Sorry everyone. We couldn’t even make it to Memorial Day without more Todd Graham spin-time. The latest is an ESPN piece by Ivan Maisel.
So much that could be (and probably will be) picked apart. But, just as I was about to do some, I realized that FraudGraham’s son just contradicted one of his earliest lies.
Todd Graham made the decision to leave Pittsburgh for Arizona State so suddenly in December that he caught his own son Bo unaware, and Bo is a member of his coaching staff. Bo walked out of a recruiting visit in Philadelphia at 9:30 p.m. and his phone rang.
“Hey,” Todd Graham said, “you need to come back here. Where are you?”
“You sent me to Philly,” Bo said. “Don’t you remember? Why do I need to come back?”
“Because I resigned my job.”
“You did what?”
“I resigned my job.”
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“Because I took another one.”
But… But… I thought Todd Graham resigned, without having the ASU job in hand. It was his leap of faith for his dream job.
Heck, FraudGraham even repeats the lie in the story despite the contradiction from his son.
“Here’s [what] people don’t understand,” Graham said. “Coaches don’t control the process. When you don’t have a job, and they say you need to be on the plane first thing the next morning, that’s what you do.”
Not according to your own son’s account. Fraud Graham is a helpless victim in this horrid game.
Graham wondered if Pittsburgh would have allowed him to hold a meeting once he resigned. He said he asked Beaudine, who led the search for Arizona State, “several times” to delay the family’s departure from Pittsburgh long enough for Graham to meet with the team and was told there was no time.
He might have been able to meet with the players if he had actually spoken to anyone from Pitt before leaving. As he conveniently forgets refusing to speak to a Pitt official who came to his house the night before.
As usual, though, it wasn’t his fault. The head of ASU’s search committee, Bob Beaudine, was the ogre who Graham happily throws out as the real villain. Refusing to let him meet with the players — or even text them himself.
He also continues to try and use his family as his shield. Once more citing his wife.
The most obvious reason he is doing it: He’s getting killed for it on the recruiting trail.
He can preach accountability, honor and all the other stuff he tries to sell. And maybe the fans and current players will buy-in, because there is no alternative. Selling that to kids and parents who aren’t bound to ASU is not so easy when every competing program is pointing out the big lie.
Even Arizona’s present coach Dick Rod figured out after a month at Michigan to just shut up about leaving West Virginia. That it wasn’t helping change the narrative.
Most people would recommend just putting the head down and not trying to befriend the national media. Give that area time to move on to the next outrage. Don’t keep reminding them. Just focus on winning over the local media. Make sure to connect with the students, boosters, fans, administration and build support in the first year. Fraud Graham has been at it for 6 months and still hasn’t learned. Instead he talks, and everyone points out the lies and how bad he is.
That, goes to who Fraud Graham is. He’s always been able to sell, spin and talk. It’s always worked for him. It has to drive him absolutely crazy that he isn’t able to do it. He’s still a punchline. A joke that keeps on giving.
If a guy gets dumped by a girl, and he is still talking about how terrible she was (and what a lair she was) 5-6 months after the break-up, it makes that guy sound pathetic. If this guy was your friend, you would begin to ignore him and/or tell him to move on already.
We are now 5-6 months removed from Graham leaving Pitt. Can we please move on already?
We’ll see it on the field because he put the kids in a blender and they will have to bounce back from that to have a successful. We’ll see it is our national reputation where, not have had a great one anyway, this situation will be talked about every time any national media mentions either ASU or PITT.
We’ll see in in the recruiting this year also I think. Any kids who were on the fence originally probably jumped off on the other side and Graham has made Paul Chryst’s job just that much harder then it would have been as a new HC.
You know every school within 200 miles is pointing at us and telling the recruits that they will probably have three or four HCs during their time at PITT just like most of the current PITT players have had.
In my bit of lifetime, I have never met, nor heard of a professional university or business person, that given them hearing the phrase on the other end of the line…
“hey, I know you want me ASAP, but, I really want to talk to my team in the morning and tell them personally that I’m leaving”
wouldn’t have responded with
“of course, absolutely, do what you need to do, when do you think you can get out here?”
He had to get to Arizona State the very next afternoon!! My a**!!!!!!!
Right after Iran or Israel having their finger on the button, Todd Graham going to ASU is the next big important situation!!!!!!
