Carr and Smith
By jeb
The departure of Lloyd Carr has really left me wondering. Where is the outrage at the crazy Michigan Fan base? Take a look at Lloyd Carr’s resume, it is incredibly similar to that of Tubby Smith. Yet when Tubby leaves to take another job UK fans are lambasted in the media both locally and nationally for unreasonable expectations, whereas Carr resigns and not a negative word.
Tubby Smith at UK
10 Seasons
263-83 76%
5 Regular Season Conference Titles
1 NCAA title Year 1
Biggest complaint: No final fours for 9 years
Lloyd Carr at Michigan
13 Seasons
121-40 75%
5 Conference Titles
1 NCAA Title Year 3
Biggest complaint: Only defeted Jim Tressel 1 time
Now lets look at the schools:
UK: Most wins and highest winning percentage in Division 1-A Basketball
Michigan: Most wins and highest winning percentage in Division 1-A Football
And a quick google check show that there are 3,800 pages returned for “Fire Tubby Smith” while “Fire Lloyd Carr” returns 10,400.
After the jump we will look at the media reaction.
UK and Tubby Smith in the media.
From the New York Times
But Smith’s consistent excellence did not appear to be enough for Kentucky’s fans and administration.
From Michael Wilbon in the Washington Post (Link)
The nerve of the Kentucky people is stunning, how they think any season that doesn’t end with a Final Four trip is utter failure and a reason to roast the coach like a marshmallow.
From Cheryl Truman the Lexington Herald Leader
We should be ashamed of ourselves. We drove away UK basketball coach Tubby Smith, a decent guy and generally successful coach, because he didn’t give us what we’re sure is our Kentucky birthright: Absolute dominance of American men’s college basketball.
Gene Wojciechowski ESPN.com
How do you deep-six a guy who won you a national championship, who wins nearly eight of out 10 games he coaches, who gets rave reviews from his peers? How do you stick a buyout fork in a distinguished 10-year Kentucky career that has lasted longer than beloved (pre-Louisville, of course) Rick Pitino’s tenure in Lexington and includes exactly zero NCAA penalties?
You don’t. You can’t … except at Kentucky, where, said Wildcats junior guard Joe Crawford, “people expect us to be in the Final Four every year.”
Dick Vitale
It is amazing to me to hear the Kentucky fans and boosters complain about Tubby Smith. This man deserves better. All he has done is win a national championship and average over 26 wins per season. He leads the Wildcats to the NCAA tournament every season, and this is still one of the proud programs in America.
Michigan and Lloyd Carr in the media.
Stewart Mandel SI.com
The measuring stick by which all Michigan or Ohio State coaches are ultimately measured is their performance against each other. Ever since Jim Tressel’s 2001 arrival in Columbus, Carr simply hasn’t measured up, losing six of seven meetings. And while Carr delivered Wolverines fans their first national title in nearly 50 years back in his third season (1997), the ensuing decade has seen Michigan fail to return to that perch.
While Carr’s teams made frequent visits to their traditional Mecca, the Rose Bowl, including three times in the past four seasons, Wolverines fans watched with frustration as programs like USC, LSU, Texas and, most gallingly, Ohio State, eclipsed theirs in notoriety by reaching a more modern pinnacle: the BCS Championship.
Despite enjoying as visible a national recruiting profile as any school in the country, Michigan has been stuck a rung below the truly elite circle for quite some time now, as evidenced by their string of four straight bowl losses — including two lopsided Rose Bowl defeats to the Trojans. This season’s stunning opening-day loss to I-AA Appalachian State served as the ultimate confirmation of that reality to even the most blinded of Wolverines diehards and seemed to warm a whole lot of previously pro-Carr loyalists to the pending inevitably of a regime change.
Drew Sharp Detroit Free Press (Link)
It was time. He knew it. He knew it last year. The game changed and he was too tired to keep pace. It simply isn’t enough anymore winning three of every four games while maintaining a program that’s remained above NCAA investigative reproach.
Doug Karsch (Link)
So I think Lloyd Carr probably won’t be appreciated for what he did until he’s retired. With that said, it’s probably time for him to move on. At times I think a program starts to get, maybe stale. And Lloyd himself said prior to this season that his agenda can’t exceed the agenda of the program. And when that starts to happen, he’s doing no good.
Pat Forde (Link)
On Lloyd Carr’s career: Phenomenal, consistent success. … The problem was the high point was awfully early in his tenor. Has he been really able to live up to that since then? Not quite. You can’t knock the guy, he’s done awfully well but your kind of are always left with this taste, jeez, they should have been a little bit better. Why didn’t they win this game?