Tis the lot of the university basketball or football coach to ever and always be disappointed… Nay, even at times disgusted. He looketh upon th’inconstant student fan and despairs. He looketh upon the arrested student athlete and despairs. He is (in a phrase UD coined) coacha inconsolata, a perpetually grieving figure who stands amid the wreckage of his dreams. What profiteth it that his salary is the highest not only at the university, but in the entire state, if he cannot bend his wayward charges to his will?
Michigan State University’s coaches are among the most inconsolable of them all. Izzo, gazing at the charred ruins of East Lansing, weeps at his wayward ones. MSU’s football coach, for his part, has abandonment issues. “The fans that left, that’s just not right,” he says of the huge numbers of students who walked out before the end of the last game (to say nothing of the students who bought tickets and didn’t show up at all, and the students who didn’t buy tickets).
Indeed the whole university is aflutter. Having spent all its money on stadiums and coaches and Adzillatrons, MSU is staring down the barrel of the end of its raison d’être if the little buggers won’t play along.
October 8th, 2014 at 10:33AM
I’d love to hear Izzo’s answer to the simple question “just what’s wrong with any student(s) not being all that interested in football (or substitute any or all sports)?”