Post by rkb on Jun 20, 2008 11:23:48 GMT -5
Even More from the Daily Journal
www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=275132&pub=1&div=Sports
MUDCATS NOTEBOOK: Changes at the top
6/20/2008 3:14:27 AM
Daily Journal
By John L. Pitts
Daily Journal
Thursday was supposed to be a slow news day in the sports department.
Instead, I got a text message about 10 a.m. telling me that three Mississippi MudCats coaches – Brian Brents and two key assistants – had quit. Same thing, from a different source, on my voice mail at work.
After making a few calls myself, the phone rings and offensive lineman William Stewart is telling me that, since the coaches have quit, he’s quitting.
Fourteen hours later, here are some thoughts and notes gathered through the long day. I’ll try to sort through these for a column to run in Saturday’s news paper:
1, First of all, it means the team will surely face an uphill battle to advance past the first round of the AIFA playoffs, even though the game is supposed to be played here. The MudCats’ first-round foe, Columbus, won here on May 17 – the only homefield loss in the ’Cats two seasons.
Columbus hasn’t played that well since then, sandwiching ugly wins against Florida (52-44) and Huntington (57-54) around a 40-35 loss at home to Florence. But if they could beat the full-strength MudCats here, then the Lions will have to feel pretty good about making the return trip on July 5.
2, In his news conference Thursday afternoon, majority owner Jim Waide said out loud something I had wondered about a few weeks ago – that he had given some thought to completing the regular season and disbanding the current version of the team before the playoffs began. He said he was talked out of that by Brents, who said it would “kill the guys” to not have a chance to win a championship after a strong season.
More to the point, it would have killed the team’s credibility with the NeMiss public. There would have been no point in discussing a 2009 version of the MudCats.
3, In a sense, the 2009 MudCats season begins Saturday night in Augusta.
“A big question is, can this team be competitive without its top coaches and without its quarterback,” Waide said. And can the team draw any fan interest for a first-round playoff game on the Fourth of July weekend? After all this?
Any sort of stab at bringing the team back next year, I fear, is going to seem like MudCats Lite after the team – ”an incredible product,” Waide called it – that’s been on the field the last two seasons.
And that won’t help with attendance or community interest.
4, We often want to try to identify the heroes and villains in situations like this. It’s not that easy with what happened on Thursday. Both sides – the coaches and Waide – did what they thought to be the right thing. It’s just that the MudCats as a business venture has gone so far downstream at this point, so to speak, that it’s hard to see how you get it back to figure out where the wrong turn was made.
Waide has spent a “world of money” on the team with no real prospect of seeing a turnaround to profitability the way things were set up. He had to do something. At this level of pro sports, merely winning is not enough – just ask the Lakeland team that won the AIFA title last year and is on “hiatus” this season for financial reasons. There are no multi-million-dollar TV deals to bail these teams out.
And the MudCats coaches were committed to their vision of how the thing was going to get done here. And they believed in that vision enough to walk away from their own hard work rather than take a sledgehammer to their own creation.
5, The MudCats’ owner was caught in a paradox that was not really of his own making. He sorely needed the credibility of Brian Brents and his staff to build a winner this season and give the team some kind of viable future.
“Nobody is going to come out to watch a loser,” Waide said.
But that all cost a lot of money, and meanwhile attendance and sponsorship interest – despite the excellent record – lagged as this season went along.
What would I have done differently? I’m not sure. It may be that this whole enterprise was set on a bad path by the previous ownership – and that, however you slice it, this kind of minor-league sports enterprise just wasn’t going to work here.
As it is, it’s a shame the way things unraveled.
After all these wins, it seems as if there are nothing but losers in MudCats Land today.
A few more coach quotes that didn’t quite get in the paper this morning:
Brian Brents: “I always say that I put faith, family and football first. Family comes before football, though so this is what I had to do. I know it’s the right decision for me and my family.”
Gary Patterson: “We started this thing together last year, Brian and me. My whole thing about coming back was that I was here if Brian was here. Without him, it just wasn’t a good situation any more.”
Kirk Broussard: “The challenge for the three of us now is to market ourselves. In just two seasons, we’re the winningest coaching staff in the history of this league, with 24 wins and just five losses. Hopefully this will pay off with another opportunity down the line.”
