowing the next level of outrage you reserve for murders and strippers and payments for players. Because if it's not something more vigorous than "truly horrific" then you truly are figuratively saying that stealing a car and shoplifting a candy bar are the same thing.
 

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