Jumping the gun

Shit. It WAS too good to be true.

Monson says he'll be back for another year

A day after I went to bed giddy about the future, my hopes again have been dashed. Fitting, that Monson should disappoint us yet again, in the same way his teams have been disappointing us for seven years now.

Being that we here at The National Anthem Before A Cubs Game are hurt, angry, and confused, it's only right that we should resort to mockery like a sixth-grader.

"I'm not going to resign. I have no plans but to see this through." --Dan Monson

See what, exactly, through? You putz, you're in the eighth year of your five-year rebuilding plan. What's left to accomplish? An 0-16 Big Ten season? Losing at home to Hamline? The first Gopher basketball game since 1932 attended by fewer than a hundred people?

"We at Minnesota expect more than a 10th-place finish in the Big Ten. ... We want to get back to the 'Big Dance' and the Final Four, and if I didn't think this coach was capable of doing that, he wouldn't be standing here." -- Joel Maturi

Was he sitting down?

No, let's examine this topic seriously. What in seven years of failure has convinced you that a Dan Monson-coached team could make the Final Four? The pileup of losing seasons? The total lack of competition for a Big Ten title? The fact that the Gophers have never even come anywhere NEAR winning a Big Ten tournament title? Seriously, Joel, I want to hear this from you, and then I want to find out where you get your consciousness-altering drugs, because it seems like a hell of a happy world you live in.

"I don't have a magic wand. Timetables and magic wands are dangerous." --Dan Monson

First of all, what the hell is that supposed to mean? What is this, the Phantom Tollbooth? Timetables and magic wands are dangerous? How about newts, purple rabbits, and the number eight? Are those dangerous too?

We're not asking for you to wave your damn arms and give us a Big Ten title, Dan. We KNOW what the hell it takes to compete in the Big Ten - you have to play defense and you have to rebound and occasionally you have to be able to score, and your teams have consistently failed on the first two and usually on the third. You're going to have to recruit more than the scrapings at the bottom of the talent barrel to make that happen, which is something you've never been able to do. And you should be able to turn it around in something less than SEVEN DAMN YEARS.

Read between the lines of that statement, folks. I'm serious. Look at what Monson's really saying here:

"I don't know how to fix this. I can't do anything about it. Everything I've tried so far has made us get worse. The only thing I can tell you for sure is, while I don't know how we'll get better, I can say for sure it won't be happening soon."