The CheckerBoard

He can hire the best coach available, but he still put this program through needless embarrassment and set up the next coach for unnecessary difficulty. If we weren't going to do what it took to get Gruden or he wasn't a realistic possibility this should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago.

I agree that Hart blew it if either of these scenarios is true.

That said, it's conceivable that Gruden showed interest until earlier this week when he finally said "thanks, but no thanks," regardless of what we were willing to offer.

If Gruden truly decided after some thought that the college game isn't where he belongs, it's not really on Hart.

That's completely ludicrous. If Gruden's name is out there and you have the people that cover the team not shutting it down of course the fans are going to go batcrap insane. This isn't some irrational response on our part. If any team in the country had their actual media who do it for a living saying "Yeah it's possible" they would all go equally off the deep end. That isn't our fault.

If they weren't going to do what it took(and they should have had some clue what that was), then they should have shut this down a long time ago. If they weren't willing to go 12M for his whole staff then why even talk to him? Do you think he's going to give you a discount for some reason?

You said fire Dave Hart..Dave Hart never said we did or did not have a chance. With the reports we have had how can anybody at this point completely stand up and say that We did or did not have a shot at? It is ludicrous to believe anything more. Dave Hart understands Public Relations better than we do. I will follow his lead.

How can you look at this as anything but a colossal PR blunder? We look like a bunch of buffoons and our next head coach is going to be, at some level, resented by a lot of our fan base. If that was Hart's master PR plan he's a complete idiot. He botched it. If he had killed it two weeks ago and said it was ridiculous people would be excited about the other candidates. Now there's a cloud over the whole situation.

Sorry but it's your fault. You let yourself go off the deep end period. We're all big boys here, if you couldn't tame your expectations accordingly, that's on you. Wes, Ryan, and the 247 staff continually said there's some interest but they would believe it when they see it.

And what is so embarasing about going after Gruden? It didnt work out, and now we move on towards a whole list of quality candidates.

People were at the same fever pitch for Gruden two weeks ago and we had barley even fired CDD. Saying anything at all about JG at that point takes away any kind of leverage that you may have had. If he would had came out and said that Gruden was ridiculous two weeks ago all it would have done is devalue the position.

I will say it again. Dave Hart is not Mike Hamilton.. That alone is good enough for me.

I couldn't agree with Alex more. We are the ones that put the rumors out there. We are the ones that kept "banging the drums." We are the ones who should get fired or at least apologize. I haven't seen one person who for the past 11 days has thrown one dookey (this is a family board) after another against the wall apologize or even admit they were making it up. They should be fired. This AD didn't screw up a damn thing IMO.

Exactly!

Many of the fans are a bunch of gullible maniacal idiots.

We made this mess and perpetuated these rumors and so you blame Hart for not cleaning it up? How about taking a little responsibility yourself?