Ball State Gives Up On Football, Lets Hoke Walk

I'm so very disappointed in my alma mater today.

As wonderful, incredible, amazing as the 2008 football season was to watch Ball State rise as high as 12th in the polls - almost assuredly as high as they will ever go - it is just as disheartening to see that Ball State's leadership has absolutely no intention of keeping it going, or even attempting to.

Brady Hoke, the coach and architect of the 12-0 start, bolted BSU for San Diego State over the weekend. It is, at best, a lateral football move and is probably more like a downgrade. Hoke's salary will be more than twice what it was at BSU, so he has that going for him. But all reports are he would've stayed if Ball State had done one simple thing...give his assistants the raises they deserved.

The offer on the table for Hoke was 390,000 dollars a year (SDSU will be paying him 700k a year for 5 years). But when Hoke asked president Jo Ann Gora about raises for his assistants - you know, like Stan Parrish, who's only one of five finalists for the national asst. coach of the year award, or Mark Smith, who, as much as he was shredded by people like me the last few years, actually put together a pretty solid defense this year - Gora said no.

That was it. Hoke was gone. A Ball State alum. A great guy. Exactly the kind of person Ball State should have representing their football program and their university. Done.

This was the equivalent of Notre Dame saying thanks but no thanks to Frank Leahy after the four straight undefeated seasons in the late 1940s. Florida dumping Steve Spurrier after he won the 1996 national championship. Nebraska chasing out Tom Osborne after his back to back titles in the mid-1990s. Simply a humiliating day.

Ball State should be ashamed of itself. They could get a new coach who's better. I really doubt it. This university has shown no aptitude for achieving anything in athletics. Ronny Thompson saga, firing the women's volleyball coach after his 1st losing season out of EIGHTEEN, pick your humiliating move. This school, for all its talk of achieving, seems to have no desire to achieve what would give us the most publicity.