[NU Sports] Butler

[Eric West]

I remember answering this same question four years ago. Butler is in the 
Horizon League. This year they were also a bubble team (if even that) 
until they won their conference tournament, finally defeating a 
Milwaukee team (remember them?) who had swept the Bulldogs in the 
regular season. Butler's season was actually considered a great 
disappointment until these past two weekends, but the Horizon League 
gave them a much easier road back to the dance. If you are suggesting 
that NU should switch conferences, that would actually be far more 
likely to end the "streak" than firing the most successful coach in 
decades, at the end of the most successful season of men's basketball in 
history. (And no, you haven't technically said he should be fired right 
now, but you have made your overall feelings clear.)

Is Carmody not good with the media? Does he give bad interviews (or not 
enough)? Perhaps there have been too many years of trash talk from 
Syracuse and Missouri alums in the newsroom? I really have to wonder at 
the source of negativity from practically every writer except Teddy 
Greenstein. At least BC has won some postseason games -- unlike, say, 
Pat Fitzgerald, who is also the first NU football coach since Francis 
Peay who didn't win a share of the Big Ten title within four years of 
being hired. If we're going to ask how long it's going to take Bill 
Carmody to achieve something that has never ever been achieved before by 
anybody, why not question Fitz's ability to take us somewhere we've 
already been?

I am not meaning this to be as harsh as it may look over email (and to 
be clear, I would be fine keeping Fitz forever), but I am puzzled at 
where all this is coming from. I don't want to start quoting Linus. :)

Eric West
e-west at northwestern.edu


On 3/26/2011 9:01 PM, Alan Abrahamson wrote:
> News item: Butler advances to Final Four for second straight year.
>
> News item: Northwestern, for 73rd consecutive season, fails to earn a
> bid to NCAA tournament.
>
> Discuss.
>
> Who wants to tell me, just to jump start the conversation, that Butler
> is recruiting superior athletes?
>
> Or that Butler student-athletes couldn't hack it academically at Northwestern?
>