[Cider Jim]

Does any know what happened to Ken Karcher after he left LU? Is he still coaching anywhere?

[jmdickens]

quarterback coach at ?????? Can anyone guess

[Cider Jim]

According to Wikipedia...

Currently, Karcher is the offensive coordinator at Fellowship Christian High School in Roswell, Georgia, and also teaches a 9th grade Bible class at Fellowship Bible Church. He is married with children.

As a coach, Karcher stressed building character in his players through football. One such player was Samkon Gado, a reserve while playing at Liberty. Karcher helped Gado get his foot in the door of an NFL team, and within the year Gado was the starting running back for the Green Bay Packers.

Of course, Gado was not good enough to start for LU under Karcher, but he was good enough to start for the Packers.

[jmdickens]

actually.....Gado was not good enough to start over the players we hae....

Dre Barnes was a sick running back, and was better than Gado at that time
Eugene Goodman was pretty good.
Gado was better than Marcus Hamilton

[TDDance234]

Barnes is our all-time leading rusher, I believe.

Goodman was a darn good back, as well.

[thepostman]

we had some good backs back then....man....i think we had talent on those teams, just not a coaching staff that knew how to use it all....

I remember when Gado was playing well for the Packers last year and on espn I believe one of the announcers was talking about how he was the third string back at LU and made fun of Liberty a little bit...I do think that the 2 backs ahead of him were better, some bad injuries though

[Cider Jim]

Barnes is our all-time leading rusher, I believe.

Goodman was a darn good back, as well.

And what NFL teams are they playing for?

How can you possibly imply that they were better than Gado? It appears to me that Karcher wasn't a very good judge of talent if he had an NFL-quality running back playing 3rd string for him at LU. My guess is that Gado's sudden success for the Packers greatly contributed to Karcher's firing.

[LUconn]

Playing for an NFL team doesn't really indicate that you were better than someone. Dre was way better. He's just too small for the next level.

[Hold My Own]

Gado developed later, not to mention he has one thing you cant teach...speed...there are very few backs at the I-AA level that could have taken Barne's job

[Sly Fox]

Injuries also kept Dre from being in position to play ont he next level. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he were playing Arena ball or A2 somewhere.

And good luck if you ever try to get Samkon to say anything negative about Coach Karcher. He told me last week he still talks to Coach K on the phone every couple of weeks.

[Libertine]

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[Rocketfan]

Barnes is our all-time leading rusher, I believe.

Goodman was a darn good back, as well.

And what NFL teams are they playing for?

How can you possibly imply that they were better than Gado? It appears to me that Karcher wasn't a very good judge of talent if he had an NFL-quality running back playing 3rd string for him at LU. My guess is that Gado's sudden success for the Packers greatly contributed to Karcher's firing.

So we're going to rehash this again? Why exactly did you start this thread, Jim?

It's not an implication. It's fact. Barnes and Goodman were both much better backs coming out of high school than Sam was. As has been stated, Sam matured much later and, except for the injuries to Dre and Eugene that forced Sam to use his last year of eligibility in '04, the plan was for him to start for us in '05. Unfortunately, he ended up starting for the Packers that year.
Also, like many clueless fans -- and I include most announcers in that -- , you also make the assumption that success in the college game automatically translates into success in the NFL and vice-versa, completely disregarding running style, offensive style, body types and blocking schemes. Dre and Eugene were much more suited to the slashing type of run play that we had at the time and their bodies were built for it. Sam is a power back with straight-ahead speed, a style that's tailor-made for the NFL but not for that offense. He saw a lot of playing time but in many cases he was lined up in a lot of games as a fullback/tight end hybrid.
Also, for the record, -- and Sam would be the first to tell you this -- both Dre and Eugene also had NFL-quality talent. There are only so many carries in a game and those guys got 'em. Dre's knee injury happened at all the wrong time for him and Eugene is lucky to be walking after the broken leg he had.

There are still too many strong feelings on both sides, including my own, so I'm not going to discuss either Karcher's firing or the reasons for it. It's a topic better left alone. At last check, he's the offensive coordinator and head baseball coach at Fellowship Christian Academy in Roswell, GA. The head coach there is former LU/Rhein Fire/NYG OL coach Bob Lord.

Well this may be a first, i can't recall ever disagreeing with anything you have said, but if "strong feelings" means you think Karcher got fired for the wrong reasons, i am both shocked and disappointed at the same time. This post is not meant get to you respond and ill leave the topic alone, but i couldn't help but express my shock.

[Libertine]

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[Ed Dantes]

And what NFL teams are they playing for?

