It's not about wanting Cal back.
Its did we move on from Cal in the right direction?
So hypothetically if Pope was the best we could do maybe we should have stuck with Cal.
Even though it came crashing down in spectacular fashion, I still enjoyed the " Rob and Reed " show more than anything I've seen from this team.
This current UK is shaping up as one of the most bland vanilla group of players in recent memory.
No player is worth the price of a ticket to watch play.
I get the frustration but Cal lost to Oakland, Cal lost to St. Pete. In his last 4 years UK had not beat a ranked team by December 17 in the season. Right direction might be debatable but its hard to argue that we haven't seen some improvement overall.
Our frustration is that we've lost some big time made for TV matchups -Games that Cal would refuse to play if he wasn't even contractually required or pressured from the administration. I give Pope credit for wanting the smoke. He is just living with the results of not having a team prepared for it.
Right direction is also questionable in the sense that we were hoping for Hurley, who might have won but would have been caustic with the fanbase and Drew who was about as exciting as mudding drywall. Frankly in retrospect I'm glad we didn't get either of those guys, and both would have demanded a huge contract with a monster buyout - and remember, they both told us no.
So who was left after that? Beard?
I dunno, I get that Pope is struggling and the fanbase is frustrated but its too easy to say coach X would have us winning right now forgetting that we had two no's in the tank and were on our second tier choices.