Moreso than his poor coaching hires, hill’s lack of fundraising and growing the donor base is his biggest flaw. Also, how poorly we treat our MBB program
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I struggle to see anything he has done particularly well except success in baseball/softball.
It’s unfortunate that we didn’t know certain things before Biff Poggi was hired (I say facetiously):
- He had no prior college football coaching experience.
- Charlotte was moving up to the AAC in his first year, which would have been a challenge for any coach.
- Historically, the team had only one successful season followed by a poor one.
- We needed a major improvement in fundraising.
- Building a strong program requires time to develop a coaching staff, culture, and proper personnel.
- A complete new staff was going to need to be developed. We were not going to hit a home run in the first year or two. We had not done it in our history.
Despite all of this, Charlotte hired Biff with the understanding that it would take time for him to grow and adjust. It’s important to recognize that pulling the trigger on firing a coach too early can be just as, if not more, detrimental than firing too late.
Are you saying we didn’t know he did not have college coaching experience? We definitely knew but hired him anyways.you cannot build a culture if you are a poor leader, hire inexperienced assistants, and generally act like a clueless jerk
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Leadership knew Biff had never coached a college program and articulated that he would have to learn on the job. Leadership made no effort to address Biff’s attire. They seemed to be promoting it and only after they fired him did it become an issue. Why complain about a coach not controlling his players when the AD could not control the coach themselves.
Still, I am not blaming the AD.
It seems Biff was let go because of his push for change in the athletic department and his drive to promote success. Was this a fight to maintain the status quo as opposed to making necessary changes to drive success? Most people and departments resist change.
I would have preferred to continue with the talent Biff was bringing in over the past two years and expect coaching adjustments and new coordinators to address certain concerns. Facing Appalachian and UNC at home while tackling a rebuild, in lieu of giving Biff another year, seems to be tragic. We played UNC very well for over a half in Chapel Hill. I was looking forward to how we competed this year at Richardson.
Regarding upset donors, everything I have heard has been extremely vague at best. We need more clarity. For the records, a certain number of donors are always upset regardless of the college.
While we value all donors, we must also acknowledge that our success requires more than just the ones we currently have. Biff was pushing for fresh donors, but it cannot be done in 1.5 years.
While I’m not overly fond of Biff Poggi, I did buy into the vision presented by our athletic department when he was introduced, highlighting his wealth and influence, and ability to move our program forward. The program changes he made at Michigan was emphasized upon Biff’s hiring. Apparently, our department did not welcome similar changes he was attempting to make at Charlotte. Why change, just maintain the status quo and let’s enjoy our historical success.
I didn’t expect immediate success on the field, but I believed Biff could make the program changes required for us to build long-term success and infrastructure. Now, we’ll never know.
I still do not believe the problem is with the AD. I believe the the problem is at the top of the pyramid and what is being demanded from our AD. As an overall fan group, we are naive and complacent if we believe the appropriate success metrics are being emphasized. Success at Charlotte seems to be measured by championships with no emphasis on our major sports.
“A championship is a championship at Charlotte. Leave the major sports to the flagship schools.” Heck, we just won a national championship in Frisby Golf!!
I think a lot of us are “drinking the Kool aid” believing the accusations against Biff. “He was a cheater, that did not want to work (lazy), that dressed unprofessionally (but was never required to change), that had a bad attitude and pissed off most everyone including fans, donors, employees, etc., could not raise money and was not able to win based on results over 1.5 years.”
If that’s the case, how did the guy that hired him get a contract extension? None of this makes sense. Something is not adding up.
Is that horse symbolic of Poggi, Charlotte football, Charlotte athletics, or the whole university? You may be right, our horse may be dead.
Those that do not learn from history…
I’m just curious, are you satisfied? Is your horse still alive?
Our AD sucks but so did biff. Biff would wear his michigan shorts to practice, and frequently undermined coaches in practice, plus the entire situation with lew. What about that makes you think he was oushing for success?
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On pace for second best season in history when fired. I thought the hire was shit but it’s pretty hard to fire that guy.
Then to top it off, Hill didn’t even want Albin. He wanted coordinators at P5 schools. Sounds like the chancellor twisted his arm then he still tried to torpedo it by offering him less money than Biff.
