Fair enough. I think overall he’s a good guy who cares a lot about his players. Probably doesn’t really care about UVA overall as has been pointed out (at least not as much as a guy like London). I also think his success in turning us around is heavily marred by the outcome of the last VT game. We won the Coastal and played in Orange bowl. That’s a very rare level of success for UVA football. Would be interesting to see how he’s remembered if he beat VT and then stepped down. Basically if one single play went differently
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Again I’m not knocking Bronco, but after ML things felt better with him as coach so many fans became content with mediocrity. I called it football purgatory…it ain’t hell, but its a long way from heaven. But if BP never enrolls, it isnt even mediocre. My VT fans said UVA was a one player team. It hurts to hear it but I saw very little that convinces me BP wasn’t the sole reason for our brief relevance.
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I mean he did heavily recruit Mormons and I think a common knock was his total inability to recruit in the state of Virginia so I don’t totally know if I agree that we are looking at an appropriate sample of who liked him. The mediocre talent on a mediocre team liking the mediocre coach does not a convincing argument make
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I agree to some degree. Bronco I’m sure is a good person and I do believe he cared about and wanted to nurture and develop players on and off the field. He is also arrogant and tried to cloak it in quirkiness and independent thinking.
Yes the program is better than London who was over his head and was leading a bad program.
But at the end of the day the records are what they are and that’s all that matters
Al Groh: 59-54 36-36ACC 3-2 in bowl games
Mike London: 27-46 14-34ACC 0-1 in bowl games, a disaster
Bronco: 36-38 22-27ACC 1-2 in
Bronco created an average program. Average programs get coaches with average personalities. Can’t be quirky and average. If Mike Leach or Mike Gundy were average they’d never have a job.
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“The mediocre talent on a mediocre team liking the mediocre coach does not a convincing argument make.” I agree we were pretty much the definition of mediocrity from a results/talent perspective, which is an upgrade from laughingstock, but still just mediocre. I was just surprised to see that people think Bronco is arrogant and fake. Not my opinion but to each their own
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Yup I agree 100% all around.
Also of note, I’ve been very consistent of my criticism of Bronco long before he left Charlottesville. So I’m not jumping on some bandwagon here.
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It’s the way he went out. No matter where you fell on the spectrum of attitudes towards him before the VPI game (I was neutralish drifting the wrong way due to the accumulation of coaching ineptitude), I can’t see how you wouldn’t downgrade your opinion of the man materially after his exit. I mean just the supernova of incompetence that was the VPI game leading to his “retirement” in what was such a blatantly opportunistic, almost conniving, move…now his campaign staff are laying the groundwork for his return with this article…I’m struggling to find adjectives here…
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Use of Supernova just incredible (after I looked it up). Always assumed that meant NOVA but like all the way down to Culpeper or some shit
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GotDayum my boy Fresh is killing it this morning.
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We really need to have a Cov and @IAmBallHawk with me and @chavlicek15 podcast breaking that article down.
The football guys could talk real things, Hav can change costumes between a coach, an algo trader, a teacher, a rodeo guy and construction guy during pod. I can just be me
Edit: Dragon can be the narrator reading that piece
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I’m here for it. Love to hear @IAmBallHawk thoughts and I know @chavlicek15 will see through the BS.
Really getting VT basketball fan shitting all over buzz Williams vibes from this. He brought this program back from the Kansas-Vanderbilt dustbin. Be glad for that and move on yeesh
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I’m in the camp that gives Bronco some solid credit, but also acknowledges his temperament may not be ideal for a P5 coach.
I do think he deserves credit from taking us from an absolute joke of a program to a competent one. I think people forget just how bad things were under London. It wasn’t just about the win-loss record - we were failing at the most basic team construction things like recruiting balanced classes and had like no OL when Bronco showed up (not because they transferred to other schools after nice careers, which just happened, but because we literally hadn’t recruited them). We had almost no competent QB play for years. Our game management and player discipline made it impossible to even watch the product on TV - I tuned out for years. Bronco took that and made us into a respectable program that was routinely bowl eligible. That counts a lot for me.
I can’t agree with this. Bronco landed and developed Benkert, Perkins, and Armstrong. We’ve had a string of good QB play we haven’t seen for decades. Failing at QB development was one of Groh’s great undoings, and London never figured it out. That achievement shouldn’t be hand waved away.
Also, the last thing I’ll note is that Bronco’s players almost never had off-the-field issues. He ran a tight ship and all of the guys he got represented the university well. That should count for something too, and shouldn’t be taken as a given (see the Groh years).
Anyway, I’m happy with where we are and I do think Bronco had probably taken us as far as he could get us, so I’m not torn up about him leaving or not having to put up with his weird press conferences and what not anymore. But I do think the person that helps you through the first leg of the journey still deserves some credit, even if they didn’t get you to the end destination.
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I’ll let it go when Bronco learns to Keep my Schools Name out his Mouth.
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I just can’t reconcile the two trains of thought here. Either bronco was incompetent and it’s good he left when he did before he hurt the program more or he wasn’t incompetent and it’s a bummer he left when he did. But for some reason the prevailing thread is “he was both incompetent and screwed the program by leaving.” Now if we ended up with a shitshow of a coach I would get it… but we didn’t
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But he didnt even go fishing that one day
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you sure you want to be the guy that both calls for tony’s head and defends bronco?
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WFS droppin in like a got dang Supernova!
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I am mostly joking
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If you want to find the place where I say I want CTB gone then be my guest
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