aggie6thman, take off the tin foil hat. Bruce knows Gould is done and he agrees in the article that this was the only outcome. If he didn't he wouldn't have written this:

'The 3-8 season — UC Davis’ sixth straight losing campaign — was unacceptable. Blue was forced to remove his football coach.'

If he was trying something as absurd as trying to help Gould get his job back, we'd see reasons for Blue to reverse the decision.

He's obviously humanizing Gould in this feature article, and there's nothing inappropriate about that. He likes and respects Gould, and there's nothing wrong with that either.

And Gould could legitimately offer the following reflections, and get buried for them:

-I was handcuffed by recruiting restrictions;
-We lack the facilities to attract the athletes who do qualify for admission;
-We don't have depth, of course I had to play my starters against Oregon. If I didn't and got my QB killed, those guys on the forum would rip me some more.

He's fired. Why bitch about an article that shows we showed a good man the door?

I'm with OldAggie on our talent level. My sample is only two games, Eastern Washington and Portland State, but I don't think we matched either of them in terms of talent, and we don't have their depth.

OldAggie's comment about the kid he's pushing towards Davis resonated with me. I got to know a former Idaho offensive lineman, played on our last bowl team with Mike Iupati. Smart kid, great young man from around Palo Alto. The Ags were interested, but he wanted to play at the highest level he could and came to Moscow. I don't know if any other FBS schools were interested in him. I think players want to play at the highest level they can, and want a shot at a bowl game. We can't offer that, so at least we need to offer high-quality facilities to attract athletes from our small pool of candidates.

And before someone says that perhaps my friend didn't value an education enough to go to Davis, he was working on his masters when he finished his football career, and then he got a law degree too.