Captain Sasquatch;n124321 said:
In today's CFB world, not having an indoor practice facility somehow equates to having "bad facilities." :rolleyes:
I believe that the indoor practice facility has been approved. Besides, has Thamel ever set foot on our campus? The geography of putting up the IPF was daunting. The O'Dome, with its NCAA pool, volleyball, hoops, indoor track, and gymnastics, takes up space west of the stadium, along with the parking lot for it and the stadium. Then we have the baseball stadium due west of that. And the outdoor track and soccer stadium due west of that. All in one relatively small space. And the football practice fields are crammed into all of that. Ragging on the lack of an IPF, did he think we'd build one out near the Harn Performing Arts Center and bus the players to it when necessary? What a jerk.
As for the timing of Strong in 2010, again we have to presume that he would have left his employer (Louisville) just one year after they hired him as HC. Considering how loyal he felt to them, less than unlikely. And since Urban didn't tell anyone (well, his wife and probably Foley) about his chest spasms after the 2009 Bama SECCG, he didn't "resign" until later in December 2009, by that time Charlie had already sailed on to Louisville.
The only plausible thing he writes is that Foley should have fired Muschamp after last season. Given all of the unpredictable and crucial injuries (you just cannot make up how debilitated we were), I guess he felt that was a reason (and that he genuinely liked Muschmap) to give him one more chance. It didn't work.
As for the "I spy" nature of trying to acquire a new coach - in today's social media world (Facebook and Twitter didn't exist when Foley was hunting Meyer), unless you are the CIA or the NSA, you can't keep things secret, and even they're not perfect. With tools like Flight Aware (interesting that UAA took until last night to pull their planes' tail numbers off of it), we're all tracking university planes these days (or, at least those that really care or have nothing else to do) Other than the work Foley and his team did in-house in researching these coaches and vetting them through other sources (including agents and other coaches), it's impossible to keep something like this a secret, and Thamel should have known that.
I just think he's an idiot.