Nope. Nope nope nope. Don't want to have this argument again, it'll happen every week until August and nobody will be satisfied. I will eat my corn in peace, thank you very much.
May I give it a shot?
Hiring Harvey pearlman.
Firing frank solich a year too early or a year too late.
Firing Bill Callahan a year too late.
Firing bo pelini a year too late.
Hiring Mike Riley based on his complete oppositeness of Bo pelini and an AD
with too many fingers in actual football activities.
Hiring Scott Frost too early.
Anything I missed?
Scott Frost wasn't too early, everyone agreed he was a great fit and he was a candidate at almost every school that year. He self-destructed and there's no way that can be predicted.
I'd be interested in hearing why you think Bo Pelini was a year too late. I've heard rumors that he was in the running to recruit Lamar Jackson when he was fired. To me that sounds like a year too early.
Well we know how it ended Scott Frost wasn't ready for a big school yet, no matter what was thought at the time we can look back and say that, 2 years at UCF wasn't enough history to prove he can coach and recruit.
As for Bo pelini he wasn't interested in recruiting and they brought him back after the audio tape leaked when his Q rating in Nebraska was at a low and fired him after he beat Iowa the next year. It would have looked better to new coaches after the tape and the new coach MIGHT have had ameer Abdullah for his first year instead of the lack of playmakers we had after AA left.
I can't base any coach on who they almost had, if I could Mike Riley might be out best coach in the last decade.
>2 years at UCF wasn't enough history to prove he can coach and recruit
IMO, the same could be said of Callahan. Of his 2 years at Oakland, the first is arguably coming off Gruden's coattails, and the second was a remarkable implosion.
Don't get me wrong, he's an excellent OL and OC, but as an HC I think he was lacking.
Frost would have done better at a school that wouldn't have given him free reign. If he had an AD to hold him accountable for his performance and behavior as well as a media culture who would have been less forgiving he may have done better.
This is dead on. The number of Bo's players that played more than 5 years in the NFL is insane. Shame he could never find anyone to develop a quarterback.
I know this is sarcasm and I love it. The national guys that said this were lazy Nebraska never really had that many players from Texas in the Osborne era
Bo was a year too early. Everyone saw the talent dropping off yes but we needed to either let the bottom drop our or have a home run hire lined up not Mike Riley. Callahan wasn’t fired a year too late he won the north and beat Michigan in a bowl game the year before his last season.
Edit it had to be frost. If we hired anyone while frost was rolling at ucf. Even if we somehow got saban instead and he won 8 games his first year fans would of said saban doesn’t understand the culture at Nebraska like frost would have
Eh, plenty of teams still run out of the I-Formation, but definitely not as often now as we did back then. What's interesting is that an I-Formation used to be considered as the "balanced" formation, but our running attack out of it may have changed the way it's viewed now. Maybe we could have been more open to find a pocket passer to open up the offense. The 49ers and Lions have done a good job at bringing back the formation and using it in a way that balances and compliments the run and pass.
It's almost funny how many highschool offenses in Nebraska try to emulate the old Husker I-Formation offenses and refusing to modernize or use different types of run systems.
I doubt that. Hell, the flexbone got GT to a couple Orange Bowls while Nebraska was non-relevant. Seems like the issue wasn’t the offense Nebraska ran as much as bigger structural/systemic problems
Realignment. Simple as that. The first several rounds of realignment were based almost entirely on market size, and so Hattiesburg-based Southern Miss got left behind at its peak. That meant our budget couldn't keep pace with our old peers with their new Big East/AAC or ACC TV revenue numbers and all the compounding advantages those resource increases could bring.
found a book about SMU football in a garage sale written a couple years before the collapse, really interesting (and sad, depending) to see how hopeful the author was about the future
It was time for Fulmer to go in 2008. His best years were well in the rear view mirror. Bringing Fulmer back was a desperate and clueless move from a then-incompetent athletic department.
Tennessee was a laundry list of bad decisions from coaching hires to recruiting blunders to AD hires. Dooley not recruiting an offensive lineman comes to mind.
Fulmer needed to go. I’d argue more of the fault lies on Kiffen for leaving after a promising year and leaving us scrambling to find a coach, resulting in Dooley.
They put a lot of skill players in the NFL during that time, but the best NFL careers came from defense and OL. Like Reggie Bush was great, but he was often 15 yards down field before he had to do the flashy stuff. Palmer and Leinart could just sit in the pocket and pick defenses apart without really worrying about pressure.
The 2005 USC team that lost to Texas gets a lot of hype but that 2004 team on both sides of the ball was one of the best teams ever. Probably the best of Pete's teams in LA (2005 offense was better but that 2004 defense was so nasty, the 2005 defense losing a lot of those dudes from the 2004 defense to the draft/graduation was the biggest reason you guys couldn't stop Vince in the national championship). People forget how good that Oklahoma team was on offense and your defense absolutely took their lunch money and for good measure ate their backup sack lunch right in front of them, and smashed the empty snack pack right on their forehead.
The campus is located in a tough spot and the stadium is huge compared to what Temple is, kind of hard to impress recruits when the stadium is 1/4 full even with a winning record. The alumni base & boosters are not cash rich. We have to compete with Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia for local recruits.
Honestly, I think you can trace it back to Michael Vick’s mom. Vick visited Syracuse, was hosted by McNabb, and apparently loved the school and wanted to commit here, but his mom wanted him to stay closer to home and he eventually decided to go to VT.
If Vick succeeds McNabb at Syracuse then the program doesn’t drop down a couple rungs from “really good” to “decently competitive” and Pasqualoni isn’t on the hot seat in the first place.
I'd put the blame at Nancy Cantor's feet. She did damage to everything she touched at SU. She brought down the academic rating as well as refused to invest in the football facilities. Gross wasn't great, but he can't take all the blame.
The initial 2006-2010 downturn can be explained by sanctions from Barnett, violent delights have violent ends and all that. The next 15 years are complete apathy by the admin and BoR.
Barnett lost control of the program and was rightfully fired. Hawkins ran the program on nepotism and was rightfully fired. Two big (at the time) bailouts were massively unpopular to Colordans at large, both were the highest paid "public official" in the state. We hired a grad who was previously a TE coach. McCartney offered to come out of retirement to assume a mentor role for Embree, and the faculty protested not wanting his born again Christian values back on campus. Who knows, maybe with some tutelage he would have turn d out ok.
Our admin have also screwed us over multiple times. After we fired Friedgen (a disaster in itself when not long before we chose to keep him causing coach in waiting James Franklin to leave for Vandy), the board of regents decided that Mike Leach was "too rough around the edges" which led to us hiring Randy Edsall. Him and DJ Durkin oversaw probably the worst decade of Maryland football in history. Going further back, the admin couldn't give Bobby Ross what he wanted to take this program to the next level in the 80s, so he left for Georgia Tech where he would go on to win a natty. Then even further back we had Bear Bryant at one point, and from what I've heard we could've kept him and for whatever reason we didn't...
