Just To Keep This Straight

by SMQ on Dec 12, 2007 7:19 AM EST in News Comment 14 comments

Take a week off, miss titillating scads of hot coaching action. Time to break out the new SMQ Coach Board to get up to speed.

Raise your hand if you're the tiniest bit surprised by Bobby Petrino's alienating jump to Arkansas before finishing his first full season in the League. Bueller? Bueller?

Fedora should be announced at Southern Miss today; Disloyalty? Petrino? Les Miles scoffs at your puny overtures to doubletalking opportunism; and Karl Dorrell couldn't possibly find a better fit than Duke: mediocrity is a significant step up, and no one will ever start a Web site dedicated to his termination. Unless you're a little too successful, that is, in which case Coach K can get a little territorial.

Update [2007-12-12 16:19:19 by SMQ]: It's officially official. In reality, it looked like this:

In our minds, it's more like this:

Fear the Fedora!

(I only downloaded the 30-day trial of Photoshop, for non-blog purposes, and don't think I'm not going to get my non-money's worth. Go Eagles.)

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Congrats USM

Congrats to USM. With the firing of Bower and the hiring of Fedora you now become the SEC's main feeder program. Good luck holding onto a successful coach. Oh, sure, I hear you now -- "who cares, as long as we're winning 10 games?" The margin for error with mid-majors in coaching searches is the same as the big boys, but the big boys can spend their way out of bad situations. Can USM?

If you get what you want -- a coach who can bring USM back to the level you expect the Golden Eagles to achieve, your coach will be gone in two years. And the coaching search starts again.

by hailstate on Dec 12, 2007 10:17 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Obviously

If he wins, he'll be gone. Not necessarily to the SEC, but that's how it works. USM is not 'the big boys.'

by SMQ on Dec 12, 2007 12:38 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Expectations/performance

So just to clarify things here -- you are saying that anyone who wins at the level that you expect for USM (8-9 wins, Top 3 CUSA, regular conference titles, somewhere in the top 20-40 nationally) will be poached from the school, so even with success you'll be recycling coaches every 3-5 years. Do you believe Is the era of a Jeff Bower or Sonny Lubick type over at the mid-major level, where teams can expect to be reasonably successful and still keep the head man in place for an extended period of time? Or were those coaches always the exception rather than the rule?

by Beatuofa on Dec 12, 2007 2:36 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

They were exceptions...

...in that they stayed. I know Bower had bigger offers (to Georgia, for one, where he's from originally) and I assume Lubick did, too, around the same time, when CSU was regularly one of the top teams in the MWC and landed in the top 25 for a few seasons. LaVell Edwards, too, I guess, after a very long run of success of BYU. Fisher DeBerry. But in the last 30 years, very few mid-major coaches have hung around long enough to make careers of winning where they are. These have always been "stepping stone" jobs, and the guys who pass up that step usually wind up fading out as they get older. Jobs like Southern Miss are made for young, energetic, innovative coaches, I think.

Make the best hire you can - I like Fedora - win while you can, and if you have to start over in three years, start over and try to make the best hire you can the next time. It's the nature of who you are and where you are and what you can afford. Just do the best you can and don't be afraid to be a little more ambitious sometimes than outsiders think you have any right to be.

by SMQ on Dec 12, 2007 3:36 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

consider this:

26-44. That's Sonny Lubick's and Fisher DeBerry's combined record over their last 3 years at Colorado State and Air Force. Lubick lost 16 of his last 19.

Security comes at a price.

by Shawn1228 on Dec 12, 2007 4:06 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Heck, look at...

Florida State and Penn State. The records haven't dropped quite as precipitously as CSU, AFA, or BYU have at the tail end of their patriarchal coach's tenure, but that is largely due to institutional resources -- it's pretty damn hard to go below .500 at a football powerhouse school, at least for any extended period of time. If Bobby Bowden or JoePa was at USM and performing the same way they are now, the Golden Eagles would probably be mentioned with the Dukes, Rices, and Baylors of college football.

From what SMQ and others who actually know about the program have said in the past few weeks, it looks like USM recognized the downward trajectory they were on and acted sooner rather than later. It's easy for an ESPN talking head to say that "so-and-so should name their time to leave," but they don't have to deal with the program-killing consequences of the grand old man hanging on 3-4 years too long.

by Beatuofa on Dec 12, 2007 6:35 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Your last paragraph...

...sums it up succinctly and perfectly.

by Shawn1228 on Dec 12, 2007 9:25 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

So?

LSU won the national championship only to have Saban leave for the Miami Dolphins.

With the possible exception of the New England Patriots, every team at every level of football is a feeder for somebody higher up the chain. That's just the reality of it.

It continues to amaze me how everybody knows more about the Southern Miss football program than the people who actually pay attention to it every day.

by Shawn1228 on Dec 12, 2007 4:03 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

A matter of perspective...

hailstate said:

Congrats to USM. With the firing of Bower and the hiring of Fedora you now become the SEC's main feeder program.

That beats the heck out of being the main feeder program for non-existent Sun Belt teams:

http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=466&f=3200&t=1603160#s=466&f=3200&t=1603160

by Shawn1228 on Dec 13, 2007 4:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Congrats SMQ

Nice hire and must be quite a relief.

As for Miles, this wouldn't be 2K7 if he weren't keeping us on edge to the very end. One hesitates to defend him yet intimating that his sliminess exceeds that of Petrino seems a tad much. His interest in Michigan is at least in part spurred by loyatly rather than pure mercinary considerations and he would be going to what is in some ways an inferior job for less money. At the same time he is in the middle of trying to win what will officially be considered an MNC and finds himself in a situation where the best motivations will make it difficult to avoid looking like an asshole.

We'll se if and how he slithers out of Red Stick to pass final judgement but comparing him to Petrino would seem to be quite unwarranted.

by marcillac on Dec 12, 2007 10:38 AM EST reply actions 0 recs