this discussion sounds soooo very familiar....i wonder where i might have seen this before....hmmmmm...... :dunno:
QUOTE(oklavol @ Mar 24, 2006 8:24 PM)
"You are misrepresenting the facts. The reality is teams who replace coaches because of retirement ie Florida, Nebraska, LSU would have never chosen to voluntarily terminate their coach."
it probably makes no difference, but Oklavol, if you'll go back and re read my original posts on this matter, i've pointed out on more than one occasion that these were coaching changes either by replacement by the univiersity or the coach left on his own accord.
the point to all of this is that coaching changes rarely work out on the first go around, regardless of reason for having to replace that coach.
and again, i'll keep using the same examples as proof. Ohio St. is the only one i can think of in recent memory that actually upgraded 1st shot out.
I'm not saying that coaching changes are simply bad. I'm saying that once you have to replace a coach, for any reason again, and again, and finally again, you should be prepared to replace that guy in much shorter amount of time than the previous coach otherwise you as the AD look like an idiot for the hire that has yet to pan out.
Yes, LSU and Florida both made changes this last time because they had to. their coaches, whom they would NOT have replaced if given the choice, still had to be replaced. UF went for the homerun and struck out and got Ron Zook. LSU has Les Miles and that is still a work in progress. But again, before LSU got to Saban, look what they went thru before that....it wasn't good. Nebraska, the same thing. Nebraska however FIRED Frank Solich for going 9-3, and have since been so far off the radar screen it's ridiculous.
alabama has also been thru the ringer at the HC position. And while Shula had a good year last year, there were plenty of rumors that his tenure might have been up this past season barring a turnaround...which they did finally get.
And it was only 3 years ago where Tommy T (whom some on this board is a much better coach than CPF) at Auburn was almost ousted in secret to get Bobby Petrino....what did he do? Oh yeah, he went undefeated, won the SEC and won the Sugar Bowl. Yeah, Auburn was defintely making a good decision by trying to get rid of him weren' they?
Notre Dame, same as LSU and Florida, they had to make a change because Holtz left. but your not going to tell me that Bob Davie and Ty Willingham experiments were succesful ones?
Texas A&M could be another example, and so could Oklahoma and Texas.
Most of the teams i've been mentioning have all found their guy. Most all of them are now much, much better off than they were.
the point is, what did each have to go thru to get to where they are now compared to where they were in thier conf and national scene? For me, i still believe that we are not that far off, definitely not far enough off to warrant making changes that could put us further behind (i dont' want to get stuck with a Jim Donnan for 5 years is my point). I think CPF can and will get us back to where HE'S had us before. Given that, i don't think our situation is as dire as some of the schools i've mentioned. Furthermore, i think our situation could get worse, not better, by not allowing the coaching staff the time to get it back on track.
i've posted in another thread that anyone who thinks CPF is the best coach, is probably crazy. are there better coaches? yes. But relative to what's available and realistic is the concern. If i had my choice of coaches in fantasy land, i would take charlie Weiss, Pete Carroll, bob Stoops and probably a handful of others on my team no questions asked.
but none of those types of guys are realistically available. and also, when those teams got those coaches, they were all coming off sub par to poor STRETCHES of consecutive bad seasons....which is different than our situation. We may be down, but we're not so down that it warrants that kind of change RIGHT NOW.