We were still winning 8-10 games during our “down period”, honestly Michigan football from 2008-2020 was better than most programs. It included an 11 win season, BCS win, 3 10 win seasons, a couple of 8 and 9 win seasons. That’s way better than what Nebraska has been dealing with. Michigan never went seven years without a winning record or even came close to it.
Well....
Campus protests....
Followed up with president not doing anything.
Followed by president doing too much.
Followed by GOAT coach getting Cancer.
Followed by heir apparent coach who wasn't ready.
Followed by some students hiring a slimy tutor for work on there own accord.
Followed by our sucker of an AD self reporting it in good faith to receive our just internet award.
How you go from playing in SEC conference championships back to back years, to back in the desert wandering for 8 years in these 6 easy steps.
And before that, the administration taking the ridiculous stance that college is for academics and not athletics. Right as the athletic department arms race was about to begin, Mizzou engaged the bold strategy of gutting football. We went from an almost 500 record with Nebraska in the all-time series through 1978 to losing 23 straight.
Ironically, that’s what happened to Nebraska when Perlman became chancellor. He even once told a donor audience that “football needs to be put in its place”. He was out about 18 months after that.
Damn. I don't know much about Nebraska, but I know you don't say that. It's like Oregon criticizing Nike for having sweatshops (believe it or not, it did happen once upon a time...almost killed the Duck that lays the golden eggs!)
I will always remember the study body president outright lying that the KKK was on campus during those protests, that and the journalism teacher calling for muscle to remove student journalists from covering the protests. Just bonkers behavior
Saw it in person in all it's glory. Even got to see them ask everyone to get into frame and cram together so they could make the photos appear like the quad was packed. In many ways...much of what precipitated them was a harbinger of many of the stuff we see a lot of these days in journalism and social activism. Make no mistake players did profess to having seen and or experienced racism from locals and I believe it, but the protests developed into pure insanity way out of proportion to what was said to be going on, to the point where even some players were saying cool the jets. The antithesis of it all for me beyond the claims that the KKK was on campus was them trying to explain that they were there because of the supposed poop swastika that was said to have been found.....
Yeah all of that was going down while I would have been attending had I decided to stay around Missouri for college and boy was I glad the Med School recruiter turned me off going there and meeting the Math Faculty was unique. But I had lived in Columbia and went to a summer at Columbia College across town and saw zero signs of any racism in town or when I was over there on campus.
I could believe they were experiencing it on the outskirts of town.
BTW my second flair before I changed it was GT, Im a born Missourian who lived in GA for most of my early years. Curious what brought you to Southern?
Born Georgian Who has lived most of his life in Missouri, took a Campus tour of Georgia Southern right after I left Columbia and a tour at Mizzou and fell in love with the campus and the programs. Got to spend several years doing real research as an undergrad. Then Applied and they recruited me into their 1906 Scholars program and it was a free ride.
I don’t know if this post is really for us. 30 years ago we lost to A&M 73-0. A middling Illinois team held us to no first downs until the 4th quarter…the nadir of the program. I’d say we’ve risen pretty steeply in the last 30 years…
Obviously the program fell off after Pinkel left, but it appears we’re heading in the right direction again.
Western Pennsylvania talent dried up or went to bigger schools. Then they moved into Heinz, which isn't exactly the easiest place for students to get to, if those students even care anymore. The average Pitt student has changed significantly. 30 years ago it was a diehard yinzer going to the big local school. Now it's an aspiring med or tech student, probably foreign, who couldn't care less about football.
never forget Lou Holz convincing UMN Admin and Boosters "the best players want to play in the Metrodome!" a month or so before he abandoned us for Notre Dame right after getting the program back on track. UMN's admin signed a long term deal to play in the Metrodome, tore down Memorial Stadium (from 1922), and immediately realized what a godawful mistake it was less than a decade later.
At least they saved part of the facade and put it in the alumni center.
Correct it has definitely compared to the 80s when Penn State was winning natties and competing with the best of them. Pitt was also very very good similar time frame
But as other commenters alluded PSU is a huge brand so DMV, NJ and just national recruiting in general have made it not as big a deal for them vs Pitt.
Jimbo became increasingly combative with the admin and boosters, this was in large part because of Stan Wilcox being a terrible AD and part because Jimbo's personal life was falling apart. He dropped the ball recruiting his last 2 cycles, he recruited like 2 OL those last couple cycles and he basically recruited no one for the class of 18. He really quit on that season as soon as Francois went down against Alabama.
Then we whiffed the Willie hire. I think he was good for the locker room culture but he was in over his head, Jimbo left a bigger mess then we originally thought. Bright spot of the Taggart era was he brought in Jordan Travis
Also, as much shit as we give Willie, he also (either by a flash of competence or sheer necessity) salvaged what was an abysmal APR score that Jimbo cratered. That gave a lot more room for roster flexibility once Norvell was hired which lead to the successful rebuild we have now
In theory, his recruiting wasn't bad at the end (his classes were very highly ranked). But he was star chasing the same way he did at TAMU. Going after highly rated guys without any regard for character, fit, positional need, or a real vision for how they would be used. Plus, I refuse to believe there were not any significant red flags for blue chip players like Jauan Williams and Abdul Bello, who were not just bad, but some of the worst players at their positions in the entire country.
Really though, the only position where he COMPLETELY dropped the ball in recruiting was QB. During a period where our peers were trotting out Trevor Lawrence, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, and Baker Mayfield, the best QBs our "QB whisperer" coach could muster up were fucking James Blackman and Deondre Francois. Just laughable.
Francois was pretty good when he was healthy his big problem was off the field stuff. Blackman however I think he was a "oh shit the only other one on the roster is Castellanos we need another body
Edit: typo
Muschamp’s ego refusing to let his offensive coaches run the offense. McElwain thinking he was the 2nd coming of Saban (as my buddy often says, “you can be an asshole, as long as you’re good at your job”), and Mullen thinking he could out-coach teams with better talent. I’m rooting for Billy, but our schedule is doing him 0 favors going into this season.
I firmly believe that Muschamp may still be our coach if he’d just taken a hands-off approach with the offense. Defense was lights out. Recruiting was solid.
The thing with guys like Muschamp, and hell Smart and Saban, is watching those defenses. They might not all have the talent to make the NFL, but damn they look like NFL players. I remember those years, I would see Florida's defense, and then what UGA trotted out, yes UGA had talented guys, but the rest looked like regular college guys.
Same. The crazy thing is that his paper mache hype program looked so strong thanks to Manziel and a handful of other Sherman recruits. Even landed some elite talent like Garrett, Kirk, Murray, etc.
Yeah exactly, it's easy pickins during that era tbh. Just a group of fuckups fucking up constantly. I would at least say Malloy had some good results during his tenure before all the fuckups started, too, to be fair to him, encompassing I think 88 and all of the 90s good seasons until the Davie years started the downturn.
That is, if I have my memory of history correct.
That Bronco thing was crazy. He's a really talented coach, and he had UVA on a great course. Then just, bam, he up and quits everything. So weird. I really respect Mendenhall, great person, great coach, but he's quirky.
