• The KillerFrogs

Diehards: New SMU coach Sonny Dykes raves about Gary Patterson, calls TCU top-15 job in country

flyfishingfrog

Active Member
hate to tell you, but killer cheated as well
Is that kind of saying everyone still does it - so we are all the same?

I knew Jim pretty well going back to his days in Pocatello even - comparing anything we did in the past to hiring a coach that had literally ran from NCAA investigations that resulted in penalties at every place he had been successful just so you could “win” - is idiotic on your part
 

Eight

Member
funny how some will rationalize things, damn near romanticize them.

people are only too happy to pick up rocks and throw them and then defend the sins close to them in some way or the other.

my position has been pretty clear on this and yet some continue to miss it.

the biggest sin in this entire conversation is not what ron meyer, bobby collins, dave bliss, those guilty on the tcu staffs, those smu and tcu boosters, but what happened to quite possibly the most decent and honorable person to ever grace the tcu athletic department.

jim wacker was that rare person who actually lived his faith. he had won multiple national titles at swtsu and was brought to ft worth to turn around the tcu football program. without him knowing it he had has legs cut out from under him by the very people who hired him by going behind his back and continuing to do what he told his players and the booster that must stop.

as i said before, i don't know why kd finally went to tom perry, maybe it was guilt, maybe he knew the ncaa was about to start digging into tcu after what they were told by jeff atkins. we all know what happened to kd, the program, and wackers time in ft worth, but what continues to be washed over is people in the athletic department who knew what went on kept their jobs after the betrayal.

guess i am just an [ Arschloch], don't know, but why pick up stones and throw at over programs instead of just enjoying what we are fortunate to enjoy today.
 

TopFrog

Lifelong Frog
funny how some will rationalize things, damn near romanticize them.

jim wacker was that rare person who actually lived his faith. he had won multiple national titles at swtsu and was brought to ft worth to turn around the tcu football program. without him knowing it he had has legs cut out from under him by the very people who hired him by going behind his back and continuing to do what he told his players and the booster that must stop.
You can't just stop. If you are going to end it then it would need to be done gradually. Had you just stopped players would have jumped ship, blew the whistle. The NCAA was already on the program anyway. Wacker naively thought self-reporting and beating them to a punch would soften things. It didn't.
 

flyfishingfrog

Active Member
I don’t think anyone was really denying we were doing things in the past - my point was when SMU wanted to get relevant again but at basketball - they went and hired a known cheater because that is their way - fast and loose

While we tried a couple of coaches that were straight shooters but struggled to succeed and through patience hit the mother load with Jamie

We could have traded ethics for speed also - but we seem to have learned at least something from our past while they didn’t - as evidenced by their recent exclusion from post season eligibility

But you choose to ignore that because it doesn’t fit your narrative
 

nrhfrog

Active Member
The Jim Wacker was one of the highest and lowest eras of TCU football.

Jim Wacker was truly a great man.....and a great coach. He brought class and enthusiasm to a near-dead program. He proved that we could win at TCU by taking us to the Bluebonnet Bowl in his second year. The next Fall, following a Top 10 recruiting class, TCU and Fort Worth was full of optimism and excitement....only to be decimated by the revelations of payoffs. Wacker immediately suspended 7 players including All American, K. Davis.

Cheating was going on all over the SWC in those days. He said from the get go....no cheating in his program. Anyone that had followed his coaching career at Texas Lutheran and SWTS would know he was a man of his word. The NCAA knew there was cheating going on everywhere and encouraged schools to turn themselves in. I believe the NCAA used the term "self police", which Wacker did when he discovered the payments. Instead of the NCAA giving us credit for our self-imposed penalties, it imposed some of the harshest penalties ever against TCU. Instead of standing by Wacker, TCU abandoned him and let him dig his way out of the multi-year "living death penalty" imposed by the NCAA with virtually no support. It was agonizing as a fan as our short-handed teams faded midway through the season for several years. The other schools learned the lesson.....never, ever, ever admit to anything. A & M's Jackie Sherrill (always one step ahead of the NCAA) took particular delight in humiliating TCU every year by running up the score.

Wacker beat the odds, though, and returned TCU to a winning record (7-4, I think) and was on fire in recruiting for the next year when Minnesota came calling. All Wacker asked for was an extension of his contract (not even a raise), but TCU did nothing. Minnesota gladly stole him away (to the dismay of many TCU fans, but to the quiet glee of a few very influential alums). TCU then hired Pat Sullivan who had never been a head coach of anything..... paid him double Wacker's salary and gave him the natural grass Wacker had been requesting for years. The reason he was hired? Because a couple of the big wigs (I will not say their names in the interest of "forgiving and forgetting") decided he would make a great coach based on a speech they heard him give in NY. The hire was a disaster and dang near permanently destroyed our program.

The horrible way we treated Wacker was the closest I ever came to giving up my season tickets and stopping my meager (in comparison to the big money alums) donations to TCU. I will forever be grateful to Bill Koehler for leading us out of the darkness with the hiring of our first real AD, Eric Hymen and subsequent hiring of Fran (who brought us Gary Patterson, TCU's greatest coach). I only regret that Coach Wacker never had a chance to see TCU become the program he knew it could be.
 

Eight

Member
I don’t think anyone was really denying we were doing things in the past - my point was when SMU wanted to get relevant again but at basketball - they went and hired a known cheater because that is their way - fast and loose

While we tried a couple of coaches that were straight shooters but struggled to succeed and through patience hit the mother load with Jamie

We could have traded ethics for speed also - but we seem to have learned at least something from our past while they didn’t - as evidenced by their recent exclusion from post season eligibility

But you choose to ignore that because it doesn’t fit your narrative

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Eight

Member
You can't just stop. If you are going to end it then it would need to be done gradually. Had you just stopped players would have jumped ship, blew the whistle. The NCAA was already on the program anyway. Wacker naively thought self-reporting and beating them to a punch would soften things. It didn't.

wait top, others on this thread have told me the decision was based upon tcu doing the right thing and not an act of self-preservation.

funny thing about players jumping ship if the payments ceased. aside from kd there weren't too many of the players who were paid that were truly performing on the field
 

Hoosierfrog

Tier 1
wait top, others on this thread have told me the decision was based upon tcu doing the right thing and not an act of self-preservation.

funny thing about players jumping ship if the payments ceased. aside from I’d there weren’t too many of the players who were paid that were truly performing on the field.

I don’t know, that was one the better teams in a long time. So maybe not performing to today’s standards, but pretty darned good for the time.
 

Eight

Member

the 84 team was the best tcu in quite some time, but if you look at many of the players who contributed were younger players recruited by wacker, jucos recruited by wacker, a couple of walk-ons and some older players from the dry era.

kd was the bell cow of that team no doubt and there were some older players who mattered, but had they left it would not have done near to the program what happened when the payments came to light


 

LSU Game Attendee

Active Member
The hire was a disaster and dang near permanently destroyed our program.

I am 100% on board that running off Wacker for Sullivan was an extreme injustice. However, while Sullivan brought the frustrating X's and O's (SMOKE DRAW ad nauseum), his staff's recruiting of Jimmies and Joes was flat amazing (unbelievable, even).
 
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