micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links

Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm.

Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net.

Holmquist's full archives are listed here.

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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)

Aljazeera.Net English
AlterNet (War on Iraq)
Alternative Press Review
Always Low Prices -- Always
Another Irani online
antiwar.com (blog)
Asia Times Online
Axis of Logic
Baghdad Burning (riverbend)
BBC News
blogdex.net ("track this weblog")
bobanddavid.com
BuzzFlash
The Christian Science Monitor (Daily Update)
Common Dreams
Cryptome
Cursor
Daily Rotten
DefenseLINK
Democracy Now
The Drudge Report
Eat the Press (Harry Shearer, The Huffington Post)
Empire Notes (Rahul Mahajan)
frontpagemag.com (HorowitzWatch)
globalsecurity.org
greenandwhite.com
Guardian Unlimited
Haaretz
The Independent
Information Clearing House
Informed Comment (Juan Cole)
Iranians for Peace

Iraq Dispatches (Dahr Jamail)
Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation
Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report (Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice)
MetaFilter
MLive
Mr. Show and Other Comedy
The Narco News Bulletin (blog)
NEWSMAKINGNEWS
The New York Times
Occupation Watch
Political Theory Daily Review
Press Action
Project Syndicate
Raed in the Middle (Raed Jarrar)
random-abstract.com
Reuters
Salon
The Simpsons Archive
Simpsons Collector Sector
Slate
Sploid
Technorati ("search for mth.blogspot.com")
thi3rdeye
United States Central Command
U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Iraq
venezuelanalysis.com
War Report (Project on Defense Alternatives)
The Washington Post
Wildfire (Jo Wilding)
wood s lot
www.mnftiu.cc (David Rees)

Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development)

Thivai Abhor
As'ad AbuKhalil
Ken Adrian
Christopher Allbritton
Alli
Douglas Anders
Mark W. Anderson
Aziz Ansari
Atomic Archive
Bagatellen
James Benjamin
Elton Beard
Charlie Bertsch
alister black
Blame India Watch
Blixa
Blog Left: Critical Interventions Warblog / war blog
Igor Boog
Martin Butler
Chris Campbell
James M. Capozzola
Avedon Carol
Elaine Cassel
cats blog
Jeff Chang
Margaret Cho
Citizens Of Upright Moral Character
Louis CK
Les Dabney
Dack
Natalie Davis
Scoobie Davis
The Day Job
Jodi Dean
Dominic Duval
Steve Earle
Eli
Daniel Ellsberg
Tom Engelhardt
Lisa English
Faramin
Barbara Flaska
Brian Flemming
Joe Foster
Yoshie Furuhashi
Al Giordano
Glovefox
Rob Goodspeed
Grand Puba
Guardian Unlimited Weblog
Pete Guither
The Hairy Eyeball
Ray Hanania
Mark Hand
harveypekar.com
Hector Rottweiller Jr's Web Log Jim Henley Arvin Hill Hit & Run (Reason) Hugo Clark Humphrey Indri The Iraqi Agora Dru Oja Jay Jeff Lynne d Johnson Dallas Jones Julia Kane Blues Benjamin Kepple Ken Layne Phil Leggiere Brian Linse Adam Magazine Majority Report Radio Marc Maron Josh Marshall Jeralyn Merritt J.R. Mooneyham Michael Scott Moore Bob Morris Bob Mould Mr. Show and Tell Muslims For Nader/Camejo David Neiwert NewPages Weblog Aimee Nezhukumatathil Sean O'Brien Patton Oswalt The Panda's Thumb Randy Paul Rodger A. Payne Ian Penman politx Neal Pollack Greg Proops Pro-War.com Pure Polemics Seyed Razavi Rayne Simon Reynolds richardpryor.com Clay Richards Mike Rogers Yuval Rubinstein
Steven Rubio
Saragon Noah Shachtman Court Schuett The Simpsons Archive Amardeep Singh Sam Smith Soundbitten Jack Sparks Ian Spiers Morgan Spurlock Stand Down: The Left-Right Blog Opposing an Invasion of Iraq Aaron Stark Morgaine Swann Tapped (The American Prospect) tex Matthew Tobey Annie Tomlin Tom Tomorrow The University Without Condition Jesse Walker Warblogger Watch Diane Warth The Watchful Babbler The Weblog we have brains Matt Welch
Alex Whalen
Jon Wiener
Lizz Winstead
James Wolcott
Wooster Collective
Mickey Z

Monday, November 04, 2002
 
Spartan Football Coach Bobby Williams Fired

I was debating whether or not to go over to The Lansing State Journal as I didn't want to read more bad news about the MSU football team but I figured nothing else was likely to happen and so I did. It turns out head coach Bobby Williams has been fired and Offensive coordinator Morris Watts is taking the helm on an interm basis.

Michigan State Athletic Director Ron Mason made the decision and in a statement said:

When I was named athletics director, I promised decisive leadership. I assured the administration that I would make the decisions I thought were in the best interests of the athletics department and the entire university. I knew some of them would be difficult ones, and didn't expect one this early.

Tonight I announce one of those decisions. I have terminated Bobby Williams as our head football coach, effective immediately. This was even more difficult because I respect Bobby as a person and he is a colleague. Morris Watts will serve as interim coach for the remainder of the season. Morris has no intentions to be permanent coach.

It became clear to me that the direction of the football program required this decision. There was no one incident, event, episode, or game that determined my conclusion. Therefore, I don't think it wise or helpful to publicly analyze any single event or incident. I made the decision today. There was no reason to prolong what I had determined was inevitable.

Bobby Williams' career record can be found here.

Especially interesting is school trustee Joel Ferguson's statement, which implies that Ferguson believes racism is a factor in the firing.

To me an issue that needs to be remembered is how Williams got the job. Nick Saban left to go to LSU in 1999 after MSU finished 9-2 in the regular season and was heading to the Citrus Bowl. Williams became the interm coach because well they needed a coach and for some reason that escapes me the running backs coach got the call. The players particularly liked Williams and campaigned for him and got Williams made into the permanent (for the forseeable future, at least) head coach even before the Citrus Bowl. Since MSU beat Florida, 37-34, in that game, in all liklihood Williams would have been named head coach shortly afterwards if only because he was part of the system and it is hard to turn away a guy with a perfect record as head coach at your school.

All of this seemed normal and logical at the time and, because nobody ever knows for sure what the future holds, it was probably the right course of action to take. At the same time it should be apparent that this was far from an ideal way to pick a coach and maintain the momentum the program had built up in 1999. As I said on Friday, picking a coach is always a risk and picking Williams didn't work out for one reason or a couple.

Hopefully the team's meltdown will allow somebody fresh to come in at the end of the season and build the program up again. Yesterday I wrote that any prospective coach should be asked, "In your mind what would constitute sucess for this program?" In my mind the right answer is to be a top 10 or top 20 team consistently in years when with a loss to Michigan.

As far as the speculation about Williams, Jeff Smoker, the program and what not that is no doubt stoked by the firing, I would encourage anybody who wants to try to do some indepedent reporting on the topic. But if you don't do that, to not speculate with abandon about the situation. That doesn't do anybody any good.

And I guess I also feel the need to say that it will be interesting to see what impact this has on a certain website.