Hall of Fame Coach Don Nehlan spoke to WVU law students the other night. He was in total grumpy old man mode.
Coaches make too much money, too much pressure to win now and he discussed religion.
When the subject turned to the current state of college football, Nehlen did not hesitate to express his views. “The (current) drive to win at all costs scares me. Coaches making one or two million dollars a year scares me. That’s too much for a doggone coach.”
“It’s a game, and we’ve made it like a religion,” Nehlen continued. “If you look at the Southeastern Conference, I’m not sure it isn’t a religion.”
The role television has played in transforming the game into a business also worries Nehlen. “TV tells schools what to do and when to do it. We used to not play on Friday nights out of respect for high school football. Now we play on Fridays. It’s like biting the hand that feeds you. If you play on a Wednesday, the athletes miss class from traveling on Tuesday and on gameday, and we all know they’re not going on Thursday. But the NCAA says it’s all about academics. It’s not. It’s about money.”
Then he went on about the Big East — taking a rip at Louisville — and speaking near heresy.
“Say what you want, but it killed us to lose those teams,” Nehlen said in reference to Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College, each of which defected to the Atlantic Coast Conference since 2004.
“We’ll be playing a lot more Wednesday games unless something changes. South Florida doesn’t have their own stadium, and at Cincinnati games, the fans would rather talk about the start of basketball season.
“Louisville made their program go by taking Prop 48 guys. Now they can’t do that, and it won’t be long until they’re average again. That’s why we need Pittsburgh and Syracuse to rebound. They’re the only two (Big East) schools with national name recognition. I never thought I’d root for Pitt to get better, but we need them to give our league some prestige.“
[Emphasis added.]
Kind of funny to read anyone associated with WVU complain about schools taking academically questionable students. When the Big East voted this past year to refuse to accept academic non-qualifiers any longer, the Hoopies were one of two schools to vote against the measure.
That’s the frustrating thing about the Big East these days. We find ourselves kind of hoping that our bitter rivals do at least well enough to help the overall quality of the conference, and thus our status.