William Stewart had a lot to say. I’ll try to get into more of that into Saturday’s newspaper.
www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=275132&pub=1&div=Sports
MUDCATS NOTEBOOK: Changes at the top
6/20/2008 3:14:27 AM
Daily Journal
By John L. Pitts
Daily Journal
Thursday was supposed to be a slow news day in the sports department.
Instead, I got a text message about 10 a.m. telling me that three Mississippi MudCats coaches – Brian Brents and two key assistants – had quit. Same thing, from a different source, on my voice mail at work.
After making a few calls myself, the phone rings and offensive lineman William Stewart is telling me that, since the coaches have quit, he’s quitting.
Fourteen hours later, here are some thoughts and notes gathered through the long day. I’ll try to sort through these for a column to run in Saturday’s news paper:
1, First of all, it means the team will surely face an uphill battle to advance past the first round of the AIFA playoffs, even though the game is supposed to be played here. The MudCats’ first-round foe, Columbus, won here on May 17 – the only homefield loss in the ’Cats two seasons.
Columbus hasn’t played that well since then, sandwiching ugly wins against Florida (52-44) and Huntington (57-54) around a 40-35 loss at home to Florence. But if they could beat the full-strength MudCats here, then the Lions will have to feel pretty good about making the return trip on July 5.
2, In his news conference Thursday afternoon, majority owner Jim Waide said out loud something I had wondered about a few weeks ago – that he had given some thought to completing the regular season and disbanding the current version of the team before the playoffs began. He said he was talked out of that by Brents, who said it would “kill the guys” to not have a chance to win a championship after a strong season.
More to the point, it would have killed the team’s credibility with the NeMiss public. There would have been no point in discussing a 2009 version of the MudCats.
3, In a sense, the 2009 MudCats season begins Saturday night in Augusta.
“A big question is, can this team be competitive without its top coaches and without its quarterback,” Waide said. And can the team draw any fan interest for a first-round playoff game on the Fourth of July weekend? After all this?
Any sort of stab at bringing the team back next year, I fear, is going to seem like MudCats Lite after the team – ”an incredible product,” Waide called it – that’s been on the field the last two seasons.
And that won’t help with attendance or community interest.
4, We often want to try to identify the heroes and villains in situations like this. It’s not that easy with what happened on Thursday. Both sides – the coaches and Waide – did what they thought to be the right thing. It’s just that the MudCats as a business venture has gone so far downstream at this point, so to speak, that it’s hard to see how you get it back to figure out where the wrong turn was made.
Waide has spent a “world of money” on the team with no real prospect of seeing a turnaround to profitability the way things were set up. He had to do something. At this level of pro sports, merely winning is not enough – just ask the Lakeland team that won the AIFA title last year and is on “hiatus” this season for financial reasons. There are no multi-million-dollar TV deals to bail these teams out.
And the MudCats coaches were committed to their vision of how the thing was going to get done here. And they believed in that vision enough to walk away from their own hard work rather than take a sledgehammer to their own creation.
5, The MudCats’ owner was caught in a paradox that was not really of his own making. He sorely needed the credibility of Brian Brents and his staff to build a winner this season and give the team some kind of viable future.
“Nobody is going to come out to watch a loser,” Waide said.
But that all cost a lot of money, and meanwhile attendance and sponsorship interest – despite the excellent record – lagged as this season went along.
What would I have done differently? I’m not sure. It may be that this whole enterprise was set on a bad path by the previous ownership – and that, however you slice it, this kind of minor-league sports enterprise just wasn’t going to work here.
As it is, it’s a shame the way things unraveled.
After all these wins, it seems as if there are nothing but losers in MudCats Land today.
A few more coach quotes that didn’t quite get in the paper this morning:
Brian Brents: “I always say that I put faith, family and football first. Family comes before football, though so this is what I had to do. I know it’s the right decision for me and my family.”
Gary Patterson: “We started this thing together last year, Brian and me. My whole thing about coming back was that I was here if Brian was here. Without him, it just wasn’t a good situation any more.”
Kirk Broussard: “The challenge for the three of us now is to market ourselves. In just two seasons, we’re the winningest coaching staff in the history of this league, with 24 wins and just five losses. Hopefully this will pay off with another opportunity down the line.”
William Stewart had a lot to say. I’ll try to get into more of that into Saturday’s newspaper.