How can you possibly imply that they were better than Gado? It appears to me that Karcher wasn't a very good judge of talent if he had an NFL-quality running back playing 3rd string for him at LU. My guess is that Gado's sudden success for the Packers greatly contributed to Karcher's firing.

So we're going to rehash this again? Why exactly did you start this thread, Jim?

It's not an implication. It's fact. Barnes and Goodman were both much better backs coming out of high school than Sam was. As has been stated, Sam matured much later and, except for the injuries to Dre and Eugene that forced Sam to use his last year of eligibility in '04, the plan was for him to start for us in '05. Unfortunately, he ended up starting for the Packers that year.
Also, like many clueless fans -- and I include most announcers in that -- , you also make the assumption that success in the college game automatically translates into success in the NFL and vice-versa, completely disregarding running style, offensive style, body types and blocking schemes. Dre and Eugene were much more suited to the slashing type of run play that we had at the time and their bodies were built for it. Sam is a power back with straight-ahead speed, a style that's tailor-made for the NFL but not for that offense. He saw a lot of playing time but in many cases he was lined up in a lot of games as a fullback/tight end hybrid.
Also, for the record, -- and Sam would be the first to tell you this -- both Dre and Eugene also had NFL-quality talent. There are only so many carries in a game and those guys got 'em. Dre's knee injury happened at all the wrong time for him and Eugene is lucky to be walking after the broken leg he had.

There are still too many strong feelings on both sides, including my own, so I'm not going to discuss either Karcher's firing or the reasons for it. It's a topic better left alone. At last check, he's the offensive coordinator and head baseball coach at Fellowship Christian Academy in Roswell, GA. The head coach there is former LU/Rhein Fire/NYG OL coach Bob Lord.

Well this may be a first, i can't recall ever disagreeing with anything you have said, but if "strong feelings" means you think Karcher got fired for the wrong reasons, i am both shocked and disappointed at the same time. This post is not meant get to you respond and ill leave the topic alone, but i couldn't help but express my shock.

I was at the press conference when Karcher made the announcement for his first recruiting class. The previous year (2000, I believe), LU's running backs were terrible. We went 3-8 that year, and if memory serves me correctly, we had only six rushing touchdowns. Karcher talked about the signings of Dre, Gene and Gado and was talking about how they would work on a rotation within games. However, by spring of '02, Dre had established himself as the go-to guy. THere really wasn't a rotation, although it should be mentioned that Dre was phenomenal.

It wasn't until their senior year that Karcher opted to redshirt one of them (Gado). Unfortunately, that didn't exactly happen, as both Dre and Gene went down (even worse, Karcher obtained a medical research for Dre, only to burn through it midway through the season). Gado became the star.

Here's the thing: you can say that there are only so may snaps in a game. True. But 1) too many of those snaps were wasted on lousy quarterbacks trying to pass the ball far too frequently. 2) Karcher wasn't ever smart enough to employ a two-back formation, wasting our man power on a third and fourth wide out when we barely had two competent ones and 3) Karcher wasn't smart enough to redshirt either Eugene or Samkon early on. Yes, it wasn't his fault that injuries ruined Gado's redshirt season. But that was a redshirt season that came years too late. And without either of his three star backs the following year (having graduated), Karcher went 1-10, and it cost him his job.

To Karcher's credit, Samkon Gado wouldn't be in the NFL if it weren't for him. Karcher made phone calls and hit up old contacts to get Gado a shot at training camp with both the Chiefs and the Packers.

And also to Karcher's credit, he (or those controlling him) were smart enough to negotiate a cushy deal that allows him to earn more money by NOT coaching Liberty than I make at my current job. By a lot.

All that being said, I don't think that Karcher was incapable of recognizing talent... I just think he had no idea what to do with that talent.

[Sly Fox]

I don't think many of our young fans realize the wealth of talent we had at RB between those three guys.

I agree with Lib that rehashing the Karcher topic seems pointless unless someone genuinely cares what Coach Karcher is doing these days. If that's the case, then the topic is valid.

[Libertine]

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[Libertine]

You know what? I'm done with this. I've replied to too many posts and answered too many PMs in the last year on this topic from both very intelligent and insightful members of this board and those who don't know anything about football other than what they read in the stat line.

Karcher was here. If you liked him, you know where he is. Get in touch and spread the love. If you hated him, well, now he's gone. Drink some hot tea and let the healing begin.

[PAmedic]

good way to sum it up, LIB.

we have a great future ahead of LU-FB. lets move on.