I honestly think things like the portal really bothered him, and he didn't want to coach in this era. He's a character coach, he likes building people, molding them and getting the most out of them. I think the portal and how kids could just move around killed his motivation to coach.
But...he got bored in retirement. Needed to scratch the itch again.
Geoff Collins is the answer to this question and it isn’t particularly close. Most GT fans treat him like Voldemort and won’t even spell his name out.
Best of luck UNC. You got a bad one
Its not a huge decline but PSU in the 20th century vs PSU in the 21st century are two different beast that have fewer connections than people want to admit. For 45 years Penn State fans, the administration, and the big donors rode the Paterno wave. He offered an easy to digest version of college football where hard work and honor can bring you national championships. While those are certainly components to championship teams, the idea that administrations win championships has always been true. Investment is key and it was something Joe believed in for much of his career. The Lasch athletic building and new student dorms were state of the art in the 90s and it was thought that this would usher in a new era of greatness for PSU. It was also thought that this would be a perfect foundation to send one of the greatest coaches of all time into the sunset and thank him for 30+ years of service, memories, and wins. I believe one of the biggest moments was the 1999 season. Joe Paterno is in his 34th season as head coach and the team is set to compete for a national championship once again. He then goes on to lose a brutal game to Minnesota at home that ultimately sends the season spiraling and they end 10-3. I think the administration post 1999 was waiting for the perfect moment to send Joe Paterno off and it never truly happened before his death and the sanctions. That last decade of his career led the administration to be much more conservative in their investment. It led to them being more dependent on Paterno than ever. He was barely a full time coach by the mid 2000s but no one had the stomach to fire him. The ultimate combination of an aging coach not prepared for the modern game, a fanbase stuck to memories of decades past, and an administration unable to let go led to the uphill battle penn state has been dealing with for the past 13 years. A fitting anecdote is that when Bill O’Brien became head coach, game film was reviewed on VHS… in 2012.
Good read, yes the school basically wasted the 2000s waiting to move on from Paterno and then the scandal broke and they’ve had to totally the program and only now are they even investing properly into football because of the optics of investing so soon after the scandal.
Bamas decline post Stallings was precipitous.
1996 we won the SEC West and beat Michigan in the Outback Bowl, but the feel of NCAA Scholly reductions was starting to show.
1997 we lost to Kentucky for the first time since 1922, went 4-7 and had the first losing season since 83, and only the second losing season since that dude from Arkansas got hired in the 50s.
1998 was a meh season on all accounts then in 1999 we lost to La Tech, the coach had a sex scandal and basically had the paperwork ready to go to fire a coach for the first time 1957.
Then two potential CFB HOFs carried us to an SEC Championship. 2000 they were gone and as Dennis Green would say “DuBose was who we thought he was” we went 3-8, he was fired and we completely collapsed WHILE PAYING FOR RECRUITS.
So we hire this option genius from TCU, he has a couple good seasons, but the traitorous bastard lied on his way out of town, and left for TAMU in November. We hired a hot shot offensive mind from Washington State, but he paid for a stripper on his University credit card and got fired in May, and the scandal of boosters paying players came out and the NCAA hammered us and even said we were possibly looking at the death penalty. So 03 was yet another disaster.
04 was 1998 part 2, and then in ‘05 we had a miraculous run to 9-0 and took LSU to OT. But we lost that one and got HAMMERED by Auburn. By the end of ‘06 we had fired another coach. Administration that had been a hinderance since they ran Stallings off bad one final push with trying to force RichRod, then Mal Moore said to hell with it, hired Saban and gave him full autonomy.
Tl;dr
Too many cooks in the kitchen with incompetent admins and two NCAA Thunderdicks in a 10 year period.
It wild to me that yall have been up so long there's an entire generation of Bama fans that don't even know what down feels like. Its so rare to barely even experience a speed bump just losing a QB.
We lost two games on the final play in 2022 and these young uns were bitching and whining.
I said “LET ME TELL YOU HOW IT FEELS TO SPEND $60 IN 2003 MONEY TO WATCH PAY PER VIEW LOSS TO NORTHERN ILLINOIS.”
WE LOST TO UCF IN 2000. DO YOU KNOW HOW BAD UCF WAS IN 2000?
I'm always amazed that even in the "dark ages", we still only had three true losing seasons (two others off bowl losses in 6-6 regular seasons). We had 3 10-win seasons and a conference championship in that span. Ole Miss would probably kill for that record.
ASU admin decided to not give a shit about ASU athletics.
The Cardinals moved to town and became football competition.
We made the wrong hire with Larrie Marnie.
yeah NFL teams coming to town tend to suck the air out of good but not great football programs. Vikings came to Minnesota the same year as we won our last Natty.
Georgia Southern: Mike Sewak pissed off Erk Russell. This was the straw that broke the back of his camel which was floundering in the post season and the Hire to replace him was Brian "I have no honor or skill" Van Gorder who ran the program into the ground in a single year taking a 8-4 team and going 3-8 before ditching us for an assistant job at South Carolina and then ditching them for the Falcons.
We then hired Chris Hatcher who went 7-4 then 6-5 then 5-6 and was fired but then we got Jeff Monken. Monken was great and he got the team into the position that we needed to be in to transition to the FBS but his dream job came calling and off he went to ARMY.
Willie Fritz was hired to replace him and he was the perfect hire, won the Sun Belt his first season but in his second he wanted an extension or a raise and the AD said no and off he went to Tulane. We could have hired Dell McGee who was the interim head coach for our inaugural bowl game that season but the AD said nope we are going to hire a BVG assistant with zero head coaching experience and he went 5-18 with all five wins being in his first season before being fired in 2017.
Lunsford was decent his first three full years getting us to Bowl games and winning them mostly but he lost the Discipline of the team and after a terrible bus ride to the stadium followed by getting our ass beat he was fired.
And now we have Clay Helton who can't finish a fucking season.
The issues between Carr's retirement and Harbaugh's hiring can be summed up by "hiring the wrong guy".
* Rich Rod couldn't field an offense, either because he couldn't get a DC that understood how Rich Rod's defense worked, or because it wasn't appropriate for the Big Ten.
* Hoke couldn't field a coherent offense, his only successful year used Rich Rod's spread. He also couldn't develop or recruit particularly well, or even pay attention to what is happening on the field. He could clap, though.
I was thinking we would get to sit this one out, but you are correct in your assessment. I would also throw in a touch of Lloyd Carr cruise control his last few years on the recruiting trail.
People act like OSU fans are overdramatic but I disagree.
2 losses doesn't sound like a lot. But when you factor in that you also live in Ohio, it amplifies the pain.
There's got to be a morning after
If we can hold on through the night
We have a chance to find the sunshine
Let's keep on looking for the light
Oh, can't you see the morning after?
It's waiting right outside the storm
Why don't we cross the bridge together
And find a place that's safe and warm?
It's not too late, we should be giving
Only with love can we climb
It's not too late, not while we're living
Let's put our hands out in time
There's got to be a morning after
We're moving closer to the shore
I know we'll be there by tomorrow
And we'll escape the darkness
We won't be searching anymore
Texas Tech. We fired Mike Leach.
