billings said:
I would say Burman has made good hires in Wrestling, Tennis (great seasons) , and Volleyball is trending up.
Soccer and football are mixed at this point.
Only BB was a total disaster. Although I remember quite a few WYo fans were excited about the Schroyer hire when it was announced. A former Wyo assistant coming home, a great defense minded coach like Brandenburg, was the thought. Someone who wanted to be here.
Well it all blew up and in hindsight was a screwup. I remember some on the same posters on another board calling for Tillers head just like the are calling for Burmans now.
Sorry I am not ready to throw stones yet and I don't pretend to understand what is going on inside the AD office. Pressure is on though as another bad hire will kill this program for a long time
A few thoughts on this Billings:
1. Volleyball is only trending up, because the first part of Yerty's tenure was so bad. This past year was no better in conference than Stangle's last year.
2. Agreed with Tennis. I should have included Gyulai who has done a great job IMO (noting that I am nearly clueless when it comes to college tennis).
3. I don't think the Schroyer hire generated the excitement you claim. Sure, there were a few vocal supporters (Cup, POKE FAN, etc.) on the message boards, but the fanbase as a whole was not excited by the hire and the decrease in attendance tells the tale.
4. Hard to equate Burman with Tiller with the positions (AD and HC) being so different.
5. The revenue sports will always carry a disproportionate value and we have been near the bottom in both sports for the entirety of Burman's tenure. The only time we have finished in the top half of league play in either sport during Burman's tenure was 2006 under a coach that he has since fired. Pretty tough to give him much credit for that one (and that team was still just 6-6 and didn't play in the postseason...although they were robbed, but I digress).
6. Having said that, we could possibly overlook the struggles in the revenue sports if we had other success to point to, but the fact is we really don't. We continually finish in the bottom half of D-1 teams in the director's cup standings (and usually at the bottom of MWC schools) and we have only 2 MWC titles in any sport through the first 11 years of the conference (both coached by Steve McClain).
7. The Schroyer hire was more than just a bad hire. There will always be hires that don't work out. For example, DC may not work out (although it's obviously too early to tell for sure), but it's hard to criticize Burman for that hire. Very well regarded assistant prepared to take over his own program. It's a hire that made sense. The Schroyer hire had several problems that are unforgivable IMO. First is the appearance of Cronyism. You are telling me that the best coaching prospect in the country for a lower to mid tier MWC job was as assistant on a NIT bound WAC team? Really? No matter that this same assistant happened to have been hired by Burman at PSU. Secondly, is the strategic choice to underfund Men's Basketball coaching salaries. Schroyer was by far the lowest paid coach in the league. There is no reason that TCU, CSU, and AFA should have been paying higher salaries in Men's BB. Even at the end of McClain's tenure we had roughly double the attendance of those schools (that's not true now however). We got what we paid for. Now we are going to more than double the compensation to get a quality coaching prospect. That should have been done 4 years ago. Finally, the decision to extend Schroyer after two disappointing seasons in which he squandered the talent McClain left behind in his first year and then finished with a losing conference record (7-9, same record as the year McClain was fired) in his second with a senior dominated team (Johnson, Ogirri, Ewing). That extension was undeserved and ended up leaving us stuck with Heath for a 4th year when we should have made the change last year.
