Countdown to November 30

As ACC COY noted earlier this season, 2009 has been a long and inevitable march towards Al Groh's firing.  This is as much AD Craig Littlepage's fault as it is Groh's.  But with the end of the football season mercilessly close, you should know that the death blow will likely come quickly, and soon. 

As ACC Sports Journal notes, November 30 is the annual date to exercise the rollover clause in Coach Groh's contract.  If the University isn't going to pick that up - and there's no one out there that thinks it will be picked up - conventional wisdom says that there's no reason to let an alum and, whatever you think of his coaching ability, a good man twist in the wind.  Jerry Radcliffe had a interesting piece about what went wrong for Al Groh.  Don't know that I agree with all of what Jerry writes, but he raises some interesting issues that any coaching candidate will have to consider.

Everyone's already starting with candidate lists - here and here for example.  Its a bit early for that, but with November 30 just ten days away, not that early.  Better than talking about the Clemson game, though, and Virginia's likely foray into the land of 3-8, something even the most pessimistic among us did not think possible when the season began. Continue reading this post...

Oktoberfest Buzz

What in the world has happened? Only a month ago, this thing was all sorted out – a horrific 0-3 start, including an embarrassing loss to William and Mary, meant had officially hit rock bottom. All signs pointed to Groh’s dismissal as a foregone conclusion, and after being on the proverbial “hot season” for several seasons, it finally seemed like a true consensus had been reached regarding the embattled coach. The only question remaining was whether or not he would be released during the bye week or if Littlepage and company might consider an “exit” plan.

Yet a road win last Saturday over Maryland extended the Cavs winning streak to three, got them to .500 on the season, and as expected, caught the attention of some national media and even elicited some minor praise. While entertaining and good for news stories, Groh’s trademark as an October turnaround specialist proves confounding to most Virginia fans and downright problematic to those who firmly believe “Groh-must-go.” As it stands, the rebound certainly complicates the situation, and a matter that seemed resolved just three games ago once again provokes far more questions and “what-ifs” than answers.

So, the Yellow Jackets come to town tomorrow in what has turned out to be a surprise mid-season ACC showdown in C’ville, yet, no matter the outcome, the game will likely do little to help clarify things for Virginia fans. A loss and clearly things get very dicey, yet not entirely hopeless, and with this crew, who knows how the rest of the season will play out. On the other hand, a Cavalier upset probably only makes the Duke game that much more nerve-wracking. Long-time Wahoo fans have come to almost expect having their hearts stomped on just when things start to look promising, and a flop against Duke at home seems so fitting to follow an upset-win over Ga Tech. Even if UVa finishes October at 5-3, becoming bowl eligible is still no sure bet.

Ultimately, anything after tomorrow’s game is neither here nor there, and as players and coaches alike always take it “one game at a time,” so too should Cav fans. The Ramblin’ Wreck visits tomorrow and recent history favors the Hoos. References to Ga. Tech’s current winless streak in Scott Stadium abound, and for those who follow the Cavaliers, it would not come as a complete shock if Virginia pulls off the upset. These two squads seem to have a knack for making sure the favored team suffers a disappointing and often season-altering defeat. If the Cavaliers want to continue the trend, the overwhelming consensus is that they must find a way to stop Tech’s high-powered running game.

Averaging over 281 yards per game, Ga Tech ranks second in the country in rushing and their 417 yards of total offense per contest is good for second in the ACC. Quarterback Josh Nesbitt orchestrates the Yellow Jackets’ triple-option, and in fact, the junior leads the team with 625 rushing yards on the season – good enough for 34^th in the country no less. Reigning ACC offensive player of the year Jonathan Dwyer follows closely behind Nesbitt with 593 rushing yards and 5 touchdowns on the season. How heavily do the Jackets rely on these two guys and their ground attack? Put it this way, last week against the Hokies, Ga Tech ran the ball 63 times (43 of which were either Dwyer or Nesbitt) and the two accounted for 204 of the team’s 309 rushing yards on the afternoon. For the season, Nesbitt has only 80 pass attempts, and last week against Va Tech he was a mere 1-7 for 51 yards. On the rare occasion they do go to the air, look for Demarius Thomas to be the prime target as he leads the team with 27 catches for 671 yards and 4 touchdowns on the year.

