Cragg - Is He the Guy?

[19854ever]

AJ was Coach Blankmeyer ran out of town By Cragg ? 

 

[Alumni Hall]

No, he left for an opportunity with the Mets, unfortunately that only lasted one season with the Brooklyn team. Ed was offered a position in the Cubs organization for 2022, but he chose to not take it. Coach Ed is arguably one of our greatest and most successful  coaches ever at St. John’s. 

 

[monte]

He has been here four years now. Nothing gets built, nothing gets funded, and the attendance at basketball games decreases annually. He pushed out the last coach with no plan on a new coach, which led to weeks of embarrassment for the University. And as the AD he has also helped destroy the Lacrosse and Baseball programs. 

People say he is a hard worker. The athletic department did a good job at one thing in four years, they got more students to games this year. What else? What am I missing about this guy? 
After reading the above post got me looking into how our spring sports are doing after our disastrous winter sports:
As of today the combined record of Lacrosse (1-5) Baseball (2-13) and Softball (3-16) are 6-34!!! What has happened to our storied baseball program?  Team is getting blown out in many games and just dropped 2 of 3 to MANHATTAN. Softball traditionally makes the Big East Tourney and they are usually competitive but are also getting blown out most games. Even Fencing is having its worst season in years with probably the least amount of fencers getting an NCAA invite. I don’t think we can place any blame on our AD…but something must be up with these results and W Hoops going 12-19 to go along with our 17-15 season looks bad. Are our coaches being held accountable for these poor on field performances by our Senior Athletic Staff?
If the Big East still had the Commissioner's Trophy , emblematic of the best program in the conference, we might very well be in last place in the standings this year.




 

Wow. Good thing for the coaches and Cragg that they are not paid per win. Clearly no expectations around SJU sports anymore 

 

[bamafan]

There is one simple answer to all of the poor results of our sports teams-WE ARE ST. JOHN'S!

 

[ohiofan]

The premise of this thread and a vast majority of the posts are just nuts. I will not say any more.

 

[mjmaherjr]

The premise of this thread and a vast majority of the posts are just nuts. I will not say any more.

this is usually the point that I’ll take this off topic to avoid the shite show but  wouldn’t want anyone complaining about being off topic

 

[Ilzion]

Cragg is playing us like a fiddle.

 

[PharmDJohnnie11]

I’m not ready to give up on Cragg just yet. 

Although it’s a really bad look that he disappeared from social media as soon as the season took a turn for the worst. 

From what I heard the athletic department is looking to communicate with the fans in different ways so we shall see. 

If he gets rid of Anderson and hires a better coach I think he can redeem himself. 

 

[room112]

I still give Cragg a ton of credit. As a hew hire in his first AD role, he was given the task to basically get rid of the basketball coach who just happened to be the best player in school history. 

Then during the hiring process for his replacement, it appeared his hands were totally tied and he ended up with the guy the powers that be accepted for him. 

I've seen alot of good things he's done to take the athletic department out of the stone age. It just so happens there haven't been positive results on the basketball court to coincide with those, but that's not his fault. 

 

[Knight]

I don’t understand the complaints about Cragg.  The consensus is that SJU is not a desirable program due to  poor facilities, fan support, lack of seat backs, etc.  He had little time to assess SJU on his arrival and had to hire a coach to replace a homegrown icon.

 

[IDRAFT]

I started a thread to ask what he has done that is positive. I didn't ask for a loyalty oath to the cult of Cragg - which seems very large here. Nobody is listing anything that the guy has done, just mocking the question, and with the stupid Paultzman thread, mocking the thread itself.

As a consumer of SJU basketball I thought it was a fair topic four years into his run here. This is supposed to be a place to discuss SJU sports ad he is the AD. But whatever. 



 

 

[RedStormNC]

I'll take a shot

He's re-organized the dept and staff assignments, leader roles

Switched from UA to Nike

He did a facilities survey to support the broader university master plan

He outsourced marketiing type stuff to Learfield IMG

He got the NIL thing going for students

Maybe others that are bigger...don't know

I'm not saying he's hit a home run, but he's been better than anyone else in a while

He probably bleeds blue more than red but as long as he can make tough decisions, build culture and push for more university resources he's doing OK so far.

