Everyone needs to own up and look at their involvement in this entire debacle. Don't get me wrong, I am not totally defending Bo but these situations are never one sided.
Media - Doing our job is flat out an excuse. Our entire journalistic media in this country is crap. They are paid for a bunch of opinions and make more money from stirring the pot. The media will feed the fans. If the fans only see negativity from the program, regardless of 9/10 things are positive, they will be negative to the program. The media is absolutely part of this mess and "doing our job" is crap.
Fans - Irregardless if you are behind Bo staying or being fired be honest. If you got beat up that badly at work by your "boss" would you be happy there? If "fans", or the media are going to always skew things to their benefit, you have no hope of improving your work environment. You would be out searching for a new job and I don't blame Bo for seemingly wanting to leave. Should he handle it better, sure. At some point I don't care who you are, you would have similar reactions. Anyone that says they won't is lying. Our world is entirely to hypocritical and we can rarely handle those that aren't, we call them out and force them to be the same.
Players - Should our opinion matter more then theirs regarding Bo or the media. That's a big fat no. His players would take a bullet for the man. Why do we marginalize that? If your opinion of someone you cared about was marginalized to that, extent how would you feel about that other person. Fans and the media are absolutely creating the us against them mentality. Those boys played their rear ends off in major pain, severely depleted by injuries, and what do we give them We give them nothing except try harder, your not good enough, your coach sucks. If you and your family feel that attacked by others your leader doesn't have to brainwash you, those you feel attacked by naturally become our enemies. Again put yourself in their shoes and tell me you wouldn't feel the same.
Bo - Come on man. There are ways to handle your frustrations and anger without looking like a 5 year old. I do not blame him in anyway for his feelings or even showing his frustrations. He should know that he is in a fishbowl to begin with and have only made it worse. It started your first few years before he actually began working to control his emotions/communications. Obviously it is not a talent of his. If you were Bo and you saw your efforts going nowhere you lose your patience to continue those efforts. What do you get? You get today's outburst when all of your frustrations from the media and fans overflow. I greatly appreciate his honesty, but there are better ways to communicate.
I would argue that much of this still stems from poor and inconsistent leadership within the athletic department for years. Tom helped but didn't have enough time to truly make the changes stick, plus you still have Pearlman. We have passed the point that Bo can succeed here but in the future we need leadership needs to mentors the coaches in all aspects. That leadership needs to market and manage fans expectations and knowledge of the programs.
Don't kid yourself about that finding a new quality will be easy. The grass is rarely greener. On top of leadership issues, which Wisconsin doesn't have and makes it attractive, we are NOT a top 10 coaching destination. Many schools throw money at football, have ridiculous facilities, academics, strength and conditioning, and anything else you want to add to the list. We have 1 thing many other schools don't, only 1, and that is tradition. Tell me what does tradition get you anymore.