While every team facing the Ramblin’ Wreck knows what to expect, few have been able to slow them down. For the Hoos to control the Yellow Jackets' running attack, Hootie of the Daily Progress points to the importance of Virginia maintaining their defensive assignments while Michael Phillips of the RTD stresses being patient defensively. Virginia’s defense has proven decent most of the season and has especially come on strong during the three-game winning streak. The Cavs enter the contest ranked 21st nationally while only allowing 293 yards of total offense per game. Virginia will have to go without defensive end Matt Conrath, and he plays a key role in a unit that has fared relatively well against the run (ranking 59th nationally). Against Maryland the Hoos gave up less than 4 yards per carry (Va Tech surrendered almost 5 yards a carry to the Yellow Jackets last week). Forcing three turnovers was a key contributing factor in last year’s upset victory and this is one area that could likely play a big role in tomorrow’s contest – takeaways are certainly one way to slow Ga Tech’s ground attack, keep their offense off the field, and disrupt their ball control. After digging themselves a deep whole early in the season, Virginia is now back on the plus side in turnover margin and ranks 37th nationally

Of course, UVa's offense could do their part in helping slow the Ramblin' Wreck attack by sustaining long drives and putting plenty of points on the board. Sewell is probable for Saturday's contest and Mikell Simpson is expected to play which is good news for the Cavalier offense. Ga Tech has been allowing opposing offenses to move the ball well against them. The Yellow Jackets surrender almost 378 yards per game and give up 26 points per outing, so Virginia should be able to move the ball and generate some ball control of their own.

Call it Virginia’s version of Oktoberfest, chalk it up as yet another shining example of the “Octgrohber” effect, or simply blame it on Groh continuing to live up to his media nickname of “Mr. October,” but whatever the reason, Virginia's turnaround has certainly made things interesting. The players call him “Jeezy,” for Young Jeezy, and while there seems to be no obvious connection between Groh and the hip-hop artist, Young Jeezy’s single titled “Crazy World” off his 2008 album The Recession seems to aptly sum up the season thus far. Hoo knows, if history continues to repeat itself, things might just get even more crazy after Saturday.
Continue reading this post...

An Open Letter to Craig Littlepage

Dear Mr. Littlepage:

For the last two weeks, Al Groh has been the subject of fans' criticism, scorn, and boos. Sometime in the next few months (or if unsubstantiated rumors are to be believed the next week), you'll begin the search for a new football coach, and the heat will be on you.   

To be sure, Virginia fans have unreasonable expectations. When a George Welsh-led football program won at least seven games from 1987-99, Virginia fans often complained that he couldn't get the program over the hump to being great, and cited his contemporaries (Georgia Tech's Co Nat'l Championship team in 1990, Mack Brown's 1997 UNC team that went 11-1, and Frank Beamer's pair of 11-1 squads in 1999 and 2000) as evidence that it should have been possible. Similarly, Virginia fans didn't fully appreciate its own Jeff Jones, who brought his team to the NCAA Tournament in his first five seasons, including an improbable run to the Elite Eight in 1995 behind one marginal NBA player (Junior Burrough) and a guard who got the absolute maxium out of his limited physical ability (Harold Deane). Since being shown the door here, Jones has made the Dance twice at former doormat American, while Virginia was either sitting at home or hosting CBI games.

But its been a tough couple of years, and that can humble a fan base.  They've lost to teams that don't belong on the same field or court as the University of Virginia. William & Mary is the most recent example, but its been too common in recent years: Liberty (Hoops '08), Wyoming (Football '07), Western Michigan (Football '06), Fordham (Hoops '05). They've been embarrassed by teams they should always be able to compete with, especially at home. A post-renovation low graced the confines of Scott Stadium Saturday because everyone else that thought about attending cringed at what they might see. Perhaps they had flashbacks to a pair of whippings by Xavier (the last two season in Hoops), a 35-point gridiron loss in 2008 at Connecticut, who just started a I-A program this decade, or a 25-point thrashing at the hands of a Dave Wannstedt-led Pittsburgh squad in 2007. And they've gotten their brains beat in by Virginia Tech. We'd like to beat Virginia Tech more than once a decade in football, and we'd like to beat their brains in in everything else.