All on you buddy!!!
Many of us knew he was trash from day one, so why didn’t the guy who hired him examine him more closely? And don’t forget Heywood/Heygood/Deadwood/whatever. Two Mulligans on one hole?
Please.
Who among us would be allowed to perform like that in our occupations and still have jobs?
All college coaches should get at least a year or two with their own ball players imho.
I roundly criticized him on game day decisions (punting from the 34 yd line, time outs a series or two into the game, keeping Sunseri in), but, yes I supported him. Actually, I supported him until the final fiasco stunt that he pulled.
I would have supported him this year too, if he hadn’t pulled that stunt and shown his true colors.
Some of you saw his true colors from the get go. Sure he was a snake oil salesman, who couldn’t tell that, but, he had my support, and probably more than anything, had my HOPE.
Same goes with Coach Chyrst, he has a couple years with me, till he gets his own players.
Most of us seem to be happy with him, myself included, but, his soft sell approach that we all love, could in fact, bomb!! Hopefully he is awesome as Pitt’s head coach.
We got 6, and an exit for the ages!! LOL!!!
Venting about it and letting off some steam from something else that happened tonight, I would venture??
Hey, you gotta come back and pick one off in game 6, then the ol’ cliche’, anything can happen in game 7.
Good luck!!
Then we never have to discuss the loser again.. Like naming all urinals on campus “Grahams”.
Oy gavelt.
I’m so tired of these overpaid, overglorified coaches like FraudG talking about their job-jumping antics as if they are normal guys living from paycheck to paycheck and worried about paying the mortgage like the rest of us. Give me a frickin’ break. They are millionaires who can not only afford not to work between their “dream” jobs, but can certainly afford for their family to live somewhere else if they don’t like it. It’s not like these guys pay any attention to their wife and kids during the football season anyway. Of course, using the family as a shield is ridiculous anyway, because I guarantee if Notre Dame or Oklahoma came calling, those kids would simply be told to live there and like it because daddy’s job is more important.
Ivan Maisel is an idiot
I was also on board with Graham. We all make mistakes. Good ridance.
One reason that I thought Graham was a bad selection was his previous coaching crediantials in a non-BCS league (forget yards gain only measure is wins and losses)were medicore,barely above 60%. This indicated his system of football by his record was not overwhelmingly successful.
We thought we could be the reincarnation of Oregon’s turn around. That turn around had less to do with the style of offense than the demograhic boom caused by the IT explosion and sybsequent population explosion in the northwest. There was a rapid influx of affulent people providing top rate school systems and atheletic programs for their children. It is more Sociological than football offensive styles.
Peterson after Haygood felt desperate and lost sight or ignored the fact that Pitt fans (because of our short history of the 70′ and early 80’s) believe the school is a football power. During that time we we inarguably the best football team for 5 straight years.
Further those teams played the type of football that refletcs the style of football Pittsburgher’s pride themselves on as reflected by the Steelers reputation.
In some ways we are to blame as much as Peterson by whipping up a frenzy of what we thought the new winning formula in college football that was causing Pitt to fall short. The spread offense, short passing game, no huddle offense. Number of yards on offense not wins was a quick way to fix the problem. So we got what we wanted.
The flaw of the thinking about the system winning games is that in the end it is always good coaching and excellent atheletses and depth that wins Alabama, LSU, Southern California, as we did in in the 70′ and 80’s.
For the same reason Stanford and Oregon programs have blossomed will never duplicate the 70’s and early 80’s. That was a period before the manufacturing base fled the northeast for cheap labor in Texas, Florida, Goergia, Carolina’s, etc. At the same time black atheletes in the south were now beginning sought after by SEC schools rather than discriminated. After several embarrassments to SEC teams in bowl games (southern black athletes playing in Northeast and Midwest)to teams from the north the Bear said let them come.
Finally our recruiting based was never suited for Fruad’s style which would have been a dismal failure and set the program years behind. We need to be thankful that he immediately saved Peterson’s ass for the moment. Pitt recuiting areas strength is based on big OL and DL and great running backs. It has also produced excellent QB’s since Marino that we have not been successful in recruiting or when we do are not used properly (
I think Chryst is perfect. Maybe he can bring back the 4 horseman; May, Grim, Corbet,Fralic all from our recruiting area. I could run behind that line.
oh, yes i can