Next to OP's statement of love for "Mr. Brandon", this may be my favorite:
Unclear that Brandon wanted Hoke, which is interesting. Now that we see him, it's obvious what a great candidate he was. I mean, when you have a guy like LC, who didn't have much of a coaching tree to start, you're not going to be prone to trusting what him and his supporters want. Is it even clear that LC wanted Hoke to succeed him, vis-a-vis someone like Debord, English, etc? So given that situation, once Hoke emerged in this recent coaching search the rational thing to do was to be skeptical of what that crowd wanted. Hoke totally looked like a nepotism hire, but it turns out that the guy is that rare creature who is as good as the praise he gets from his inner circle of supporters.
I don't blame any outsiders, such as the lot of us here, for not being familiar enough with Hoke to understand this. We lacked the information to do so. Brandon, on the other hand -- maybe he just wasn't around the program enough during Hoke's time here to see it. That seems reasonable. But Brandon's strength is marketing, and his priority was to go into the new-coach press conference with a guy he could call his #1 choice. We can all put 2 and 2 together and see that Hoke wasn't the first option, but because the process valued secrecy above all else we don't know if he was second or third or ninth.
Either way, what luck! Brandon made a nepotism hire via a process not much better than the previous disastrous one, and it turned out to be just the thing the program needed. Better to be lucky than good in life, right?
I don't blame any outsiders, such as the lot of us here, for not being familiar enough with Hoke to understand this. We lacked the information to do so. Brandon, on the other hand -- maybe he just wasn't around the program enough during Hoke's time here to see it. That seems reasonable. But Brandon's strength is marketing, and his priority was to go into the new-coach press conference with a guy he could call his #1 choice. We can all put 2 and 2 together and see that Hoke wasn't the first option, but because the process valued secrecy above all else we don't know if he was second or third or ninth.
Either way, what luck! Brandon made a nepotism hire via a process not much better than the previous disastrous one, and it turned out to be just the thing the program needed. Better to be lucky than good in life, right?
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