I give you credit for actually naming a name.
Yeah fair enough to Reggie
He’s obviously one of the best in D1.
Without a doubt
It’s possible the AD literally just does not care
Reggie is going to take issue with me saying this and say doing one thing doesn't mean they can't do two things, and no, he wouldn't be wrong -- but even if last year was the right time to move on from our longtime largely successful women's hockey head coach (it wasn't), that was probably not happening with a football head coach to hire. This year our women's basketball coach might literally get left behind on a road trip they're doing so badly (again), and men's basketball isn't doing much better (again). Those are way, way, way more high-profile headaches for him to worry about than a non-ACC longtimer coach whose worst season in a decade and a half would still have the team around .500.
I'm not saying I don't get the frustration with us scratching towards what is looking like our worst record since Stack & Schaus were in the Olympics. But "hey our women's hockey team didn't have a good season" is going to be like 25th on his list of concerns this summer.
Providence got nowhere with their coaching change even though in theory it seemed reasonable - USA Hockey scout and maybe a former Clarkson guy if I remember.
BU's hasn't exactly been a jolt either.
Part of the reason I'm so hesitant to just boot out a head coach is that in my years as a student/alum I'd be hard-pressed to name a time where BC fired a coach and the new hire made a materially positive impact. It makes you feel better because "something" is being done, but it's action for action's sake and not addressing any underlying institutional problems.
- I was a freshman in September 2006, our football coach was Tom O'Brien. He was known for being a Pretty Damn Good Coach and ran up 8-win seasons with regularity, getting to and winning bowl games almost every year. He left to go coach at NC State and we replaced him with Jeff Jagodzinski, who took us to the ACC championship game both years he was here. This is where the trouble starts.
- Jags was fired for taking a job interview in the NY Jets (insane for him to be fired for this). He was replaced with Frank Spaziani, who was a disaster and saw us get worse every single season he was here.
- Spaz was fired and replaced by Addazio, the Emperor of Mid who was here for 7 years and had us 7-6 (4-4 in conference) every single season but one, ending, hilariously, with a 44-44 career record. Spaz getting let go was, I guess technically speaking, a "materially positive impact" to go from losing seasons to .500 every year.
- Daz was fired and replaced by a Jeff Hafley, who, like Daz, was here for a decent stretch and had us almost exactly .500 every season except for one. Definitely not a material improvement after Daz getting fired.
- Hafley left to go be an OC in the NFL (was not fired) and we got our splashiest football hire probably ever in Bill O'Brien and well wouldn't-you-God-damn-know-it, we were 7-6 (4-4 in conference) his first year here lol... last year was abysmal but who knows, maybe he'll bounce back.
It's not just football though!
- Men's basketball was competent and competitive forever under Al Skinner. Skinner had one sub-.500 season and was fired. Steve Donahue, Jim Christian, and Earl Grant have strung together a remarkably consistent stretch of 15 straight seasons of being WELL under .500 in conference with only 2 of those seasons above .500 overall. Forget NCAA tournaments, this stretch of hirings and firings has done nothing to get us back to being anything more than an ACC laughingstock.
- Women's basketball had the wonderful Cathy Inglese for ages until she was inexplicably forced out. This one was even worse than firing Skinner. In 18 seasons since, we've had just 3 above .500 overall and 2 above .500 in conference. Sylvia Crawley, Erik Johnson, and JBM have all been part of the same fire-hire-fire-hire train that men's basketball has been attempting and things are going even worse for them.
We're lucky men's hockey had Jerry York and a transition plan in place for when he retired.
So again -- is it impossible to fire a head coach and do better? Of course not! But BC's track record on this has been horrendous, and Coach Crowley has almost an identical coaching history (and way better historical success) to TOB/Jags, Al Skinner, and Cathy Inglese. I saw what pushing out a capable and competent coach did to those programs just because they had a couple years of not meeting their previous standards. It has never, ever ended well for us.
You are free to disagree with my reasoning here, and I know you do, but I type all this out to support my claim that this has nothing to do with me having spoken to Kinger in person a handful of times after a few games over the years. She is not my "best friend" just like you're not here because you're a "jilted parent" -- I'm sure we are both guilty of hyperbole in our assessment of the other -- but she certainly has my respect for what she's done and where she's brought us as a program in her time here. Combine all this with the precipitous decline in women's hockey for Hockey East (and to a lesser extent eastern hockey as a whole) and every bit of evidence I have from following women's hockey and Boston College as an institution over the years is pointing to "Kinger is not the problem" for me.
If BC wants to compete nationally in women's hockey again, they're going to need a serious NIL budget and serious increases in the coaches' budgets for recruiting travel evaluation and other program costs. No idea where that money's going to come from until I win Powerball. They'll also need the rest of the league to improve along with them, because we have seen time and time again that when one team is able to climb to the elite in the conference, not having any true in-conference iron to sharpen iron has left them coming up short in the NCAA tournament.
In the near term I will settle for being good in the league again and we can take it from there.
