Has there ever really been a lot of hate around Rhoads? It seems like since we've had a good amount of success people have forgiven him pretty quickly
We haven't talked about it much lately, but there was a pretty vocal contingent on here for a long time that was "Rhoads sucks good riddance don't let the door hit you on the way out," which was rather unfortunate.
The last real contact I can remember Rhoads had with the fanbase was doing a postmortem podcast with somebody (maybe CW), and it was very much a "this is what went wrong in the program under my watch."
Compared that to how we treat McCarney... CW does a podcast with him to tell old war stories, plenty of instances of people describing his tenure and accomplishments with gooey nostalgia, and Campbell brings him back to speak to the team now and honors his legacy in both small and large ways (e.g., the uniform designs).
We have some work to do with Rhoads in that sense.
They don't need to be "forgiven" or "rehabilitated." They weren't murderers, they just didn't win enough games.
They gave us some good memories and represented us with class and pride. It wasn't enough to save their jobs but it ought to be enough to earn our thanks and respect.
Hence why I put quotes around those words to indicate their imprecision and ward off negative connotations.