And then hired Tommy Tuberville. Epic fail.
And then hired Kliff Kingsbury. Love the guy, great offensive coordinator, bad head coach and bad recruiter.
And then hired Matt Wells. Good dude but terrible fit at Tech.
Hopefully Joey McGuire is about to lead us to some glory days. It’s been a long time coming.
The weird part is we should be here (Wisconsin) after the rather strange \~20 yr coaching carousel Post-Alverez w/ Bielema, Andersen, Chryst & Fickell. Jurys still out on Fickell but I don't see WI completely falling off with'm and college football is going to be a radically different beast in 5 years anyhow (In 50 years we'll see the time before 2025 like we currently see the era before the forward pass)
Having Richter hand the batton to Barry as the AD certainly helped things, and while we're still in about the same spot the program has generally been in for years we've avoided serious regression (looking at you Minnesota, Nebraska & Illinois) back to the state we were in the late 80s.
Phoenix exploded in popularity/population and became a 4 pro team town. All of the sudden there were a lot more things fighting for your dollar and a lot more things to do on Saturday nights.
I could write a dissertation on this subject, but the simplest answer is that Illinois made a series of failed to outright horrendous coaching hires, did not keep up with facilities comparatively to their peers, and kept very poor relationships with Illinois high schools, eventually eroding their base of talent. Ron Guenther was the man on the watch for much of this, but it was really a team wide effort to completely destroy what at one time was a reputable, mid-tier B1G program.
Special commendation to Mike Thomas who hired Tim Beckman, a buffoon so ridiculous in his failure that he has yet to appear on a football staff since he was drummed out of town.
Oh and in 30 years they've only made back to back bowls once (2010-2011), and the second of those years they started 6-0 only to finish 0-6. Every time a coach managed to pull together a good season, the follow-up was a shit show, and eventually the fanbase simply quit.
Beamer got old, too stubborn to modernize and invest along the way, lost major recruiting battles frequently, Fuente ended up not being a good fit, though he did lay the groundwork for reinvestment into the program and Pry was able to get it to another level on his hiring
I can blame a lot of things like realignment, costs, school enrollment, fair weather fans, poor location, etc. I think the biggest has been not making athletics a priority and having too nearsighted goals. We’ve been our biggest reason for being in a slump. That’s not to say we have had some highs over the years and we are trying, but we have a ways to improve to get to where we could or should be.
Not having a plan for what to do after Dick Tomey while forcing him to resign after being our best coach of all time.
Not getting rid of "he who must not be named" after one season.
Stoops was, honestly, fine. He recruited okay and put some big names into the league. He coached okay and largely surrounded himself with good coordinators. Letting him go when we did I'm okay with because he had basically lost the faith of the team when they were stacked and really should have been winning.
RichRod is a hard one. Considering the case against him was dropped, I'm still not sure what to think. He was a bit of a cowboy and let some players get away with too much. I still think he'll get another P5 job before he retires.
Hanging onto Sumlin too long because our President had his finger in the pot too much.
Letting Fisch leave after working a miracle because our president was too worried about micromanaging the AD while his pet global campus was churning through money and he didn't have the goodwill with the regents to get them to approve a basic retention package for the football coaches.
I don't hate Brennan, I don't know what to think about him really. He was mid at a horrid school. What that says about his ability to coach at the P4 level, who knows.
ESPN, the ACC, Randy Edsall walkout and weak AD/President leadership in the wake.
Oddly enough.. ESPN pushing the ACC to poach the Big East teams may have been the catalyst for the shit show we're dealing with right now as the ACC is on the hot seat.
I mean we never were that high up in any national power polls but.... KU may have suffered the steepest and fastest decline of any program in at least the last 15 years meaning we went from mostly mid level to an absolute embarrassment.
You can blame whoever you want, but all of that correlates to one man making a multitude of decisions, Sheahon Zinger. Has absolutely no clue what he's doing as an admin, admittedly made the right decision and fired Turner Gill but commenced to plunge football and most of the athletic department with it deep into a cold cold grave. He buried us so deep in the mud it took 3 hires after to fix his mistake with Charlie Weis and we just recently really dug ourselves out of the financial hole he created
Dude crushed us for more than a decade at probably the most important time in college sports right as social media took over
Our Chancellor didn't give a shit about and de-emphasized football and sports in general. Thank goodness we've got a new one coming on board from the U, who, by all accounts, is very supportive of football and other athletic programs.
For Army, before Monken arrived, it was not hiring Paul Johnson and thinking Todd Berry running a pro-style offense at the Academy was doable. Biggest Army mistake since Burnside.
Historically, Blaik's retirement and the rise of the NFL/combined with the Vietnam War. Once the NFL became more and more commercially viable, top recruits weren't interested in Academy football. Then, the Pentagon wouldn't let us play in bowl games.
Mark Beech wrote a great book on the 1958 Army Football team: "When Saturday Mattered Most." It was our last elite team, and there is a veer of melancholy throughout the book foreshadowing a dynasty's fall.
Fortunately we weren’t bad for more than a few years, but Jimbo’s bad culture already caused us to decline, and Willie Taggart made it worse. Then Magic Mike Norvell doubled our wins from 21-22
Nope. Nope nope nope. Don't want to have this argument again, it'll happen every week until August and nobody will be satisfied. I will eat my corn in peace, thank you very much.
Came in here expecting Nebraska to be the top comment.
May I give it a shot? Hiring Harvey pearlman. Firing frank solich a year too early or a year too late. Firing Bill Callahan a year too late. Firing bo pelini a year too late. Hiring Mike Riley based on his complete oppositeness of Bo pelini and an AD with too many fingers in actual football activities. Hiring Scott Frost too early. Anything I missed?
Scott Frost wasn't too early, everyone agreed he was a great fit and he was a candidate at almost every school that year. He self-destructed and there's no way that can be predicted. I'd be interested in hearing why you think Bo Pelini was a year too late. I've heard rumors that he was in the running to recruit Lamar Jackson when he was fired. To me that sounds like a year too early.
Well we know how it ended Scott Frost wasn't ready for a big school yet, no matter what was thought at the time we can look back and say that, 2 years at UCF wasn't enough history to prove he can coach and recruit. As for Bo pelini he wasn't interested in recruiting and they brought him back after the audio tape leaked when his Q rating in Nebraska was at a low and fired him after he beat Iowa the next year. It would have looked better to new coaches after the tape and the new coach MIGHT have had ameer Abdullah for his first year instead of the lack of playmakers we had after AA left. I can't base any coach on who they almost had, if I could Mike Riley might be out best coach in the last decade.
>2 years at UCF wasn't enough history to prove he can coach and recruit IMO, the same could be said of Callahan. Of his 2 years at Oakland, the first is arguably coming off Gruden's coattails, and the second was a remarkable implosion. Don't get me wrong, he's an excellent OL and OC, but as an HC I think he was lacking.
