Vote for Burman's worst decision (or lack of)!!

[McPeachy]

He fired Dave Christensen and Allen Edwards. Edwards was a pretty lazy hire with no real search.

Didn't he also fire BuckyMac, Joe Glenn, Slick Dick Schroyer, and a plethora of non-revenue coaches (Volleyball, Soccer, Rodeo, etc.)?

 

[OrediggerPoke]

Didn't he also fire BuckyMac, Joe Glenn, Slick Dick Schroyer, and a plethora of non-revenue coaches (Volleyball, Soccer, Rodeo, etc.)?

I believe you're correct. The rodeo coach firing seemed to be unrelated to performance and I never heard the real story on that one. The timing was bizarre. I don't believe Wyoming actually fired the previous volleyball coach (Callihan) rather no new contract offer was extended.

 

[rocket city poke]

Didn't he also fire BuckyMac, Joe Glenn, Slick Dick Schroyer, and a plethora of non-revenue coaches (Volleyball, Soccer, Rodeo, etc.)?

yeah, he fires lots of people that he hired often with long and big contracts. Often letting them hang around a real long time because he doesn't want to admit what a total screwup the situation is -- Sawvel fits the description perfectly.

 

[McPeachy]

I believe you're correct. The rodeo coach firing seemed to be unrelated to performance and I never heard the real story on that one. The timing was bizarre. I don't believe Wyoming actually fired the previous volleyball coach (Callihan) rather no new contract offer was extended.

The rodeo thing was quite strange with Beau Clark - I agree - and I stopped asking about it (and the why). And didn't Burman fire Pat Stangle and Carrie Yerty as well (Volleyball). The Yerty situation was also quite strange if I am remembering.

 

[Brew_Poke]

Exactly. That’s the point. The latest five-year stretch is getting all the attention, but the Rubicon was crossed long before that.

Burman’s tenure has been bad. I’m not arguing otherwise. The basketball results are indefensible, and football has mostly been a bottom-half MWC program. But that actually supports the point that this isn’t just about the last five years. The decline was already baked in well before NIL, the portal, and the Pac/MWC chaos became the dominant issues.

I said we’re over-indexing on recent misery because I don’t see some magic move available from 2021 forward that would have meaningfully changed Wyoming’s place in the current college athletics hierarchy. Even if UW had been better competitively starting in 2020, we’re still a small-market, remote, low-population, limited-alumni-base school trying to survive in an era where those things matter more than ever.

Winning still matters, but not the way it used to. College athletics now puts far more weight on eyeballs, TV value, NIL capacity, donor depth, and institutional scale. Competitive outcomes still count, but they are no longer the great equalizer they once were. To the extent this was avoidable, the window was in the early years of Burman’s tenure.....and probably in the years leading up to it. By 2021, UW wasn’t standing at a fork in the road. It was already playing catch-up in a system that was about to punish small, remote programs even more severely.

So yes, hold Burman accountable. The results justify it. But I don’t buy the idea that the critical failure point was 2021–2026. By then, UW was already behind the curve, and the curve had just gotten a hell of a lot steeper.

The point was the 1996 10-2 team, ranked #22 in the country, left at home with no bowl game. It was evident we had work to do then, but our loser culture fooled itself for 30 years that everything was okay and we were doing pretty good. After all, were just little old Wyoming. The Athletics Department are losers who just fuck around in their government jobs without engaging with their work in a meaningful, goal-oriented way, because their leadership doesn't know how to lead a team to do that. It's just sad.

 

[307bball]

The point was the 1996 10-2 team, ranked #22 in the country, left at home with no bowl game. It was evident we had work to do then, but our loser culture fooled itself for 30 years that everything was okay and we were doing pretty good. After all, were just little old Wyoming. The Athletics Department are losers who just fuck around in their government jobs without engaging with their work in a meaningful, goal-oriented way, because their leadership doesn't know how to lead a team to do that. It's just sad.

You might be right...hindsight being 20/20 and all does make it easier to see.

I remember that year soooo well.