Thomas Hammock and Karma

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nsmike

nsmike

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Anyone stop and think, that with BB gong to Arkansas, that Benedict Arnold Hammock will be out of a job. What are the chances that he follows Butthead to Arkansas?, I'm thinking maybe 10%, now that's karma.
 

Actually, with BB headed to Arkansas, I am wondering what will become of ALL of Wisconsin staff. BB has widely said that he couldn't pay his coaches at WI. Since many of them left last year, are we to assume he will compile a staff of people he has worked with before? If money was the reason he couldn't keep them, one would certainly think he'd bring a lot of familiar coaching faces to Arkansas. If he was losing coaches because they thought he was an azz, one would also think he'd have a lot of new faces on that new staff. It will be very interesting to see how this goes and I am not suggesting this rhetorically. I don't have a clue how this will go but either way I think it will say something about how he was regarded as a boss.
 

Hammock recruits Florida pretty consistently if I remember correctly. Arkansas is going to need FL and TX kids so I bet Hammock comes with Bielema.
 

He's not a Benedict Arnold. He probably doesn't want to be a RB coach forever and Kill seems like he's going to stick with the coordinators he has no matter what.
 

Our two biggest rivals are WI. and IA anyone that moves directly from our staff to the other is a traitor!
 


nsmike said:
Anyone stop and think, that with BB gong to Arkansas, that Benedict Arnold Hammock will be out of a job. What are the chances that he follows Butthead to Arkansas?, I'm thinking maybe 10%, now that's karma.
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Hammock will have no problem finding a job because he has a reputation as being a very strong recruiter, those guys will always land on their feet in the world of college football. In the end you can't really fault Hamock for leaving. He wanted to be an offensive coordinator and with Limegrover firmly entrenched it was never going to happen here. It didn't work out exactly the way he wanted at Wisconsin but from an upward mobility standpoint the move made sense.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Hammock will have no problem finding a job because he has a reputation as being a very strong recruiter, those guys will always land on their feet in the world of college football. In the end you can't really fault Hamock for leaving. He wanted to be an offensive coordinator and with Limegrover firmly entrenched it was never going to happen here. It didn't work out exactly the way he wanted at Wisconsin but from an upward mobility standpoint the move made sense.
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Good post. I'd take Hammock back if he was interested and we had a spot for him.
 

Former Wisconsin coaches have the head coaching positions at Pitt, N.C. State and Arkansas and two of them are working on putting staffs together right now. Plus, Alvarez says he wants somebody familiar with the "Wisconsin way," or at least the Big Ten, to be the new guy there. They are likely all going to be just fine. Actually, I was thinking that all these opportunities are a good thing for Minnesota since it probably means a lot of additional turnover at Wisconsin even if they end up hiring someone who has ties to the old regime.
 




nsmike said:
Anyone stop and think, that with BB gong to Arkansas, that Benedict Arnold Hammock will be out of a job. What are the chances that he follows Butthead to Arkansas?, I'm thinking maybe 10%, now that's karma.
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Seldom is it ever a good idea to follow a rat down a sewer hole which in Benedict's case this would be the second time.
 

nsmike said:
Anyone stop and think, that with BB gong to Arkansas, that Benedict Arnold Hammock will be out of a job. What are the chances that he follows Butthead to Arkansas?, I'm thinking maybe 10%, now that's karma.
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"Benedict Arnold" ???? WTF don't you understand about college football (and apparently, life in general)? It's a business .... there is no freakin' allegiance by anyone to anybody or any school (Except JG at St.J). Players and coaches are routinely thrown under the bus in the eternal quest for the winning season, the conference championship, the bowl bid, and the national championship. You do what's best for you and your family.

The day is coming when you'll be tar and feathering JK and JK knows it.
 

westcoastgopher11 said:
Hammock recruits Florida pretty consistently if I remember correctly. Arkansas is going to need FL and TX kids so I bet Hammock comes with Bielema.
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Hammock recruited FL for Brewster, but for Wisconsin he was centered mostly in New Jersey. Why, I have no idea, as he never produced the results for Wisconsin that he did for us.
 

Thomas Hammock jumped ship a few months after accepting Coach Kills offer. If he had jumped ship at the time of the coaching change no big deal. By accepting the job he likely cost Coach Horton a job.
 



maroon and gold said:
"Benedict Arnold" ???? WTF don't you understand about college football (and apparently, life in general)? It's a business .... there is no freakin' allegiance by anyone to anybody or any school (Except JG at St.J). Players and coaches are routinely thrown under the bus in the eternal quest for the winning season, the conference championship, the bowl bid, and the national championship. You do what's best for you and your family.

