Wake Forest Head Coach Jeff Bzdelik Will No Longer Be Taking Callers On His Radio Show Because They Were All Angry Wake Forest Fans

Wake Forest was once a proud basketball program: only two different men helmed the team from 1934-1965, Murray Greason and Bones McKinney, and those two built a strong winning tradition. Carl Tracy stabilized the ship after some turnover in the 70s, and from 1989-2007, it was again a tale of two coaches, Dave Odom and Skip Prosser, who together compiled a record of 366-200 in their 18 seasons before Prosser passed away in 2007. Wake Forest fired Prosser assistant Dino Gaudio after he failed to advance the team in the postseason for three years, and they subsequently hired Jeff Bzdelik. How's that going?

USA Today:

In his first year as head coach at Wake Forest, Jeff Bzdelik oversaw a team that had the most losses in ACC history, became the first school to ever lose 15 conference games and finished with an RPI more than 100 spots lower than the previous ACC low-water mark. Considering how the rest of the Bzdelik era has gone, you can forgive Demon Deacon fans for referring to that season as "the good ol' days."

Things have only gotten worse. Bzdelik has five ACC wins in two seasons as head coach. Eight players have transferred from the program. This season, the Deacs are 4-5 with losses to Iona and Richmond. In an ACC/Big 10 Challenge game that was relegated to ESPNU, Wake suffered a 16-point home beat down at the hands of lowly Nebraska. At a recent home game, students from nearby High Point appeared to outnumber the Wake student section.

Wake Forest fans are angry, so Bzdelik took the only logical step: Cutting off the phones for radio show. You can still record a question, and he might answer it, if he feels so inclined, but you aren't talking to Bzdelik live on the air. The Winston-Salem Journal reports that last Thursday, "several callers were especially pointed in their criticism or long-winded, or both," and now that whole messy call-in show business is over. The Jeff Bzdelik drive-time pre-recorded and screened question radio hour should be a blast!

Bzdelik, by the way, has an 136-152 record as a head coach in four different stops, including 36-58 at his most recent place of employment, Colorado.

h/t Will G.

Wake Forest Coach Stops Taking Live Questions During Radio Show After Callers Lectured Him [USA Today] Bzdelik Will No Longer Take Live Questions On Radio Show [Winston-Salem Journal]