The AntiBowden

Tommy Bowden Post Game News Conference

This week was a cupcake game and so there aren't many tidbits in the press conference, but I'll put a few quotes up.

Question: After the week you had last week, is this a springboard into your practice next week? It is going to be easier to practice?

Tommy Bowden: "We just need to feel good about ourselves. Now you can see why Oklahoma starts with a Division I-AA, why LSU starts with a Division I-AA and Ohio State starts with Division I-AA. You don't have to play real sharp and can still win, and play a lot of guys. I want to feel like those guys felt when they won their Division I-AA games."

Ah yes, the old "we should have started with a cupcake" excuse. Tommy says this as if it's only the first game of the year where his team crumbles. I seem to remember we do it at lots of different times of the year, it just depends on the strength of the team we play. Last year it was Virginia Tech, this year it was Alabama, time of year didn't matter.

Question: Can you just talk about this week. How long of a week was it for you?

Tommy Bowden: "It was long. It was an embarrassing loss. That makes it longer. You don't sleep much. At least you can sleep tonight."

Awwww, poor Tommy. I'm surprised he can ever sleep well at night knowing how much money hey gets paid to lay eggs.

Question: What do you get out of a game like this?

Tommy Bowden: "You can feel good about yourself for just a little bit. And then you can carry on. The thing in this profession is that everybody loses. As I brought up to my team last week, when Georgia lost to South Carolina and when Virginia Tech lost to LSU, some teams respond and find their pride. They bounce back. There's a reason those teams separate."

"Everybody loses. There were 60 teams that lost last week. There are 60 teams that will lose this week. For some reasons there are some teams that separate that go on and win championships and win BCS bowl games. We'd like to be one of those teams. You can't do it unless you respond like this after a loss."

10 years at Clemson and apparently Tommy hasn't figured out what those reasons are. What an idiot. I'll give you one reason that some teams win championships: they don't make bullshit excuses after losses like "hey 60 teams lost this week."

Question: Do you think your team will understand the perspective of this one come tomorrow, because you didn't really prove anything today other than you won a game?

Tommy Bowden: "I think the biggest thing is that you have a week to feel good about yourself. Our guys have worked awful hard since January, and to play as bad as they did, they need to have something to feel good about for a while. At some point you need to feel like your work is paying off and being productive. I guess that's why most of your top 25 teams open up with the teams that they do. There must be some positives."

This is amazing to me. He is so damned arrogant it's beyond belief, and nobody ever calls him on it. With that one little half-sentence there he's shifted the blame for the Alabama game completely over to the players. People actually buy this stuff and stand behind this guy. Let me state the obvious just so it's perfectly clear: the performance of a football team is the direct responsibility of the head coach. In addition, our players did not play bad last week; they were put in adverse situations by poor strategy and poor coaching. Good coaches put their players in position to easily succeed, Bowden puts our players in position to succeed by some miracle.

Question: When you look back on this game and see over 400 yards given up by your defense, will you be worried?

Tommy Bowden: "Yeah, but we played a whole bunch of players (at the end). Right now we have one dominant pass-rusher, Ricky Sapp, and he didn't play. We've got to find a dominant pass-rush. Da'Quan looks like that's the other guy. We've got to find some way to generate more of a consistent pass-rush. We did play some down-the-line guys there at the end, but still, that's too much yardage, so that would be a concern."

Here again is another blatant mistruth by Tommy Bowden. We gave up over 200 yards to the Citadel in the first half alone and that was when our starters were all in. He does this sort of thing all the time and people just eat it right up... I guess I'll just keep making these posts and hopefully people will catch on.

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Posted by Tom on Saturday, September 06, 2008 | Permalink