Visited the new College Football Hall of Fame while in Atlanta for the game this weekend and noticed that Pat Dye is a member. I am just trying to understand how a coach that never won (or even played for) a national title
I would argue that he did and was robbed in 1983.
and was forced to resign instead of being fired (Eric Ramsey 60 minute tapes) would be voted into this Hall.
I'm not sure there's a distinction. Is it REALLY better to have been Woody Hayes (a no doubt HOF), Jerry Tarkanian, or Bobby Knight and been canned?
And anything Pat Dye did morally fails in drastic comparison to a certain former Penn State coach who let child rape go on unfettered for over a decade. Is Paterno in there?
I realize he won perhaps 4 SEC titles in the 80's ( thank you Bobby Lowder ) but his accomplishments seem to pale in comparison to the other great coaches that are inducted.
How many other guys who won four conference titles in seven years are NOT in there? To say nothing of the fact that the SEC parity of the 1980s was something absolutely unreal. SIX DIFFERENT TEAMS won the conference title in a span of about 8-9 years (Florida got stripped, but they were still the best team).
Just interested in everyone's thoughts. Would recommend visiting this facility to everyone- thought is was very well done.
In all sincerity, everybody needs to drop the "anti-Auburn bias" when evaluating things like this. Dye took over at East Carolina and went 48-18 and won a conference; he turned around a moribound Wyoming team overnight. And say what you want about whatever - the fact is that Dye took over an Auburn team coming off a crippling probation and turned it into the SEC's flagship school of the 1980s. Say what you wish about paid players, but I've never seen a dollar bill make a tackle, complete a pass, or hold onto the football.
Besides - why not go back and look at who exactly Dye was competing against and then tell me exactly what he did that nobody else did?
Billy Brewer was at Ole Miss and they got sanctioned TWICE under his watch. He was cheating like a hypocritical fool all the while playing the old "all them boys of Bear Bryant cheat and I don't" card.
Charley Pell? Major probations at Clemson AND Florida
Galen Hall? Got Florida put on probation in the late 1980s after inheriting Pell's mess.
So Vandy didn't cheat. And Bill Curry had no record of scandal, either, which is partly how he got the job. And Dye even had to coach his final two years against a guy who could give a clinic on how to cheat, Jackie Sherrill.
So what exactly did Dye do that most of his competitors didn't do? (Oh, and Dye squared off against that self-righteous Vince Dooley every year, who just happened to have a back watcher in the NCAA office - yet even UGA got probation in the 1980s so again - what exactly was not level about the playing field?)