That’s right, our AD offered less money to a G5 conference champion winner than he offered to a high school coach. He didn’t want him to accept, but Tim did anyway thankfully. It’s unconscionable that we would offer a proven winner less than a HS coach. There’s only one reason for that, but it backfired in Mike’s face when Tim took it anyway.
Watch the introductory press conference again. Mike looks so uncomfortable.
FWIW, we hired a Michigan assistant who had a glowing recommendation from his boss. Doesn’t get the job otherwise.
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With this bit of information, assuming it to be correct, who is running the athletic department? Call it what you want. We do not look like a program in pursuit of success.
Regarding Poggi, my feeling is he was scaring the hell out of someone at the top. If he was able to pull off getting the Charlotte Fortune 500 companies, the business community, and his circle of influence investing in Charlotte athletics, what a threat we would become. Biff and his mission was a threat to the UNC system. Todays game is all about money.
No way Mike Hill would fire Poggi on his own accord 1.5 years after hiring him. That is a terrible reflection on Hill. You have to let it play out for another year.
Giving Hill an extension (with his record) prior to firing Poggi had to be a compromise. Again, no way Hill made that decision without significant influence.
He got us locked out of a few large Charlotte businesses with his attitude that development has had to fix to get us back in the door.
If he had been bringing in the money they thought he could he would probably still be here even as the sucky coach he was.
Also we have to stop acting like Biff was going to win the games Brewster did. He got fired with 3 wins with one of those being a come from behind win vs GW. Odds on chance he loses at least one of those. If not all 4.
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I see this has changed from fire Mike Hill to Mike Hills performance review.
Fire him no.
Performance review?
Needs Improvement.
If he was a regular employee at a regular job he would be on thin ice just like he is here.
If the Albin hire doesn’t work out then the dude needs to go.
If we can afford it.
By the time we know this he would have worked off 3 of 5 years right?
clt asks if attire was mentioned in the job description?
I think we need substantial institutional changes. Otherwise we are simply changing the face of our programs.
Our university as a whole is not incredibly supportive of athletics other than making instagram posts on gameday.
Our athletic department has nearly the same structure it has had for a very long time. Part of the justification for hiring Mike was that he was going to disrupt the apple cart less than the other finalist. I think we may have needed an apple cart disruption.
If we never define our AD’s success on wins and losses in major sports and growth of the donor base, then we are all wasting a lot of time, effort, energy and money.
We do raise more and more money year over year, and for that I do give Mike credit. I would love to see an effort to engage alums more than corporate donors. I would love to see an effort to throw a bone to the small donor rather than simply appease the whales. Over my time as a fan I’ve seen very limited and fleeting success coupled with a lot of bad years, skyrocketing prices, and an increased reliance on student fees.
Our retention rate for fans has to be near the bottom of college athletics.
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If he had done all he was brought in to do in one and a half years he would be a god not a coach.
How exactly did Biff get us locked out of “several” large businesses? Seems convenient to make such an accusation as it is difficult, at best, to defend; vague and ambiguous. Seems like more of a “narrative” to help justify the dismissal.
Finally, the front end of our conference schedule was waited against the top tier teams with the final games against the weaker teams. Does anyone recall that we were in a rebuild mode and were cautioned it would take time and patience as we improved?
Again, I do not believe that Mike fired biff for the reasons being presented here. I believe that if Mike did actually make the decision himself it was because Biff was challenging us to get out of our comfort zone. Perhaps our program is just way too comfortable.
There just seems to be more to the story. We are struggling for money and firing coaches in 1.5 years.
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Mike may, or may not have fired biff bc of win/loss record alone but he had to go. Where is your proof that he wanted to make institutional changes? Biff did not know what he was doing, nor did he know how to run a program. Of you couldn’t see that then im not sure what to tell you.
It just takes knowing people in development that do the fund raising.
Going public and chastising the Charlotte business community for not supporting the program felt good for us fans but it turned off many that we were working on bringing in.
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Yes and it was Biff that countered that talking a big game about best defense in the nation and CFP bs, even saying if I don’t win fire me because he is a dummy and didn’t realize how hard it is to win games.
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And yet we still tied for second most wins in program history his second year. He coached, inarguably, the toughest schedule we’d ever had top to bottom.
I didn’t like him but timing was sus. Explanation consists mostly of innuendo.