September 2003

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Mackovic a year later -      Link to original La BM letter
Sept 2003   

La BM is still around unfortunately and despite making public statements about how being forced to weather yet another player revolt last fall made him a more gentle and compassionate man this year, he continues to be painfully ineffectual in all facets of coaching and act like a complete ass on the sidelines. He no longer wears the black suit but he did manage to get himself seen by a national television audience during his team’s horrible performance against LSU screaming maniacally at his wide eyed young quarterback Nic Costa after a LSU defense that “looked like they had a copy of the Wildcats' playbook,” continued to shoot the gaps and hector and hammer the poor QB and the rest of the Arizona offense like they were a suburban high school team. As the country watched La B.M. screaming and salivating into the face of the nineteen year old, most likely barking out some version of his “you’re a disgrace to your family” speech, the TV heads were saying that the young quarterback had missed an open receiver and was possibly being told that he can’t afford to do that at this level. What the heads probably didn’t realize was that any youngster that would agree to play for someone like La BM and be berated to no end on a regular basis without also being given any tools for success probably wasn’t ever going to perform well at this level anyway. If he did have potential and isn't some sort of sado-masochist, we’re pretty sure he would have pursued other options and signed on to spend his formative years under a coach who could help him better himself as a young man and actually teach him something about pride, class and football instead of pouting and screaming in his face for four years.

The local Tucson fish wrap noted of the LSU game that “Arizona was out-played, out-hustled, out-hit, out-coached and out-classed by a bigger, faster, more disciplined Tiger team,” and also pointed out that Arizona's 42-7 win in week one over UTEP was shown for what it was when the Miners were subsequently manhandled the following week 34-13 by Division I-AA Cal Poly. They went on to note that running back Mike Bell - who was limited to 41 yards on 13 carries after gaining 119 against UTEP - landed hard on his left arm trying to reel in a pointless pass during the final seconds of the contest making his status for the upcoming Pac-10 opener against the Oregon Ducks unclear. Good job La BM! Leave your best players on the field into the last seconds of a hopeless cause. That way you’ll be able to blame the upcoming nightmare season on all the injuries they will suffer during garbage time playing against the other squads back up hacks as they go head hunting trying to make a name for themselves. (La BM defended his decision quite articulately by saying that Bell was among a handful of starters still in the lineup late in the game because "You risk injury any time you put anybody out; on any given play, a player can get injured. Our guys needed to play. We needed those guys to be in there, and they are our best runners. We needed them to be able to run and do some things." Whatever in the Sam Hill that means?)

Several different parties had stopped by the Goliard offices late last week offering game tickets hoping that we would want to attend the LSU onslaught but we declined, pointing out that other than boycotting the games until La BM is gone we really have no way of getting the message across to the powers that be how much we genuinely despise this guy. Some of us have been going to games at Arizona Stadium for our whole lives and never missed a home game before La BM got here with his time tested recipe for ruining and embarrassing the program. And quite frankly we miss that old gray lady - Arizona Stadium. People have told us that they have made many upgrades and colored up the place a bit and someday perhaps we’ll be able to attend a game there again and wear with pride the football colors we used to bring to the stadium win or lose. Until La BM is run out of town however, we won’t wear them anywhere lose or win. And in the mean time what we did is put 250 dollars down on a three tier parley, picking LSU to be up more than 8 at the half, eventually cover the 16 point spread for the game and for the two teams to score over 46 points for the game (LSU had a 45 – 0 lead by half time so we felt comfortable heading out to celebrate and foregoing the rest of the painful defeat). Thanks La BM for the 1500 clams you helped us win. The bookmakers may continue to overestimate your abilities to coach, recruit and motivate but we won’t. At this rate we’ll be able to keep the lights on at the Goliard for a little while longer or at least until we let it all ride on the Ducks to cover the spread next week. If you keep this up we might be able to afford a road trip out to LA or at least up to Phoenix in order to enjoy some exciting college football live again. Which is something we only had to walk across Sixth Street to do before La BM conned the University into letting him bring his pathetic, thin lipped drill sergeant act to town.

Update of the Update - We have since wagered without fail every week that the hapless La BM's will go down by more than the spread, that they will be blown out by more than expected and that they will be considerably down by half time. We've turned 250 dollars into thousands and thousands for the Goliard coffers. This week we were a bit nervous as the bookies started to realize the ineptitude of La BM and put the spread at 28 figuring out that the young men at Arizona are not inspired to play for him in the least. We stayed the course none the less and sure enough it paid off again as it has for the past two years. Purdue 59, Arizona 7. Thanks La BM, for the ride. We're getting off now however as it's too painful to watch what you've done to our beloved school. We will pay no more attention to Arizona football and attempt to block the whole debacle that has been your stay in our fair city out of our minds until you are safely gone.

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