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Putting Out Fires
Published: 2/21/2008 1:08 PM
Last Modified: 2/21/2008 1:08 PM

I love a story that former Texas A&M football coach R.C. Slocum once told in regard to the "win now" mentality that people have.
Once upon a time, Slocum said we used to be patient. If you wanted to get a meal away from home, you had to go inside a restaurant, sit down and wait to be served. Nowadays, we pull up to a drive thru joint and, if there are three cars in line ahead of us, we speed away and go somewhere else because we don't have the patience to wait.
A&M chased Slocum away and shouldn't have. As it turns out, he was the guy keeping the program afloat instead of the guy holding it back, as some alleged.
Let met give you two other out of state coaches who shouldn't be on the chopping block:
--Missouri State coach Barry Hinson is rumored to be in hot water because he hasn't taken the Bears to the NCAA Tournament. If Hinson is fired, he should file a malpractice suit against the NCAA Selection Committee. The Bears were kept out of the NCAA despite an RPI of 21 a couple of seasons ago. No team with a higher RPI has ever been left out.
--Rice coach Willis Wilson is enduring a dreadful season. Hopefully, smarter heads (isn't Rice big on academia) will prevail and he will get to stick around as long as he wants. Nobody has had a worse facility to recruit to than Wilson. Autry Court is a throwback arena in a negative sense. A big blue curtain divides the playing surface from whatever (ask the Wizard of Oz) is behind the curtain. It reminds me of an old high school gym, where you pull open the curtain for the start of a senior class play.
Despite Autry Court's pitfalls (the Owls are playing at other venues this season during a renovation), Wilson has recruited NBA players to Rice and the Owls have often been competitive.
Sometimes you have to grade on a curve. Wilson gets a passing grade, never mind his record.


Reader Comments 1 Total
W. G. (5 years ago)
The firings of R. C. Slocum and Frank Solich were about the dumbest in the history of college football. Their successors were really "something else".
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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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