I understand a lot of what you all are saying, but it goes to my original question, at what point do we say "hit the road" with Dana? It's not just a matter of expectations, because I've come to expect very little from him, but I think we have to expect to finish in the top half of the conference on a yearly basis or we've lowered our expectations too much. Five losses, year after year after year, is just too much for a program that nearly everyone on a national level would put us in the top 40, most in the top 30. A top 40 program does not have five losses year after year after year. If Dana can get us there and keep us there (fewer than 5 losses every year), then to me, that's the line we can't keep crossing. I think we've given him more than enough time to adjust to a new conference.
I hear a lot of people say, "Well, who ya gonna get next?" My reply has always been, "You gotta break up with the girlfriend you have before you can start asking other girls out." (That is, unless you're Oliver Luck.)
I hope we go 8-4 or better. I never cheer against my alma mater. I do think you have to evaluate your program, however, and I would hope Shane Lyons respects WVU enough to expect that anything more than four losses is beneath a program such as ours. Personally, I think it's realistic for 8-4 to be a down year, 7-5 to be our worst (and rare), and it's realistic to average 9-3 with an occasional 10-2 and once in 20 years 11-1.