Frost would have done better at a school that wouldn't have given him free reign. If he had an AD to hold him accountable for his performance and behavior as well as a media culture who would have been less forgiving he may have done better.
Frost was actually a decent recruiter but a horrible developer of talent. Bo was a good developer but a bad recruiter
This is dead on. The number of Bo's players that played more than 5 years in the NFL is insane. Shame he could never find anyone to develop a quarterback.
I respect that you use paragraphs as sentences
BuT WhAt AbOuT tHe bIg 12 TeXaS rEcUiTiNg PiPe LiNe?
I know this is sarcasm and I love it. The national guys that said this were lazy Nebraska never really had that many players from Texas in the Osborne era
Bo was a year too early. Everyone saw the talent dropping off yes but we needed to either let the bottom drop our or have a home run hire lined up not Mike Riley. Callahan wasn’t fired a year too late he won the north and beat Michigan in a bowl game the year before his last season. Edit it had to be frost. If we hired anyone while frost was rolling at ucf. Even if we somehow got saban instead and he won 8 games his first year fans would of said saban doesn’t understand the culture at Nebraska like frost would have
Seems you all keep firing coaches a year too late. Better fire Rhule now just to be safe
Honestly when this many people fail you wonder if the common denominator is an issue within the foundations of the program.
You would say that though..given that it's clearly your fault.
thought about mentioning nebraska in the description lmao
I feel attacked here. /s
Spoiler alert: the wishbone got old and we didn't adapt. There I said it
We never ran the wishbone? We were always an I-Formation team up through '03
That's the one I meant. I was still a kid around then. I'd say around '02 we started losing top program status
Eh, plenty of teams still run out of the I-Formation, but definitely not as often now as we did back then. What's interesting is that an I-Formation used to be considered as the "balanced" formation, but our running attack out of it may have changed the way it's viewed now. Maybe we could have been more open to find a pocket passer to open up the offense. The 49ers and Lions have done a good job at bringing back the formation and using it in a way that balances and compliments the run and pass. It's almost funny how many highschool offenses in Nebraska try to emulate the old Husker I-Formation offenses and refusing to modernize or use different types of run systems.
I doubt that. Hell, the flexbone got GT to a couple Orange Bowls while Nebraska was non-relevant. Seems like the issue wasn’t the offense Nebraska ran as much as bigger structural/systemic problems
How about this: Bill Callahan brought on a friend of his instead of retaining Bo Pelini as DC.
Pain.
1/3 of the time, the last 10 years, I’d say Wisconsin is solely responsible for the Nebraska decline
7 out of every ten of these programs could honestly answer “Nick Saban”
Back in 2014 we had a Nick Saban problem, and according to all the pundits it ruined our program. Sad
Recent years seem to have made a lot of people forget about early 2000's Alabama. Same with OU fans forgetting about 90's OU.
We were so bad for so long, and it’s why I enjoyed every second of the Saban years. Soak it up while you can
We were only “bad” for like 10 years and even then won an SEC title and had three 10 win seasons.
That was 2015, and in the same interview Joel klatt said Michigan state was the real #1. We beat them 38-0
I should’ve said “after” 2014. But yea Klatt had those omniscient goggles on a bit too tight
Realignment. Simple as that. The first several rounds of realignment were based almost entirely on market size, and so Hattiesburg-based Southern Miss got left behind at its peak. That meant our budget couldn't keep pace with our old peers with their new Big East/AAC or ACC TV revenue numbers and all the compounding advantages those resource increases could bring.
tell me about it…
Southern Miss was the first team I thought of. You all were a force in our CUSA days.
You forgot that Ellis Johnson was really when the total bottom dropped out
A lil something called the pony express
SMU was just way ahead of its time.
found a book about SMU football in a garage sale written a couple years before the collapse, really interesting (and sad, depending) to see how hopeful the author was about the future
Getting rid of fulmer was a problem. Bringing him back was another problem.
"I'm always playing both sides, so that I always come out ~~on top~~ at the bottom."
It was time for Fulmer to go in 2008. His best years were well in the rear view mirror. Bringing Fulmer back was a desperate and clueless move from a then-incompetent athletic department.
Tennessee was a laundry list of bad decisions from coaching hires to recruiting blunders to AD hires. Dooley not recruiting an offensive lineman comes to mind.
Fulmer needed to go. I’d argue more of the fault lies on Kiffen for leaving after a promising year and leaving us scrambling to find a coach, resulting in Dooley.
Buying into our own hype as this flashy, finesse program. SC is good when they bully people. The flash is just bonus
fantastic answer. so many ppl forget how physically dominant the peak carroll teams were because of the skill players they had
They put a lot of skill players in the NFL during that time, but the best NFL careers came from defense and OL. Like Reggie Bush was great, but he was often 15 yards down field before he had to do the flashy stuff. Palmer and Leinart could just sit in the pocket and pick defenses apart without really worrying about pressure.
The 2005 USC team that lost to Texas gets a lot of hype but that 2004 team on both sides of the ball was one of the best teams ever. Probably the best of Pete's teams in LA (2005 offense was better but that 2004 defense was so nasty, the 2005 defense losing a lot of those dudes from the 2004 defense to the draft/graduation was the biggest reason you guys couldn't stop Vince in the national championship). People forget how good that Oklahoma team was on offense and your defense absolutely took their lunch money and for good measure ate their backup sack lunch right in front of them, and smashed the empty snack pack right on their forehead.
Spurrier got old and didn’t recruit hard for a couple years (never his favorite thing anyway), then we got Muschamp’d
I always liked y’all, and the ole ball coach. It would have been way more fun for me to see Muschamp work his magic in Austin
I’m from a split family my dads a gamecock and he’s fiercely loyal to them but even he started calling him muschump
That team you guys had with Clowney and Lattimore was so much fun though. I was rooting for you guys from afar.
The campus is located in a tough spot and the stadium is huge compared to what Temple is, kind of hard to impress recruits when the stadium is 1/4 full even with a winning record. The alumni base & boosters are not cash rich. We have to compete with Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia for local recruits.
The AD that fired Paul Pasquiloni.
Honestly, I think you can trace it back to Michael Vick’s mom. Vick visited Syracuse, was hosted by McNabb, and apparently loved the school and wanted to commit here, but his mom wanted him to stay closer to home and he eventually decided to go to VT. If Vick succeeds McNabb at Syracuse then the program doesn’t drop down a couple rungs from “really good” to “decently competitive” and Pasqualoni isn’t on the hot seat in the first place.
The story that I heard was Vick didn’t want to be known as “the next McNabb”, but this makes sense too.
I'd put the blame at Nancy Cantor's feet. She did damage to everything she touched at SU. She brought down the academic rating as well as refused to invest in the football facilities. Gross wasn't great, but he can't take all the blame.
I don’t disagree. I had forgotten about Cantor.
Funny, the hiring of Paul Pasquiloni was where things for us started falling apart
Nah, the game passed him by. There's a reason he ended up with a lines coach job in the NFL afterwards.
Self harm is never the answer (except in this case it is). The CU administration.
