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the silence from our leadership is deafening
Nov 28, 2010, 2:10 PM
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Who leads Clemson University? Who takes responsibility?
Who cares how Clemson football performs?
President Barker doesn't. His silence speaks volumes. His contribution to football is the AARC, Becky Bowman, and pilfering the athletic fund for academic pursuits. Clemson athletics are a cash cow to him, nothing more. He set a number of ten-year goals upon taking office (check out ClemsonDeservesBetter.com to re-cap what they were)...none of those stated goals have been accomplished, but he has made not one public statement to address this disparity. Zero. Not one. His lack of concern for athletics is beyond transparent.
Terry Don Phillips assuredly doesn't. He fired a coach in Tommy Bowden who started 3-3 - after TDP just re-signed him just six games previously to a four million dollar buyout - and now that Clemson is 6-6, with TDP's hand-picked "gut" favorite now having done what no Clemson coach in the last 40 years has done, and lost back-to-back games to South Carolina, Terry Don Phillips says...nothing. Nothing whatsoever.
Terry Don likes the word "metric". By any metric you can measure, Terry Don recently said in an interview, Clemson athletics are healthy. I'm not sure what metric he's using. Clemson football has not won an ACC title in 20 years. Our most significant accomplishment in that span has been nine wins, and a Peach Bowl victory in 2003 against Tennessee.
To recap: we have no 10-win seasons in 20 years. We have no ACC titles in 20 years. By any "metric" there is absolutely nothing whatsoever special about Clemson football. We are the 8th or 9th-place team in one of the weakest conferences in football.
Except for one thing, that is: the 83,000 orange-clad fans who pour their hearts and passion into each home game. Clemson leads even FSU in attendance and fan support.
Clemson athletics, for its size, is without question the most ineptly-led athletics department in the nation. Period. We have accomplished less with more than any program of our size in the country. If you define a "major" sports program as a BCS-conference school that can seat 80,000+ fans, only Texas A&M and South Carolina approach our level of futility in conference championships and BCS-game appearances...and South Carolina is in the SEC Championship Game this year and has the potential of breaking that dubious record (which would leave Clemson alone among big schools for consecutive seasons without a 10-win season, conference championship, or BCS bowl game appearance.) And Texas A&M appeared in the Sugar Bowl in 1998 under RC Slocum; the Aggies aren't quite as pathetic as Clemson has been the last two decades.
To repeat: if South Carolina beats Auburn next week, Clemson will be the worst-performing major athletics program in the country.
And the reason is simple: we're the worst led. At Florida, at Southern Cal, at Nebraska, at Oklahoma - anywhere but here, a 6-6 season would cause major upheavals at every level of the University.
Here...we hear nothing. 83,000 fans trudge out after a miserable season and a second straight loss to our rival...without so much as a comment, much less an apology, from those in charge.
That's Clemson, today in 2010. And that's just sick.
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