@Hawk8086
I actually think he might do pretty well in time, if the alumni don't turn on him hoping for a Billy Bob, or a Darrell, or a Deke, that is more marketable in the great state of Tayhoss.
Shaka's problem is not that he is named Shaka. His problem is that he is from Madison, WI and Kenyon College, and not really the ethnic Southerner the Billy Bobs and Darrells and Dekes think they are getting from Clemson, Florida and Virginia Common Wealth.
When the Texans discover that the mothership university of their great state of Tayhorse is a northerner, well, there is going to be a period of learning to live together, isn't there.
When Shaka was an assistant at Clemson and Florida, he could have been from Pluto for all the fans cared.
And when he was a head coach at VCU, well, VCU basketball is not really a product critically important to the state at large. Wisconsinite Tony Bennett bears that cross right now in Virginia coaching the Cavs and he is doing pretty darned well there. So: it can be done by a northerner in the South. Heck, Dean Smith proved it long ago. But there is a distinct cultural difference between Tony Bennett and the Deaner, vs. Shaka, and again it has nothing to do with ethnicity, or names. It has to do with real culture--where you grew up.
Tony was raised in Clintonsville and Green Bay and Stevens Point Wisconsin. Dean in Emporia.
Shaka was raised in Mad Town.
Tony went to UW-Green Bay.
Shaka went to Kenyon.
Um, Tony is much closer culturally to Virginia end to end than Shaka was to Virginia, or Shaka is to Texas end to end.
As I said this difference didn't matter much at VCU, because the entire state's self esteem does not hinge on what VCU does, the way Texas esteem hinges on UT. Texans want to see themselves in their head coaches at Texas as surely as Kansans want to see themselves in their head coaches at Kansas. This is serious business at both places, Texas and Kansas. Both schools constitute the 900 pound political economic gorillas in each of their states.
Rick Barnes, even though he never got to the promised land, was a guy Texans could see themselves through and identify with, as surely as Kansans can see themselves in Bill Self and identify with him. It doesn't make any difference what part of the state of Kansas Kansans come from, even Kansans that detest KU, Kansans of all sizes, shapes, colors, and ethnicities get the Edmond Kid. They understand what the mannerisms are and what the ticks and vernaculars are. They look in his eyes and they see someone who has seen the world through the midwestern lens, regardless who his parents were and what side of the tracks he lived on. The Edmond Kid is an Okie, and there are some differences of dialect alright, but Kansans and Okies can understand each other. They both get the oil and gas. They both get the wheat and airplanes. They both get Big Ag. They both get east west differences within their states. They get the grain elevators in the west and the crisp but not overwhelming skylines of a few cities from the center to the east. They get each others jokes. Their populist uprisings coincided as did their Main Street politics. There are differences over football, but the differences are tolerable, because they both love their hoops. And its humid as hell in both places.
Shaka sooner or later has to be a guy Texans can look in the eyes of and see a guy they understand--a guy living their myth, not someone else's.
It is not impossible for Shaka to be understood. I knew several grad students born and raised in mid sized Wisconsin towns that went to Austin and taught at UT and made it their homes and were accepted finally. Some even flourished. Texas is as eclectic a culture as there is in USA these last 20 years. Texans acccept outsiders easily, if they bring the Texas vision to the table. It is a virtue of theirs. But they have to be able to find something in the immigrants eyes that says this immigrant has got the stuff of a Texan, the ambition of a Texan, the desire to do something different and exceptional as a Texan. They don't want a Californian that wants to be a Californian in Texas. They don't even want Texans that don't want to be Texans.
Shaka doesn't have to make them love him. He has to make them see a Texan in the making--a potential fellow Texan. They don't love Michael Dell. They respect him as one who did what a Texan ought to do. They never loved Darrell Royal really. They respected that Okie Darrell did what a Texan ought to do in football. For doing it they paid him their highest honor. The hung his name on the stadium. And so made him the Texas equivalent of a Saint.
They finally lost faith in Rick Barnes, because Southern though he was, he just finally lost his Texas sized ambition to land a Durant and put it to KU and win a ring.
Down at TTech, or TAM, or Baylor, it doesn't matter so much what they see in your eyes, because the prestige and self esteem of Texas are not riding on those schools. Only pieces of such things are riding on those schools. But at Texas, well, Texans may laugh and be boisterously irreverent about the problems of Texas football, or basketball, but underneath there is a high seriousness about that school and its role in carrying Texas' heritage that cannot be underestimated. The oil men didn't endow it with oil reserves to exceed Harvard just for the hell of it once upon a time. The eyes of Texas really are upon it.
I like to see most persons succeed. The only ones that I don't like to see succeed are jerks. Shaka I don't view as a jerk, so much as an ambitious bright kid from Madison trying to make it in the greatest game ever invented. Ambition is good in Texas, if it comes in a flavor that Texans like the taste of. Shaka might make it, but not if he can't win some conference titles of the kind he didn't win at modest VCU.
He is a long shot and I sure as hell don't want him succeeding at our expense.
But he has a slim chance.
I have my bones to pick with Texas.
But on the whole I like Texans that want to act like Texans and do the great things Texans aspire to do.
I love some of their boats and boat builders.
I like that they keep my car running and lubricated.
But I can do without the beedy eyed ones that just want to score another trillion by knocking over another tin pot dictator the CIA installed for them 20 years before so they can step in and form the Trade Bank of Whererever and secure loans from their friends made to the new gubmint at exorbitant interest rates collateralized by that oil under whereever.
Y'all see what I'm sayin'?