The day is coming when you'll be tar and feathering JK and JK knows it.
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I was going to say something to this effect. I would say fans have a lot more allegiance to their school/program than coaches and some of the players do. Hammock probably came here because it was a job, not because he is a Gopher at heart and this is the job he has always wanted. There are some coaches like that, where they're coaching their alma mater and so they have a connection to the school beyond the fact that the school gives them their paycheck. I actually felt that Brewster had some of that passion, and it probably would have pleased him to no end if he had actually been able to get one of those wins against Wisconsin that he regularly came so close to, part of it being beating Bret Bielema probably, those two didn't seem to like each other. For Hammock, a job is a job, and he probably didn't care if it was at Minnesota or Wisconsin or anywhere else, or at least wouldn't have let rivalries/allegiance be a factor in his decision.
 

nsmike said:
Thomas Hammock jumped ship a few months after accepting Coach Kills offer. If he had jumped ship at the time of the coaching change no big deal. By accepting the job he likely cost Coach Horton a job.
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On the traitor angle, Hammock worked at Wisconsin before he worked at MN. As Cayman points out coaches in general have zero allegiance to the school they are at unless it is the alma mater. For them it is a job and one they know they will probably get fired from at some point in the near future.

I disagree that hammock cost Horton the job here. I don't think Horton would have gotten a role with enough power to make him want to stay. What would you expect Hammock to do? At the time Kill offered him a spot he didn't have another opportunity lined up so at the time it made sense and he took it. The Badger opportunity became available a few months later and looking at the scenarios he probably came to the conclusion that he would have a better opportunity to move up the coaching ranks at Wisconsin than he would at Minnesota given that Kill already had a core group he was EXTREMELY loyal to. Hammock probably figured he would always be on the outside looking in with this group.
 

Maybe Hammock's mom's friend...ah nevermind
 


Jeff Horton is the Asst Head Coach and Running Backs coach at San Diego St. Hammock was the Running Backs Coach I have to believe that the money would be comparable.
 

nsmike said:
Jeff Horton is the Asst Head Coach and Running Backs coach at San Diego St. Hammock was the Running Backs Coach I have to believe that the money would be comparable.
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Horton makes 150k a year at SDSU, so, yeah, about the same as a positional coach at Minnesota.
 

Gopherprof said:
Hammock recruited FL for Brewster, but for Wisconsin he was centered mostly in New Jersey. Why, I have no idea, as he never produced the results for Wisconsin that he did for us.
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Hammock got a 4 star back out of New Jersey this year who is enrolling in December. Kid is supposed to be special. Time will tell. He is doing just fine. The running backs have done a decent job under his tutelage.
 

This thread is silly. You can't fault Hammock for taking a better job...that's just the way the game works.
 

maroon and gold said:
"Benedict Arnold" ???? WTF don't you understand about college football (and apparently, life in general)? It's a business .... there is no freakin' allegiance by anyone to anybody or any school (Except JG at St.J). Players and coaches are routinely thrown under the bus in the eternal quest for the winning season, the conference championship, the bowl bid, and the national championship. You do what's best for you and your family.

The day is coming when you'll be tar and feathering JK and JK knows it.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Assistant coaches are relatively well-paid fodder with no assurance of anything beyond a year-to-year deal. They are independent contractors to a great extent and they want to move up. Who can blame them?

My only beef with Hammock (and it's a very minor beef) is that he should have stuck with his commitment to us for the one year he had agreed to. More poor form than anything else. Good recruiter who should have no trouble finding work.
 

BB is keeping Tim Horton (current rb coach at Ark) on staff
 



I'm sorry, but am I the only person that thinks the Hammock thing was planned from the get go between him and Kill? Didn't Kill fill the position with someone else on the staff? I have always figured that since Hammock was so critical to recruiting that he was asked to stay on until national signing day to help hold on to all of the recruits. The next day or so he leaves? I really don't think that was a coincidence.

As far as going to Wisconsin, I had no problem with that. If he shouldn't have gone there because he was working here then he shouldn't have came here in the first place since he had previously worked there. He has no real attachment to either school, and again I'm personally convinced that Kill didn't want him in the first place.

I really would have been shocked if Horton would have gone from the offensive coordinator to the interim head coach down to the running backs coach here. Even if the position is the same it's much easier to do that somewhere else.
 

Lakeville; you don't understand the purpose of Coach Kill retaining a member of the former staff. He had no experience with how the individual players would respond in games and wanted someone on his staff that had game experience with the players. Someone who could help him get inside the heads of the players. It came down to Hammock and Horton, when Hammock jumped ship, Coach lost that connection he wanted.
 


Horton was never going to get a job on Kill's staff, you have any idea how awkward that would be?
 

nsmike said:
Lakeville; you don't understand the purpose of Coach Kill retaining a member of the former staff. He had no experience with how the individual players would respond in games and wanted someone on his staff that had game experience with the players. Someone who could help him get inside the heads of the players. It came down to Hammock and Horton, when Hammock jumped ship, Coach lost that connection he wanted.
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I actually think Lakeville might be closer on this one than you think. Don't know if it was planned from the get go but Kill is very loyal to his guys so he may have wanted to keep an old staff memeber around to get through signing day but not as a long term solution. Not sure they would have orchestrated him going to Wisconsin but I wouldn't be shocked for find out Hammock was never in the long term plans here and was just a short term bandaid.
 

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