I've never understood the "if you say anything critical about the program, the coaches or the players you're not a true fan" crowd either.
From a purely business perspective, if you're not critically, honestly and objectively evaluating every facet of performance you're not doing the best you can.
I don't necessarily want to be Saban where you view each piece and part impassionately and see them as completely replaceable and interchangeable parts of the overall whole -- BUT -- you have to have some of that in order to make things work. I'm all for loyalty. I'm loyal to my employees and expect them to be loyal to me personally and to the company overall. But that doesn't prevent me from having clearly defined standards and objectives they have to meet. I've had some struggles with that in the "I thought we were friends..." reaction to some difficult discussions/decisions.
I don't think Gus has that. He's blindly loyal to his people and I don't really see that they have performance standards that he's enforcing.
I don't want Auburn to lose. Ever. But from a strictly analytical perspective, I don't think we have the pieces in place to prevent that from happening. Would I rather lose short-term in order to foster a long-term winning strategy? Sometimes you have to.
I don't like criticizing Auburn, but I was critical of the Malzahn hire (thought he didn't have the gravitas), i've been critical of a number of his decisions (because I felt they were deeply flawed), I've been critical of his style (because he doesn't have the gravitas). I've been critical of the administration because it too often seems like we're a mom and pop coffee shop pretending to be Starbucks and crapping on the brand either way.
I lived in AU when I was younger. My dad went there. My brother and sister went there. My uncles and aunts went there. My daughter recently graduated from Auburn (less than 10 years ago). My younger daughter was snubbed by Auburn for reasons that were never fully explained in a manner that satisfied me. I've watched the college change through the lives of my own family members over the last 50 years. I know change is inevitable and often painful, but I just don't think Auburn has ever had a cohesive plan. We shoot ourselves in the dick time after time. Part of that is the fact that we are constantly battling a state government and a state media that has a vested interest in keeping us "in our place." But part of it is undeniably how poorly we've handled some things over the years.
This whole "I love us when we're the underdog" mentality grates on me to no end. The "I'd rather not be ranked" and the "I don't want to play at 11 because we'll lose" mindset also infuriates me.
All that to say that there's nothing wrong with critical analysis or demanding excellence in performance and accountability. The Creed thumpers should shut it.
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