In the meantime, we're happy you've built an Athletic Department that competes for the Director's Cup. We congratulate the ACC Champions in Tennis, Cross-Country, Swimming & Diving, Track & Field, and Baseball. We applaud the fact that our lacrosse and soccer teams regularly compete for NCAA titles. And we think its great that you've revitalized some programs (field hockey) and built others from the ground up (rowing). But tennis and field hockey don't fill the stands, attract alumni donations, and generate money so all your others sports can compete on a national level.

Football and men's basketball do.  And fair or not, you won't be judged on building Stanford-East; you'll be judged on the successes and failures of the University's most visible programs.  And the blame for their present failures ultimately lies at the feet of the guy picking the men to run those programs.  You whiffed on your first big hire (Dave Leitao in 2005). The returns on Tony Bennett, the man you picked to replace him, have been good so far, but you'll have to deliver on your next hire if you want to avoid repeats of the sparse crowd you saw against TCU on Saturday.  We won't pretend to know for certain who the best man for the job is, although I'm sure we'll have our opinions.  But its on you to get it right.  Otherwise, there's plenty of room on that hot seat once Coach Groh vacates it.   

Signed,

The Scribes of the 7even Win Society

P.S. - if you do bring us the next George Welsh or Jeff Jones, we reserve the right to raise our expectations again.  Sorry, comes with the territory.      Continue reading this post...

Seriously, why on earth is Groh still the coach? No, seriously.

As red4z noted in yesterday’s post, it is too easy to simply write a “Fire Groh” post. But given that William & Mary sealed Al Groh’s fate, let’s get into the real question of the hour: why is he coaching against TCU? To me, it’s sort of the opposite of what Harry told Sally: when you figure out you don’t want to spend your Saturdays with someone, you want to stop spending your Saturdays with that person as soon as possible.

Groh coaching Saturday creates a lose-lose situation for both Groh and Virginia. If TCU and Southern Miss beat Virginia, it’s expected and the long march to December continues, tension mounting with each loss for when the hammer will drop.

If Virginia somehow manages to beat TCU or Southern Miss, it raises the possibility of Groh doing just enough to keep his job but not enough to actually get the program out of neutral, and puts off the inevitable for another year or two. The entire season becomes defined by the Groh Death Watch, which is a horrible way for the year to play out and does the school no public relations favors.

If, say, Ron Prince (the uninspiring but obvious choice) gets a battlefield promotion, and has the exact same best-case-scenario season that Groh would have had, it is a cause for excitement. Littlepage gets the chance to evaluate a candidate on the job, things start getting pointed towards the future a little earlier. If team stinks, it is not like anyone would have expected that results would have been far better WITH Groh, so there really is very little opportunity cost.

To be clear, losing to William & Mary IS a firing offense. Don’t give me any them-be-the-breaks, that’s-how-the-ball-bounces, they’re-a-I-AA-playoff-team bull. Yes, losing to I-AA teams happens. To badly-coached teams.


Virginia has much more talent in both quality and quantity than William & Mary. This is not an argument. There is a massive advantage in the number of scholarships a I-A team has versus a I-AA team, and it is incredibly unlikely that any player on William & Mary would have gone there if Virginia had offered an opportunity.

Now, I would not doubt that a half-dozen players on William & Mary are better than many players on Virginia’s roster, maybe even a dozen players are better. But even if those players are perfectly distributed in impact positions (quarterback, receiver, offensive and defensive backfield, left tackle, right end, etc.), Virginia’s overall superiority in talent should have persevered in the end. With relative ease.

Or, think about it this way: if Virginia and W&M are remotely equal in talent, that means that Groh is either INCREDIBLY deficient at recruiting and/or developing talent, OR that William & Mary’s coaching staff is VASTLY superior tactically than Groh. Either way, it’s damning.