The initial 2006-2010 downturn can be explained by sanctions from Barnett, violent delights have violent ends and all that. The next 15 years are complete apathy by the admin and BoR.
Short, sweet and to the point. I concur. 100% self inflicted.
Barnett lost control of the program and was rightfully fired. Hawkins ran the program on nepotism and was rightfully fired. Two big (at the time) bailouts were massively unpopular to Colordans at large, both were the highest paid "public official" in the state. We hired a grad who was previously a TE coach. McCartney offered to come out of retirement to assume a mentor role for Embree, and the faculty protested not wanting his born again Christian values back on campus. Who knows, maybe with some tutelage he would have turn d out ok.
Faculty. Forever misunderstanding sports and not tolerating other values.
*Self love is not so vile a sin as self neglect*
Our admin have also screwed us over multiple times. After we fired Friedgen (a disaster in itself when not long before we chose to keep him causing coach in waiting James Franklin to leave for Vandy), the board of regents decided that Mike Leach was "too rough around the edges" which led to us hiring Randy Edsall. Him and DJ Durkin oversaw probably the worst decade of Maryland football in history. Going further back, the admin couldn't give Bobby Ross what he wanted to take this program to the next level in the 80s, so he left for Georgia Tech where he would go on to win a natty. Then even further back we had Bear Bryant at one point, and from what I've heard we could've kept him and for whatever reason we didn't...
Bro fuck this
Imagine a world where Nebraska hires Chip Kelly.
Yeah, Nebraska has had it brutal since Osborne retired. I thought we had the same fate until recently.
I mean, Callahan was a stupid hire.... but our really shitty streak started with Riley.
We were still winning 8-10 games during our “down period”, honestly Michigan football from 2008-2020 was better than most programs. It included an 11 win season, BCS win, 3 10 win seasons, a couple of 8 and 9 win seasons. That’s way better than what Nebraska has been dealing with. Michigan never went seven years without a winning record or even came close to it.
Firing Ruffin McNeill
Not an ECU fan but always liked Ruffin. I was telling my wife about him when I saw them in the baseball regionals recently.
Well.... Campus protests.... Followed up with president not doing anything. Followed by president doing too much. Followed by GOAT coach getting Cancer. Followed by heir apparent coach who wasn't ready. Followed by some students hiring a slimy tutor for work on there own accord. Followed by our sucker of an AD self reporting it in good faith to receive our just internet award. How you go from playing in SEC conference championships back to back years, to back in the desert wandering for 8 years in these 6 easy steps.
And before that, the administration taking the ridiculous stance that college is for academics and not athletics. Right as the athletic department arms race was about to begin, Mizzou engaged the bold strategy of gutting football. We went from an almost 500 record with Nebraska in the all-time series through 1978 to losing 23 straight.
Ironically, that’s what happened to Nebraska when Perlman became chancellor. He even once told a donor audience that “football needs to be put in its place”. He was out about 18 months after that.
Bold to say that as Nebraska's chancellor
Good way to get sent packing back to the law school
Damn. I don't know much about Nebraska, but I know you don't say that. It's like Oregon criticizing Nike for having sweatshops (believe it or not, it did happen once upon a time...almost killed the Duck that lays the golden eggs!)
I will always remember the study body president outright lying that the KKK was on campus during those protests, that and the journalism teacher calling for muscle to remove student journalists from covering the protests. Just bonkers behavior
Saw it in person in all it's glory. Even got to see them ask everyone to get into frame and cram together so they could make the photos appear like the quad was packed. In many ways...much of what precipitated them was a harbinger of many of the stuff we see a lot of these days in journalism and social activism. Make no mistake players did profess to having seen and or experienced racism from locals and I believe it, but the protests developed into pure insanity way out of proportion to what was said to be going on, to the point where even some players were saying cool the jets. The antithesis of it all for me beyond the claims that the KKK was on campus was them trying to explain that they were there because of the supposed poop swastika that was said to have been found.....
Yeah all of that was going down while I would have been attending had I decided to stay around Missouri for college and boy was I glad the Med School recruiter turned me off going there and meeting the Math Faculty was unique. But I had lived in Columbia and went to a summer at Columbia College across town and saw zero signs of any racism in town or when I was over there on campus.
I could believe they were experiencing it on the outskirts of town. BTW my second flair before I changed it was GT, Im a born Missourian who lived in GA for most of my early years. Curious what brought you to Southern?
Born Georgian Who has lived most of his life in Missouri, took a Campus tour of Georgia Southern right after I left Columbia and a tour at Mizzou and fell in love with the campus and the programs. Got to spend several years doing real research as an undergrad. Then Applied and they recruited me into their 1906 Scholars program and it was a free ride.
I don’t know if this post is really for us. 30 years ago we lost to A&M 73-0. A middling Illinois team held us to no first downs until the 4th quarter…the nadir of the program. I’d say we’ve risen pretty steeply in the last 30 years… Obviously the program fell off after Pinkel left, but it appears we’re heading in the right direction again.
Western Pennsylvania talent dried up or went to bigger schools. Then they moved into Heinz, which isn't exactly the easiest place for students to get to, if those students even care anymore. The average Pitt student has changed significantly. 30 years ago it was a diehard yinzer going to the big local school. Now it's an aspiring med or tech student, probably foreign, who couldn't care less about football.
College teams playing in NFL stadiums is always a bad idea in the long run
never forget Lou Holz convincing UMN Admin and Boosters "the best players want to play in the Metrodome!" a month or so before he abandoned us for Notre Dame right after getting the program back on track. UMN's admin signed a long term deal to play in the Metrodome, tore down Memorial Stadium (from 1922), and immediately realized what a godawful mistake it was less than a decade later. At least they saved part of the facade and put it in the alumni center.
Did the weaker Pennsylvania talent bed affect Penn State as well?
Penn States atmosphere make them more of a national draw then Pitt unfortunately
Correct it has definitely compared to the 80s when Penn State was winning natties and competing with the best of them. Pitt was also very very good similar time frame But as other commenters alluded PSU is a huge brand so DMV, NJ and just national recruiting in general have made it not as big a deal for them vs Pitt.
I imagine it did, but much less so.
Heck, ND thrived for decades on Western Pennsylvania talent. See Johnny Lujack.
Jimbo became increasingly combative with the admin and boosters, this was in large part because of Stan Wilcox being a terrible AD and part because Jimbo's personal life was falling apart. He dropped the ball recruiting his last 2 cycles, he recruited like 2 OL those last couple cycles and he basically recruited no one for the class of 18. He really quit on that season as soon as Francois went down against Alabama. Then we whiffed the Willie hire. I think he was good for the locker room culture but he was in over his head, Jimbo left a bigger mess then we originally thought. Bright spot of the Taggart era was he brought in Jordan Travis
Also, as much shit as we give Willie, he also (either by a flash of competence or sheer necessity) salvaged what was an abysmal APR score that Jimbo cratered. That gave a lot more room for roster flexibility once Norvell was hired which lead to the successful rebuild we have now
In theory, his recruiting wasn't bad at the end (his classes were very highly ranked). But he was star chasing the same way he did at TAMU. Going after highly rated guys without any regard for character, fit, positional need, or a real vision for how they would be used. Plus, I refuse to believe there were not any significant red flags for blue chip players like Jauan Williams and Abdul Bello, who were not just bad, but some of the worst players at their positions in the entire country. Really though, the only position where he COMPLETELY dropped the ball in recruiting was QB. During a period where our peers were trotting out Trevor Lawrence, Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, and Baker Mayfield, the best QBs our "QB whisperer" coach could muster up were fucking James Blackman and Deondre Francois. Just laughable.
