EVANSTON — Everyone at Chris Collins’ press conference was waiting to ask the obvious question: what will he do to improve NU basketball’s CTECs? Coach Bill Carmody, who was fired after thirteen years of employment, saw the reported amount of time in practice drop dramatically on his CTECs, as well as low ratings for stimulating interest in the subject and overall rating of the instruction.

For years, players have had plenty of time to fill out their basketball CTECs, since they never need to make time for the NCAA Tournament. This has led to essay-length feedback, much of it written in all caps. Kevin Coble’s 2010 CTEC of Carmody commented:

“I thought it was a little strange we WENT HALF THE CLASS BEFORE TALKING ABOUT DEFENSE. Class gets a little tough around Big Ten play, but the first couple weeks aren’t so bad. Take it if you participate. Carmody cares most about that.”

“For years, a lot of people said Coach Carmody’s season was easy,” Athletic Director Jim Phillips said at the press conference. “He never made anyone try too hard to win games and you didn’t exactly have to be good. But, I did a command F search and saw that the words ‘hard,’ ‘boring,’ and ‘lots of work’ were in there a lot more. That’s when we knew he had to go.”

When asked to explain the idea behind hiring Collins, Phillips said they tried to find the person who looked, talked, and acted the most like football coach Patrick Fitzgerald.

Coach Collins, who comes from a good academic school and therefore will automatically make NU’s program similar in success to Duke’s no matter how poor NU’s athletic facilities are or how tough of a conference or that no school from Illinois has ever had any luck recruiting in state talent, vowed to make things different.

“I know a lot of students have indicated a ‘two’ or ‘three’ in interest before they sign up for the season,” Collins told reporters. “But I have some ideas to improve CTECs: I’ll install the Cornell offense so it won’t be as hard or as complicated as the Princeton offense; the Wildside will start giving t-shirts to players; and players can wear sweatpants 24 hours a day, including during games and practice.”

However, Collins also admitted the pressure was low. Worst-case scenario, he said, if the team loses 20 games, only 30 fans will notice.