+1

That's the way I took Arkley's OPINON / EDITORIAL column also. Reading it got me to thinking how many times in the last few years I have ask Jason or Russ "wonder what JS is thinking about something". There answer always was "Don't know, HAE NOT TALKED TO HIM. " My caps not theirs. Guys need to re-read this it was all about JS not Saul.

Forget saul . Jason was not reporting. His opinion and yours are different.

I 1000% agree the new Prez needs to take a hard look at the JS track record.

The main takeaway of this thread should be this: Arkley wrote an OPINION piece. He is entitled to whatever opinion he wants in such a piece.

The rest of his articles in the Messenger are factual, and -- as a former sportwriter myself -- I can tell you he does an excellent job reporting the facts. He is a high-caliber reporter for this market size. And as for 71 BOBCAT's criticism of Arkley "lacking motivation" to go to a bigger city... um, maybe he doesn't want to. Should people criticize any of us for not moving to, say, New York City?

Guys, WHO CARES about this article in the big picture? What's done is done. We all wish Saul well, and we all agree Schaus is under pressure to hit a home run with the next hire. Debating about if OU is too "win oriented" doesn't matter much. Let's go get a good coach and win... and I will personally hope he's a nice guy too.

In the meantime, I'm happy to have Jason Arkley on the beat.

There really is no ladder upwards anymore, anyways. The mid-tier markets are gone. The big boys hire straight out of the elite schools. Staying in small markets really proved to be the best way to survive in the medium run. There’s no money, but it’s been somewhat stable. Not much longer, though.

This IS an opinion piece. And surely, Arkley is entitled to his opinion. I’m also entitled to mine, and when I read his piece, my first opinion was that Arkley should disengage his cranium from up inside Saul’s gluteus maximus. The emotion in Arkly’s words indicates (in my opinion) that he got way too personally attached to Saul for a beat writer. You need some level of objectivity, and if you want to criticize him as a sports writer, that would be a valid thing to bring up.

I, for one, have grown tired of hearing about injuries as an excuse for this team’s performance. And I’m definitely over it being used as some reason why Saul should have been retained. Were the injuries unfortunate and untimely? Yes. Did they impact the team’s ability to win games? Yes. But the only reason why the injuries were SO impactful was because SAUL COULDN’T RECRUIT!

Over the past three years, if Saul had been able to attract a depth of MAC talent to the roster, the injuries would have been less impactful. None of the Saul apologists (including Arkley, clearly) seem to be willing to connect those dots. They just stop at “The injuries were devastating” without fully acknowledging why. There were nowhere near enough good players behind those who were getting injured to pick up the additional workload.

Maybe JS realized this and didn’t want to continue this cycle of ineffective recruiting. I don’t think we’ll ever really know. Let’s hope the next coach does recruit the talent needed to win AND does so in a scandal-free way. I still think that at OHIO, those two things can be accomplished.

I think some of you really like to romanticize about the strength and depth of benches in mac hoops.

Funny you say that. While watching some of the quarterfinals last night, I was thinking the teams playing in Cleveland this weekend not only have better athletes than what Ohio has, but also deeper rosters.

Another day, another dolt calling people a 'saulaholic' because they don't think the same way you do. Enough with it man. He's gone, move on from this juvenile crap.

And if you think the AD is fine, you're not paying close enough attention. He obviously is right now, but if the seat isn't getting warm, OU will be demonstrating what is important - and winning isn't it.

Bingo. Agree on both accounts.

This is why I think we see our next HC making less than Saul did. Because A)I don't think our President, our AD, the OBC or anybody else is raising the funds required (or even have the desire to) put more money into athletics and B) We don't want to find ourselves tied to yet another lame duck coach in 3-4 years if they aren't performing and not being able to afford to buy them out and move on if desired, like happened here with Saul.

I think there are still plenty of opportunities to report and write. It requires a lot of hustle. While traditional papers continue to die, online is wide open.

This. Calm down people. The out-of-control emotion of many on this board is just ridiculous. Saul is no longer, please just move on.

Bobcatlove wants Pitino .. nuff said. Hey, let's cheat or do whatever other unethical or illegal things we need to do to win. Gotta love alums who want to win at no cost.