And that's where all of us on the outside end up doing-believing our perceived truths and ultimately, wondering if we are correct.
Usually we do swimmingly, Fbolt. In fact, I have invited you to be on the board of my upcoming successful avatar campaign. But I have to say, I have a problem with your "I believe" quote of OMM. Those are your words not his. You talk about wishing to attend UND, but your quote, if part of an academic assignment, would get reviewed for academic honesty.
By cutting Mike's words to one and a half, from his original quote you changed everything about the word and a half you left. You took a complex statement about his view of the coaching staff's interaction, which he is able to make a pretty educated guess upon, and you mitigated it to him taking a flier, throwing. It isn't right to take someone's words and so twist them. You took a specific statement written in the past tense about the state of affairs at a specific time and turned part of two words into an open-ended statement of blind trust. Why? Because it didn't support your point?
All I was expressing was a logical explanation as to how things could have happened, without Kelly taking the angst now being expressed toward Diaco. Of course you are right; no one that wasn't there knows exactly what happened. I don't know much, except there are about a million stories about prospective recruits one coach or another wanted to get a good look that were nixed. There are stories about Bob Diaco's flexibility, or lack thereof. There are even stories of Bob Elliott's frustration at having to deal with the situation. That
is something!
Last year as the contract extension negotiations drug on, there were stories leaked. Supposedly from an assistant coach source. Really bad stories about Kelly, that showed him in a poor light. The key part or central focus of all of that is that he wanted a really low buyout for his contract. So I took it all with a grain of salt. Any contract written these days for a successful head coach is going to be about whether the buyout is ridiculously high, or prohibitively high. Anyone wants this coach, let them pay for him; so I took all that with a grain of salt. I took many of the Diaco stories with a grain of salt, also.
Now, I will be honest I sat at a good seat to get a view of Bob Diaco. Not the impressive imagery, the supercharged vocabulary, or the flawless delivery. The real guy. In '12 they showed tape inside the locker at half time and after the game. One week they caught Bob talking about how his defense was flying around like Freddy Krueger out there. It was published in a video on UND.com. Do you remember seeing it? Shortly afterword, at a press conference Bob was directly asked about the incident. Everyone loved the speech. Bob denied it. Vehemently, multiple times. Said it never happened. Someone, piped up when he was standing there lying, that it was on UND.com, and everyone had seen it.
He was made to understand that it was out there and every one had seen it. They tried telling him they loved it but he wasn't listening. Instead, all he could say was what a shame it was that coach player interaction couldn't be kept private. That week there was hell to pay at Black Rock. And here is a significant point. Kelly started going in to his we are the team and they are the fans, routine, right at that time. I don't disagree that I am not part of the greater ND effort, and therefore don't have a right to be treated like an insider, or part of the team. But I do buy the tickets. So just don't shovel shit in my boot and call it sunshine.
All Bob had to do was from the very first say, "Interaction between coaches and players on our team is a very private thing." He could have ended with a no comment, or an I will not discuss. And to tie the whole thing up, I had friends from Cinci that warned me of a number of things about Bob Diaco, and that was one. Actually two of those behaviors are encompassed within what was described to me as a general petulance.
Here is what I have heard. After '12 Bob got paid more to stay. But he didn't have any job offers so he wasn't going to leave. This year he had his first job offer and he left. Before he left things got heated in some areas. One was recruiting. Related to the number of offers made. There were some coaches who felt certain players were never going to come to ND, and recruiting time could be spent "casting a wider net." There were a few kids who a position coach, or a recruiter found in their area that were wanted, but their pursuit was nixed. Kelly turned thumbs up on a couple, and if I remember correctly Drue Tranquill was one. Why did Kelly have to override on any unless someone below him had absolute authority to decide?