The “Virginia has turned things around before” chorus is not a good counterpoint. Any program that has this much experience at “turning things around” from terrible starts has some serious problems. The argument of “We Play Better with Our Backs Against the Wall” implies that a team gets its back to the wall often enough to have a well-established track record there---and I’m looking at you, Washington Capitals. Good teams don’t do that. Good teams win enough not to constantly put themselves in the position of needing to win.

Also, it’s not like Virginia isn’t bound to play better after playing so poorly. Virginia played terribly on Saturday, and it will play better at some point in the near future simply because the Cavaliers are not truly THAT bad, just as they weren’t as bad as they looked against Wyoming and Directional Michigan and USC and even Richmond and all the other craptastic early season performances in years past. Regression towards the mean dictates that teams tend towards their true ability in the long run, and by starting out poorly year after year, Virginia really has nowhere to regress but up.

So, Virginia WILL play better, and it will have little to do with Groh; it’ll play better because it IS a better team than it looked like. (Additionally, some amount of randomness went into that turd of a performance last Saturday, though not enough to compensate for the loss). This natural tendency to “improve” only increases the danger of Groh winning six or seven games and creating a narrative that gives Littlepage cover to keep Groh.

This is not a Steinbrennerian (Snyderian?) spur-of-the-moment decision. Groh’s been coach FOR EIGHT YEARS. Freshmen and sophomores in high school don’t remember George Welsh coaching Virginia. If those freshmen and sophomores happen to run a sub-4.5 40-yard-dash, they can use a reason to pay attention.

It’s not hasty to fire Groh now, even if it’s in midseason. It’s set against a backdrop of questionable and alienating moves since almost day one, ranging from the not-go-for-two decision against Wisconsin (which was perhaps the first step on the slippery slope to where we’re at) to the bizarre scheduling choices, to the losses to the teams scheduled in the bizarre scheduling choices, to the problematic drain of talent both of coaches and player off-field issues. Any semblance of a relationship with the fans is gone, setting up a perverse incentive to root against a sixth win (were there to be a miracle and Virginia to reach that point) to ensure that Littlepage can’t rehire him without facing a riot.

Groh has defenders, not supporters, at this point.

The two most similar decisions that leap to my mind (though others I’m sure are out there), are Frank Broyles firing Jack Crowe after Arkansas lost to the Citadel in an opener in the early 1990s and Clemson canning Tommy Bowden after a month last year. The Citadel was similarly I-AA, and while expectations are presumably higher at both programs (they’ve both won national titles, after all), Bowden had a similar path of success (even slightly superior) to Groh, mixed with a reputation for arrogance and aloofness from the fanbase.

Crowe’s firing didn’t end up working out so well for Arkansas---they were stuck for awhile in the mud, but again, it’s not like anyone was lamenting the Jack Crowe era afterwards. Bowden’s firing so far has seemed to work out for Clemson---the Tigers found value in a lost season, removing the interim tag from Dabo Swinney’s job description last December after the Tigers turned things around.

More than anything, firing Groh now gives hope, perhaps fleeting, of better Saturdays to come, even this year. If nothing else, it gives certainty to a situation that has needed it for three years, and avoids the biggest problem of all: Groh winning more games.

Continue reading this post...

Grohing Pains

Terry Holland once said that the best measure of a coach’s impact is the difference between what was and what is. He was talking, of course, of George Welsh, whose impact was easy enough to see: building a program from the rubble, a gleaming 60,000-seat stadium, near-perennial bowl trips and near-occasional contention for the ACC title.

Given how many people want Welsh’s successor fired, it’s time to ask the question of what, exactly, is Al Groh?

Is he a collection of alternating 5- and 9-win seasons? A series of great assistants and brain drain, rinse and repeat? Orange t-shirts and a traditional marching band? Christmastime in Charlotte or Boise in the good years? An endless supply of third down backs? A yearly beatdown by Tech?

More importantly, and this is the question not asked enough, is he the best we can do?
Probably, surprisingly, damningly, yes.

Look at the past five major coaching searches at Virginia and see how close it came to landing a big name or the kind of blue chip top assistant that is a surefire bet to succeed?