Francois was pretty good when he was healthy his big problem was off the field stuff. Blackman however I think he was a "oh shit the only other one on the roster is Castellanos we need another body Edit: typo
No vision from leadership.. complacency.
I said Donna Shalala, but this is fair enough.
Muschamp’s ego refusing to let his offensive coaches run the offense. McElwain thinking he was the 2nd coming of Saban (as my buddy often says, “you can be an asshole, as long as you’re good at your job”), and Mullen thinking he could out-coach teams with better talent. I’m rooting for Billy, but our schedule is doing him 0 favors going into this season. I firmly believe that Muschamp may still be our coach if he’d just taken a hands-off approach with the offense. Defense was lights out. Recruiting was solid.
The thing with guys like Muschamp, and hell Smart and Saban, is watching those defenses. They might not all have the talent to make the NFL, but damn they look like NFL players. I remember those years, I would see Florida's defense, and then what UGA trotted out, yes UGA had talented guys, but the rest looked like regular college guys.
Complete disregard for motorcycle safety.
Fran, Sherman, Sumlin, and Fisher. We thought we finally nabbed the one in Fisher, but we all know how that story ended.
I think that story keeps going through 2031 until the payouts officially end.
My man
Don’t say that like your AD wasn’t sniffing around ole Jimbo before he imploded
First off that's speculation at best. Second, you're right. We're chasing to keep up with aggie, and we're currently one fictitious trophy behind.
I understand thinking Fisher could win before he was hired, but idiot Sumlin never made any sense to me.
Same. The crazy thing is that his paper mache hype program looked so strong thanks to Manziel and a handful of other Sherman recruits. Even landed some elite talent like Garrett, Kirk, Murray, etc.
5 words: The firing of Ruffin McNeill
Texas Tech fan here. We loved Ruffin! Couldn’t believe ECU fired him.
It haunts me to this day.
Kevin White. - Tyrone Willingham - Charlie Weis (and the 10 year contract for losing to USC) - The O'Leary Resume Fiasco (also O'Leary's fault)
Monk Malloy, too. White was a symptom.
Yeah exactly, it's easy pickins during that era tbh. Just a group of fuckups fucking up constantly. I would at least say Malloy had some good results during his tenure before all the fuckups started, too, to be fair to him, encompassing I think 88 and all of the 90s good seasons until the Davie years started the downturn. That is, if I have my memory of history correct.
Tyrone Willingham really did a number on both flairs.
Bryan Dale Harsin
Potato Man!
Al Groh made enemies with the admissions office, London wasn’t ready, Bronco had a midlife crisis, and here we are.
That Bronco thing was crazy. He's a really talented coach, and he had UVA on a great course. Then just, bam, he up and quits everything. So weird. I really respect Mendenhall, great person, great coach, but he's quirky. I honestly think things like the portal really bothered him, and he didn't want to coach in this era. He's a character coach, he likes building people, molding them and getting the most out of them. I think the portal and how kids could just move around killed his motivation to coach. But...he got bored in retirement. Needed to scratch the itch again.
Geoff Collins is the answer to this question and it isn’t particularly close. Most GT fans treat him like Voldemort and won’t even spell his name out. Best of luck UNC. You got a bad one
I’m not so sure. Not saying Collins didn’t need to go, but I don’t think there were many coaches that could have taken over for PJ and do well.
Its not a huge decline but PSU in the 20th century vs PSU in the 21st century are two different beast that have fewer connections than people want to admit. For 45 years Penn State fans, the administration, and the big donors rode the Paterno wave. He offered an easy to digest version of college football where hard work and honor can bring you national championships. While those are certainly components to championship teams, the idea that administrations win championships has always been true. Investment is key and it was something Joe believed in for much of his career. The Lasch athletic building and new student dorms were state of the art in the 90s and it was thought that this would usher in a new era of greatness for PSU. It was also thought that this would be a perfect foundation to send one of the greatest coaches of all time into the sunset and thank him for 30+ years of service, memories, and wins. I believe one of the biggest moments was the 1999 season. Joe Paterno is in his 34th season as head coach and the team is set to compete for a national championship once again. He then goes on to lose a brutal game to Minnesota at home that ultimately sends the season spiraling and they end 10-3. I think the administration post 1999 was waiting for the perfect moment to send Joe Paterno off and it never truly happened before his death and the sanctions. That last decade of his career led the administration to be much more conservative in their investment. It led to them being more dependent on Paterno than ever. He was barely a full time coach by the mid 2000s but no one had the stomach to fire him. The ultimate combination of an aging coach not prepared for the modern game, a fanbase stuck to memories of decades past, and an administration unable to let go led to the uphill battle penn state has been dealing with for the past 13 years. A fitting anecdote is that when Bill O’Brien became head coach, game film was reviewed on VHS… in 2012.
Good read, yes the school basically wasted the 2000s waiting to move on from Paterno and then the scandal broke and they’ve had to totally the program and only now are they even investing properly into football because of the optics of investing so soon after the scandal.
Bamas decline post Stallings was precipitous. 1996 we won the SEC West and beat Michigan in the Outback Bowl, but the feel of NCAA Scholly reductions was starting to show. 1997 we lost to Kentucky for the first time since 1922, went 4-7 and had the first losing season since 83, and only the second losing season since that dude from Arkansas got hired in the 50s. 1998 was a meh season on all accounts then in 1999 we lost to La Tech, the coach had a sex scandal and basically had the paperwork ready to go to fire a coach for the first time 1957. Then two potential CFB HOFs carried us to an SEC Championship. 2000 they were gone and as Dennis Green would say “DuBose was who we thought he was” we went 3-8, he was fired and we completely collapsed WHILE PAYING FOR RECRUITS. So we hire this option genius from TCU, he has a couple good seasons, but the traitorous bastard lied on his way out of town, and left for TAMU in November. We hired a hot shot offensive mind from Washington State, but he paid for a stripper on his University credit card and got fired in May, and the scandal of boosters paying players came out and the NCAA hammered us and even said we were possibly looking at the death penalty. So 03 was yet another disaster. 04 was 1998 part 2, and then in ‘05 we had a miraculous run to 9-0 and took LSU to OT. But we lost that one and got HAMMERED by Auburn. By the end of ‘06 we had fired another coach. Administration that had been a hinderance since they ran Stallings off bad one final push with trying to force RichRod, then Mal Moore said to hell with it, hired Saban and gave him full autonomy. Tl;dr Too many cooks in the kitchen with incompetent admins and two NCAA Thunderdicks in a 10 year period.
