Butch Jones + Cincinnati Bearcats = More of the Same

When your parents give you the name Butch, your options are limited.  You can drive a dump truck...You can paint divider lines on the highway...or You can coach football.

Butch Jones coaches football. 

He's done so with moderate success at Central Michigan University, but is he the right choice for the budding University of Cincinnati Bearcats football program?  He could be but he's a risky choice if you ask me...which you didn't.

With Bearcat blood in my veins I hope this risk pays off...I hope that Mike Thomas is a good gambler and that this move is the one that we need.  If I were the Director of Athletics at the University of Cincinnati, I would have made a different move for the face of the program and it would have been one that had garnered some more attention.  I would have spent whatever money it took and I would have made a splash.

I would have moved heaven and earth...to hire Boise State's Chris Peterson .

Not because Butch can't do the job but because it would have shown NCAA football, the Big East, UC alumni and, most importantly, to the students of the University of Cincinnati that the football program means business and is here to stay.

If Peterson wasn't available, I would have called everyone I could and hired a coach with a name...with a reputation...and with a history of success.

NOT because Butch can't do it ...but because the Butch hire takes our program back in time three years, to a time when we hired coaches who were in-between their small time jobs and their big time jobs.

It's time that we show the world that the University of Cincinnati is a big job.

A team in Ohio, the heartbeat of this country's football culture, in a BCS conference and coming off of an undefeated regular season is not a "stepping stone"...it's what you use the stepping stone to get to.

Hiring Butch negates the progress we made the last three years and it negates the undefeated season.  It's what my email said the UC's athletic director said...and it's what the memo line will say on my alumni contribution check (which will be smaller than usual this year...I’d have spent more money for a bigger name).

I hope I am wrong.

I really really hope I am wrong.