The searches replacing Holland, Jeff Jones, George Welsh, Pete Gillen and Dave Leitao had tons of fun rumors of a Tubby Smith or a pre-Georgia Mark Richt, some near-misses such as Rick Barnes, but really, the biggest “name” hires were Gillen and Groh; Gillen was coming off a pretty terrible season (he had lost a bunch of starters, I know, I know) and Groh’s 2000 Jets had collapsed after a 9-3 start to miss the playoffs, and nobody in New York seemed too upset he was gone (the Jets are cursed, I know, I know). But would you have imagined that Jerry Sandusky would have done much better over the past eight years? If Groh had gotten fired last winter, who would be coaching the Cavaliers right now?

Which makes UVa’s vague tolerance/hate relationship with Groh all the more depressing; it’s like a married couple that’s been together so long divorce seems like too much of an effort. The well’s been poisoned too much for any real reconciliation; it’s just a stalemate between Groh getting annoyed enough to quit or two losing seasons in a row providing Littlepage with enough cover to make what should be a bold decision look easy.

Groh’s not particularly likable, and he and Craig Littlepage have seemed somewhat callous in their treatment of a lot of things about Virginia football fans have liked (walking back to the tailgates at halftime, not going to games wearing gym clothes, having a pep band that served as a nice outlet for the “indoor kids,” having strained relationships with black quarterbacks over their “decision making,”) and running them into the ground. Creeping Big State U-ism indeed, only without the trips to the Peach Bowl.

And he loses games. Nonconference games. To teams Virginia conceivably should either not be playing or at the very least beating. Virginia fans can tolerate 3-5, 4-4, 5-3 ACC records, with upsets of Maryland and North Carolina paired with random chokejobs against NC State and at Georgia Tech to make the ride to the anonymous middle a little more of a roller coaster; that’s in our DNA at this point. But Western Michigan? East Carolina? Connecticut? Wyoming? All were good enough teams, don’t get me wrong, but remember when we used to lose to the likes of Auburn or even BYU? These were games nobody wanted to see, and certainly games nobody wanted to see Virginia lose. Remember when Virginia would split series with Auburn or BYU instead of UConn or Wyoming? Give me past national champions or I-AA teams; we can’t beat mediocre I-A teams with any consistency, so let’s get some starpower.

And there’s the off-the-field situations, and the seeming lack of a predictable standard applied to players’ transgressions; some are let go, some are welcomed back. This happened under Welsh too, of course, but rarely with such a lack of finesse as Groh and Littlepage displayed with the disposal of Peter Lalich.

Working under the assumption that a losing season spells the end of Groh’s tenure, what would keep him around? Six wins? Maybe, maybe not. Seven? Possibly, even probably---Virginia’s not really in a position to fire winning coaches. Eight? Without a doubt.

And thus the cycle would begin anew. What if Groh goes 5-7 in 2010? Another year, another shot at 7-5 redemption?

Perhaps the best thing Littlepage has done as AD was his firing of Leitao a year earlier than anyone thought, not giving him a chance at a NCAA first-round exit (in the best-case scenario) which would make him bulletproof for another year and stagnated UVa’s basketball program.

The awkward passivity of the annual December decision over whether to exercise one-year options on Groh’s contract years in advance creates no real answers or direction for the program. Even after that flukey ACC Coach of the Year nine-win year in 2007, Groh still only got a one-year bump, showing he has almost no leverage in the situation. It’s like Walter Aston’s 23 one-year contracts with the Dodgers, only the opposite. There’s no implicit loyalty here, other than Groh’s to the school. (This would be the rare turn of events which generated sympathy for Groh, except he really doesn’t have many other foreseeable options).

If a guy’s not your guy, he’s not your guy, and if that doesn’t have consequences immediately, it’s going to have them in the long run. Leitao wasn’t the guy. Groh likely isn’t either, and that’s as much a criticism of Littlepage than Groh that he’s still around with a relationship with the school and the fanbase that is in such disrepair.

Virginia needs to have the direction and (perhaps misplaced) confidence in itself as an institution to fire him almost regardless of what happens this year. It probably should have done it nine months ago. Continue reading this post...