I am pissed. He made a big point that he was here for the duration, blah blah blah. The OC stayed behind to coach though. They'll be alright. Andersen is a defensive genius and an incredible recruiter. He works the poly pipeline very well. I think he left them better off, and Matt Wells is the one who really brought them up a level this year by teaching Chuckie Keeton how to be an elite QB. It bugs me to the extent that Andersen always seemed to distance himself from Urban Meyer because Urban got the reputation after bolting Bowling Green for Utah and then Utah for Florida and then Florida for Ohio State that "his guys" would all pull the same stunt. Whittingham hasn't shown much interest in other jobs. He supported Gary Andersen in his move to Utah State, and then one good season later Andersen is gone. Sort of dickish, but that's what college football is all about.
Wisconsin is strange in that they have so many issues with their state government that they can't compete with private universities. Public employees pay is capped. The governor signing that law in that eliminated collective bargaining has further muddled the situation on state employee pay. So Andersen will do well I think... but I hope he expects this to be his last stop. If he uses it as a jump off if they improve next year and goes looking elsewhere he'll start to look like a real douche bag. It works fine if you're Nick Saban, but not a lot of guys can get away with that sort of callous attitude.
Matt Wells is the OC though and now head coach. I think he'll do really well. It's a matter of him hiring a good DC. Their second choice was Kilani Sitake who is Utah's DC and he BADLY wanted the job. He just got shut down, and it's too bad because I think part of it is Andersen's fault.
I honestly wished they had gotten Jim Zorn. He started his coaching career as a QB's coach and then Offensive Coordinator at Utah State and then I think he went to the U of Minnesota. Jim would have been perfect for the job. He's been there, he knows the environment, he knows what he's dealing with coming into it, and he's recognizable and recruited really while when he was here the first time back in the early 90's.
I don't think it's as bad as all that, but on the other hand I don't see myself wishing Gary a ton of success in Cheeseland. He's kind of burned his bridges with everybody here and although a ton of people are being grateful and wishing him luck, I'm just telling him to kiss my ass.
I haven't seen Nanomoz around lately... I'd like to hear his take. He graduated from there. I didn't. I went to Utah Valley State, but we don't have football... we have D1 basketball, baseball, and as of this week soccer and were admitted to the WAC a couple of weeks ago, so I tend to support the Aggies as we're essentially a sister school. They were established as an agricultural college a million years ago (my grandpa had a few degrees from there), but Utah Valley was established as a vocational school. Now we are both huge 4 year universities.
As things go, it is kind of like this here..... Utah and BYU are the equivalent to Washington and Wazzu (you can kind of flip either into whatever place you want as they seem to have their decades of dominance and then decades of crappiness). Utah State would be like.... hmmmm... hard to think of a school in the state of Washington that would compare, so I'm going to say Utah State would be more like Oregon State was for years compared to UW and Wazzu. A strong rival, but ALWAYS on the outside looking in. Now Utah State is good, BYU is pretty bad for the most part, and Utah is falling apart at the seams. Utah Valley State would compare to like Seattle U, but with 30,000 students. We also have Weber State which is DII (or whatever it is called now) and that's where Paul McQuistan and his brother went to school, and it is a school for mostly career professionals and locals who don't want to drive to Logan or Salt Lake City (it's in Ogden), and Weber would be like EWU or PLU.
So there's your geography lesson or social studies or something for the day.
