Well, sure, he says that now

“I’m excited for a new challenge and am excited to be going back to my home state into an environment that is familiar.”
- Dominic Yoder, new volleyball coach at Northern Michigan

Northern Michigan's long, national nightmare is over.

After the NMU athletic department's initial "Gamble" (Zing!) didn't come up aces, they doggedly went back to the drawing board and have now hired Cameron University's Dominic Yoder to be their head volleyball coach. Yoder compiled an impressive 25-4 record for the Aggies in 2006, and will take over for the deposed Qi Wang.

The bigger question is what is NMU doing to ensure that their coaching hire sticks around this time? We're envisioning something akin to the last 20 minutes of "Funny Farm," the lukewarm 1988 Chevy Chase movie where his character bribes the town to act nice while Chase and his character's wife try to sell their home.

Is NMU A.D. Ken Godfrey dispensing $20 bills to every citizen of Marquette, Michigan, who exclaims "It's really not that cold!" while in the presence of Yoder? Is he hurriedly arranging for it to rain Girl Scout cookies every day at noon? And we're talking the good ones -- thin mints and samoas -- not those crummy Trefoils.