Originally Posted by DallasFlyer
It will be very interesting to see who Xavier hires, and if that hire opens the door for the Dayton-Xavier series to be renewed. Because I believe that most of the resistance to playing Dayton came from Chris Mack. When you put the Wes Coffee incident and being married to Christi Hester on top of X's decision to not advocate for Dayton's inclusion in the Big East and on top of an already-heated rivalry, it's like throwing gasoline on an already raging fire. There's just so much there. And much of it is intensely personal (Coffee, Hester). Dayton fans being the LOWD bunch they are, got to Mack. And it was personal. Xavier could play anybody else, and it wouldn't be personal, not like that.
Now, I suppose by taking the Louisville job, Mack has set it up to be personal should Louisville ever play Xavier, having now spurned his alma mater. Louisville wouldn't dream of scheduling Dayton, probably Xavier being the only program they'd less want to schedule a series with but they could and it wouldn't be so personal I think. There'd still be that history of course, but without that Xavier jersey, I think Dayton fans would move on. Not going to happen of course, but the point is Dayton-Xavier... The door may be opening there a crack.
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I don't think it changes much, perhaps just the crack you mention. Anytime there's change (potential at this point), there's reason to believe that other things might change too, like the scheduling philosophy towards Dayton.
IF in fact that Mack is a huge impediment to us playing them, I think the Wes Coffee incident is contributing NOTHING to that. I can see maybe the wife and how she was allegedly treated upon her visits to the Arena as the wife of the Xavier Coach playing a small part. The Wes Coffee incident is so far gone and forgotten by pretty much all of the characters in the scene that the only mention it ever really gets anymore is on this board.
I've met Mack and have some very close friends that are close to him. He's not a bad guy. He's actually a pretty nice and entertaining guy. His decision to throw the ball at Wes's face, or listen to a coach who suggested such, was not a good one.
It's fun to reference every now again (I had a nice chat with Jim Crews about it 3 or 4 years ago) and makes for nice little tidbit of potential sub-plots but it's not on Mack's mind when he sits down to consider scheduling Dayton or not.
