Hate.

You hear it alot from the Tybots over the years.

It’s their leading response to criticism of The Leader. If you can’t argue the point or the facts, complain that the person hates Ty.

It is a sad commentary on our time that this annoying habit is ingrained in the political arena, mainly by one side of the aisle. Hate is thrown around so much as to become meaningless. Ascribing personal motivations of hatred to an argument on public policy or college football coaching is absurd, and yet it is ingrained in the mush filled heads of Generations X, Y and Z and whatever one we are on now.

 

It’s not enough if someone gets killed, we have to know if the murderer hated the victim.

 

Absurd.

 

But this isn’t a political blog and the Great Ty Debate does not break down on party lines. So let’s talk football.

Let’s talk about hate.

 

There is a hatred that has all but ruined this program and is directly responsible for us getting to this point and still being at this point. The hatred of Rick Neuheisel.

 

A certain magic still lingers when you say the name. Or hate. Rick is a living reminder of the time when we had high standards at the UW for the football program. The dirty little secret that the running dogs of revisionist history don’t want you to remember is that Rick was first hated for the on field performance of the football team.

 

Except it wasn’t hate then either. It was valid criticism and a concern that we were losing what Husky Football is. While we were winning and going to bowls. But going 7-6 and getting bullied by Purdue wasn’t good enough. Rick was at the crossroads going into 2003.

 

 Rick also did engender a personal dislike that grew to hatred from a vocal segment of the Husky fan base. Many of these same fans will scold anyone who critcizes Ty and accuse them of hate. We call that projection.

 

Rick’s dalliances with other teams were annoying. His run ins with the NCAA were laughable and most fans defended him. His players acted better than the Lambo years and grad rates hit an all time high. But the SF interview seemed to strike a big blow and combined with the bad season just passed, signaled open season on a man that many never accepted as one of “us”.

The idiots at Montlake in concert with the snitch and the Seattle Times (one and the same?) seized on this to take a basketball pool and blow it into a firing offense in June of 2003. The usual lap dogs cheered and proclaimed a return to Husky dominance while anyone with half a brain pointed out that this would destroy the program.

18 wins and 41 losses later, who was right? Should Rick still be here? Unknown. He just shouldn’t have been fired in June.

And it is the hatred that has been aimed at Rick ever since that has been used by the idiots at Montlake to first hire Ty, and then to keep him. The Seattle Times once again did their part in one of the worst pieces of hit journalisim ever seen in this town – the 2000 Rose Bowl team smear after the Football President kept our all time loser here.

Whenever Ty is slammed, the spector of Rick is used like parents use the boogeyman to keep their kids in line. Mindless TyBots repeat the myths and legends of Ty’s character and integrity to ward off the 25 losses in three years by this lousy football coach.

I don’t hate Ty. I don’t love Rick. I want my coach to win football games. Period.

You have to get over the hate. You can’t let the UW manipulate you anymore. Let go of Rick. He is a far, far better coach than Ty, and that drives you crazy so you lash out and become unreasonable and you break out in hives as you read this and you end up supporting another year of Ty. But our choice is not between the two of them.

You were wrong. Admit it like a man and let’s move on and get a real coach here. Stop the insanity.

Let go of the hate.

We know who the real haters are. You can change. You can be free.

And we can be free of Tydom.