 

[IDRAFT]

I'll take a shot

He's re-organized the dept and staff assignments, leader roles

He did a facilities survey to support the broader university master plan

He outsourced marketiing type stuff to Learfield IMG

He got the NIL thing going for students

Maybe others that are bigger...don't know

I'm not saying he's hit a home run, but he's been better than anyone else in a while

He probably bleeds blue more than red but as long as he can make tough decisions, build culture and push for more university resources he's doing OK so far.

Thank you I think that's a very fair list.

 

[bk8664]

I started a thread to ask what he has done that is positive. I didn't ask for a loyalty oath to the cult of Cragg - which seems very large here. Nobody is listing anything that the guy has done, just mocking the question, and with the stupid Paultzman thread, mocking the thread itself.

As a consumer of SJU basketball I thought it was a fair topic four years into his run here. This is supposed to be a place to discuss SJU sports ad he is the AD. But whatever. 




 

Nope. Your post was implicitly negative.  And the timing of it is completely unnecessary. 

 

[IDRAFT]

I started a thread to ask what he has done that is positive. I didn't ask for a loyalty oath to the cult of Cragg - which seems very large here. Nobody is listing anything that the guy has done, just mocking the question, and with the stupid Paultzman thread, mocking the thread itself.

As a consumer of SJU basketball I thought it was a fair topic four years into his run here. This is supposed to be a place to discuss SJU sports ad he is the AD. But whatever. 





 

Nope. Your post was implicitly negative.  And the timing of it is completely unnecessary. 

Of course, it was negative. And I listed reasons I'm down on the guy. I also pointed out a positive that he did accomplish. I didn't just write "Cragg Sucks." Why right now, in the offseason, it is not okay to discuss the AD on a SJU message board is something I would never have imagined, but I learn something new every day, I guess.

I probably write 20 positive posts to every negative one I write on this forum. And when I write a negative one a moderator (a moderator!) opens up an entire thread to mock my post. What a group here.

No worries I got the message, Cragg is out of bounds in these parts. 

I'm done on this topic, if anyone else wants to chime in I promise I will not be responding. 

 

 

[lawmanfan]

I started a thread to ask what he has done that is positive. I didn't ask for a loyalty oath to the cult of Cragg - which seems very large here. Nobody is listing anything that the guy has done, just mocking the question, and with the stupid Paultzman thread, mocking the thread itself.

As a consumer of SJU basketball I thought it was a fair topic four years into his run here. This is supposed to be a place to discuss SJU sports ad he is the AD. But whatever.

 

There was nothing wrong with starting this thread, it was and is a worthwhile discussion.  The "stupid Paultzman thread" was aimed as much or more at the Anderson thread as this one, just a mild commentary on where our fans' collective heads are at and mainly intended to give people a laugh and a few minutes of fun at a disappointing time in our season.  No offense intended, sorry if you read it that way.

 

[monte]

I started a thread to ask what he has done that is positive. I didn't ask for a loyalty oath to the cult of Cragg - which seems very large here. Nobody is listing anything that the guy has done, just mocking the question, and with the stupid Paultzman thread, mocking the thread itself.

As a consumer of SJU basketball I thought it was a fair topic four years into his run here. This is supposed to be a place to discuss SJU sports ad he is the AD. But whatever. 






 

Nope. Your post was implicitly negative.  And the timing of it is completely unnecessary. 

Of course, it was negative. And I listed reasons I'm down on the guy. I also pointed out a positive that he did accomplish. I didn't just write "Cragg Sucks." Why right now, in the offseason, it is not okay to discuss the AD on a SJU message board is something I would never have imagined, but I learn something new every day, I guess.

I probably write 20 positive posts to every negative one I write on this forum. And when I write a negative one a moderator (a moderator!) opens up an entire thread to mock my post. What a group here.

No worries I got the message, Cragg is out of bounds in these parts. 

I'm done on this topic, if anyone else wants to chime in I promise I will not be responding. 
 

Very fair and reasonable thread and subject matter IDRAFT. Absolutely nothing wrong with questioning conventional wisdom and groupthink. Of
course you're always going to get push back from those with an agenda, but don't let them shut you down, that's exactly what they want to do. 

 

[paultzman]

Father Shanley if Johnnies don’t dance;

 

[IDRAFT]

Bump

 

[mjmaherjr]

I knew this would pop up and Idraft was on my top 5 to do it