Okay, okay, no one actually called for Val Hale to fire GC; no, instead, they just said that they wish they were Crowton's boss so they could have beaten GC and berated him for leaving them grumpy until next season.

Dang, I'm already getting sidetracked. My intent was not to talk about how whiny most of these complainers sound.

No, I just wanted to share some random thoughts I had while reading these threads:

So, here are my random thoughts:

For football fans, Summer really bites. With only baseball and golf going on, there is nothing out there with the type of adrenalin-feuled, testosterone-driven competition to sate our aggressive influences. With nothing out there, we turn on each other, and write posts that are the internet version of: "Youz talking to me? I said, youz talking to me?"


Who are BYU fans to be talking about how a new coach is doing? I mean really, people! Of all the schools in the country, BYU, Penn St., and Florida St. are the last places to go to get informed information on judging a new coach. LaVell was around for 30 years!!

Am I the only person on the board who finds it funny that we are all pontificating our point of view about how GC is or is not fixing the football program, when there are no BYU fans alive who can speak from experience?

Even the few fossils who can remember pre-LaVell can't speak on this, because we had no program before LaVell.

Truly, this is one of the only subjects that our yewt brethren can teach us about--and they must think GC is doing pretty well, since they tried to hire the clone of Gary Crowton (however, the yewts are vain enough that they specified the Gary Crowton clone with hair).


The instant-gratification generation is also apparently the faulty-memory generation, too. I remember LaVell saying (I think it was during the PBS tribute) that after his first winning season, he thought to himself: "Well, I ought to keep my job for two more years, now." It was funny in context, but LaVell was astute in his observation, because we are seeing history repeat itself.

Gary Crowton was a miracle worker in 2001 (I'm not going to debate this topic in this post, except to say that if you don't think Gary Crowton was a miracle worker in 2001, you are uninformed and wrong ), then had a terrible year in 2002.

Result? Many fans who are devoted enough to spend significant amounts of time on this board, are ready to cast him down the river if GC doesn't have another great season in 2003. Amazing. I remember hearing somewhere that Dean Smith at North Carolina went over a decade before he won his first national championship. Would we give GC the same leeway? Some would say that GC is no Dean Smith, but you know what? Dean Smith wasn't Dean Smith those first 10 years, either* .


When there are no BYU sports to talk about, the only sport left is talking about each other and trolling with posts intended to rile and infuriate.

Honestly, how many of these fire-Gary-Crowton-threads were posted because of concerns about his coaching, and how many were posted just to tick people off? I wonder.


There are 227 things about our football progam to be excited about (approximately), and 9 things to be worried about. What do you spend your time thinking about?

I'm not the first to make the observation that internet boards are a great place to observe human nature, but this is particularly evident during the long, hot summer.

We have some posters who never scored less then a 97.3% on a test in their life, who have no patience with failure, and don't remember that the other side is trying to win, too (meaning: in sports, you can do everything right and still fail because of your opponent doing it better).

We also have posters who are in love with Gary Crowton (in a manly way, of course), and are thinking about shaving their heads like GC to see if it helps them think more clearly about what offensive sets to use against a Cover 2 with the safeties switching with the corners.

One last random thought. Does anyone else still get a chuckle out of the video from our 2001 triumph over Utah, when, instead of trying to tear down the goalposts (stupid, alcohol-induced "tradition"), everyone just wanted to rub Gary Crowton's bald head? The video from the ESPN TV broadcast was outstanding for staying with the game during the celebration, and that was the image that has stuck with me.



*For those of you who found this observation too obtuse to be readily understood, the point was that Dean Smith was not the iconic figure during his first ten years, that he later became. It is only in hindsight that we can discount the faith that North Carolina showed to Dean Smith in his first decade.

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"Oh, Mercy yes, we've got to beat that competition.
--Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou