For Charlotte 49ers, football Kool-Aid has lost its taste

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Charlotte football coach Biff Poggi arrived on campus with rhetorical guns blazing about turning the 49ers around in his first season. It hasn't happened with a 2-6 record.

Friday’s postgame press conference after Charlotte’s 38-16 loss to Florida Atlantic was more like a wake than a give-and-take with reporters.

Coach Biff Poggi looked dejected, a man bereft of ideas to put a messy season on track. Although the 49ers certainly weren’t dominated statistically – Charlotte had more first downs, didn’t turn the ball over, ran more plays and held the ball for more than 38 minutes – they were outplayed. Again.

“We thought we were going to play really well, especially after last week’s win” against East Carolina, Poggi said. “Generally, way too many penalties (12 for 106 yards). Obviously, they say statistics are for losers, and they’re probably right, but the only statistic that matters is 38-16.”

Another statistic that matters is win-loss record. Charlotte is 2-6, 1-3 in the American Athletic with wins against South Carolina State, a struggling FCS program, and East Carolina, an AAC rival that like the 49ers can’t get out its own way. It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Charlotte.

When Poggi was hired, he came in with rhetorical guns blazing. He talked about winning the AAC in his first season and called out media for picking Charlotte last in preseason polling and asking a mere three questions during media days. In buttoned-down Charlotte, people had never seen or heard anything like it. Poggi talked big and people on and off campus gobbled it up. The hype was compelling.

“I have the highest of expectations. I’m drinking the Kool-Aid,” Poggi said in August. “I made the Kool-Aid, I’m drinking it. Who wants to play for a coach that’s not drinking it? I wouldn’t want to play for a coach that’s not drinking it and the nice thing is we’ve got the players who can actually make the Kool-Aid Kool-Aid.”

There’s one glaring problem: The Kool-Aid has no sweetener. Poggi didn’t count on the 49ers being this bad, nor did 49ers fans and donors, all of whom have been hit up to grow the football program’s facilities.

Logic tells us a new coaching staff and overhauled roster are a recipe for losing in Year 1. That combination can be competitive, but a title contender? C’mon man. Poggi oversold and underdelivered in terms of on-field product and now some in the Charlotte community are ticked. The faithful shouldn’t be mad at him for stirring up the hype; they should be upset by their willful ignorance of reality.

It takes time to let the process of building a program bear fruit. Adding a raft of transfers from better-known schools didn’t mean Charlotte was going to suddenly become prominent. That kind of improvement usually doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a grind, built on incremental advances that a coach’s bravado can’t conjure up. You’d think a football lifer like Poggi, an assistant head coach at Michigan before taking the 49ers job and a high school coaching legend in Maryland, would understand.

Regardless, this will be a lesson learned. Start by tempering expectations.

Herbert L. White, The Post’s editor in chief, has covered Charlotte sports since 1986.


 

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