Craig Robinson took time for an interesting, honest, wide-ranging interview with Jason Vondersmith of the Portland Tribune.
Robinson seems to have the same refreshing candor as his famous brother-in-law, Barack Obama. When Vondersmith asks Robinson why he didn’t try harder to recruit players for this coming season, Robinson doesn’t try to say “oh, we’re happy with the players we’ve got, blah blah.” Instead, he says this: “There were no Pac-10 level players that late (after his hiring)….It’s more important to save the scholarships and use our powder for good ’09 and 2010 kids.”
Wow! The straight dope! Robinson is obviously someone who values honesty–here’s how he answers a question about how he compares living in Corvallis with living in New York or Chicago: “It’s relatively conservative, but genuinely welcoming. I’ve been all over the country and world, so I could tell if people were faking the funk, but they are genuinely nice people here.”
Robinson also talks about how the team will be different next year: “I’ve been coaching for years, and none of my guys take bad shots. Take a bad shot, you come out of the game. What you saw last year will be completely different this year.”
That will be a nice difference, the Beavers took some mind-boggling shots last year.
It’s really worth reading the whole interview; you won’t get honesty like this from a college coach too often.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
You are easily impressed. What makes you think most coaches are dishonest? There are a lot of good coaches with great integrity. The quote you referred to as the straight dope sounds more like excuse-making than honesty to me. And what’s with the comment that Republicans aren’t independent thinkers? That kind of attitude won’t help in recruiting. I expect the Beavs to remain in the cellar for the next several years.