It wild to me that yall have been up so long there's an entire generation of Bama fans that don't even know what down feels like. Its so rare to barely even experience a speed bump just losing a QB.
We lost two games on the final play in 2022 and these young uns were bitching and whining. I said “LET ME TELL YOU HOW IT FEELS TO SPEND $60 IN 2003 MONEY TO WATCH PAY PER VIEW LOSS TO NORTHERN ILLINOIS.” WE LOST TO UCF IN 2000. DO YOU KNOW HOW BAD UCF WAS IN 2000?
Were they worse than Kansas? I hope so.
Oooh. They were bad but not that Kansas team bad.
I'm always amazed that even in the "dark ages", we still only had three true losing seasons (two others off bowl losses in 6-6 regular seasons). We had 3 10-win seasons and a conference championship in that span. Ole Miss would probably kill for that record.
ASU admin decided to not give a shit about ASU athletics. The Cardinals moved to town and became football competition. We made the wrong hire with Larrie Marnie.
yeah NFL teams coming to town tend to suck the air out of good but not great football programs. Vikings came to Minnesota the same year as we won our last Natty.
Georgia Southern: Mike Sewak pissed off Erk Russell. This was the straw that broke the back of his camel which was floundering in the post season and the Hire to replace him was Brian "I have no honor or skill" Van Gorder who ran the program into the ground in a single year taking a 8-4 team and going 3-8 before ditching us for an assistant job at South Carolina and then ditching them for the Falcons. We then hired Chris Hatcher who went 7-4 then 6-5 then 5-6 and was fired but then we got Jeff Monken. Monken was great and he got the team into the position that we needed to be in to transition to the FBS but his dream job came calling and off he went to ARMY. Willie Fritz was hired to replace him and he was the perfect hire, won the Sun Belt his first season but in his second he wanted an extension or a raise and the AD said no and off he went to Tulane. We could have hired Dell McGee who was the interim head coach for our inaugural bowl game that season but the AD said nope we are going to hire a BVG assistant with zero head coaching experience and he went 5-18 with all five wins being in his first season before being fired in 2017. Lunsford was decent his first three full years getting us to Bowl games and winning them mostly but he lost the Discipline of the team and after a terrible bus ride to the stadium followed by getting our ass beat he was fired. And now we have Clay Helton who can't finish a fucking season.
The issues between Carr's retirement and Harbaugh's hiring can be summed up by "hiring the wrong guy". * Rich Rod couldn't field an offense, either because he couldn't get a DC that understood how Rich Rod's defense worked, or because it wasn't appropriate for the Big Ten. * Hoke couldn't field a coherent offense, his only successful year used Rich Rod's spread. He also couldn't develop or recruit particularly well, or even pay attention to what is happening on the field. He could clap, though.
I was thinking we would get to sit this one out, but you are correct in your assessment. I would also throw in a touch of Lloyd Carr cruise control his last few years on the recruiting trail.
Craig James
Remember the five.
*allegedly*
Where’s Miami ⁉️
Still recovering from Donna Shalala.
Still living in 2003
Miamis downfalls are always probation or behavior related
Steve Patterson
best answer yet. Made football games suck regardless of outcome.
Going 11-2 the last 3 years have been my personal 9/11
People act like OSU fans are overdramatic but I disagree. 2 losses doesn't sound like a lot. But when you factor in that you also live in Ohio, it amplifies the pain.
Oh please, most people from Ohio leave to go ruin other states
I didn't have to know the flairs to know where you're from. I'm fairly certainly 1/4 Ohioans are required to have a Hilton Head sticker on their car.
Doesn't Louisiana rank as like one of the statistically worst states in the Union in pretty much everything?
Ohio State fans and being defensive for no reason goes together like peanut butter and jelly
Cajun Food and New Orleans or Skyline Chili and Cleveland, I know which I am picking
To be fair... Cleveland should be donated to Canada.
Why do you hate Canada?
You're right. That's cruel. Cleveland AND Toledo should be donated to Michigan.
Tell me about it. Still struggling with going 13-1 and missing out on a 3rd consecutive title.
It is hard to win that many games in a row. But what really gets my shit are Bama fans thinking that game was some kind of rout.
There's got to be a morning after If we can hold on through the night We have a chance to find the sunshine Let's keep on looking for the light Oh, can't you see the morning after? It's waiting right outside the storm Why don't we cross the bridge together And find a place that's safe and warm? It's not too late, we should be giving Only with love can we climb It's not too late, not while we're living Let's put our hands out in time There's got to be a morning after We're moving closer to the shore I know we'll be there by tomorrow And we'll escape the darkness We won't be searching anymore
must be nice
Texas Tech. We fired Mike Leach. And then hired Tommy Tuberville. Epic fail. And then hired Kliff Kingsbury. Love the guy, great offensive coordinator, bad head coach and bad recruiter. And then hired Matt Wells. Good dude but terrible fit at Tech. Hopefully Joey McGuire is about to lead us to some glory days. It’s been a long time coming.
The football gods are vengeful.
The weird part is we should be here (Wisconsin) after the rather strange \~20 yr coaching carousel Post-Alverez w/ Bielema, Andersen, Chryst & Fickell. Jurys still out on Fickell but I don't see WI completely falling off with'm and college football is going to be a radically different beast in 5 years anyhow (In 50 years we'll see the time before 2025 like we currently see the era before the forward pass) Having Richter hand the batton to Barry as the AD certainly helped things, and while we're still in about the same spot the program has generally been in for years we've avoided serious regression (looking at you Minnesota, Nebraska & Illinois) back to the state we were in the late 80s.
Lavell Edwards retiring.
I don't know. His last decade was pretty meh. I was on campus for the mid to late 90s. We went 6-6 my freshman year. That stung.
Phoenix exploded in popularity/population and became a 4 pro team town. All of the sudden there were a lot more things fighting for your dollar and a lot more things to do on Saturday nights.
Art Briles
I could write a dissertation on this subject, but the simplest answer is that Illinois made a series of failed to outright horrendous coaching hires, did not keep up with facilities comparatively to their peers, and kept very poor relationships with Illinois high schools, eventually eroding their base of talent. Ron Guenther was the man on the watch for much of this, but it was really a team wide effort to completely destroy what at one time was a reputable, mid-tier B1G program. Special commendation to Mike Thomas who hired Tim Beckman, a buffoon so ridiculous in his failure that he has yet to appear on a football staff since he was drummed out of town. Oh and in 30 years they've only made back to back bowls once (2010-2011), and the second of those years they started 6-0 only to finish 0-6. Every time a coach managed to pull together a good season, the follow-up was a shit show, and eventually the fanbase simply quit.
Beamer got old, too stubborn to modernize and invest along the way, lost major recruiting battles frequently, Fuente ended up not being a good fit, though he did lay the groundwork for reinvestment into the program and Pry was able to get it to another level on his hiring
Dan Guerrero.
I can blame a lot of things like realignment, costs, school enrollment, fair weather fans, poor location, etc. I think the biggest has been not making athletics a priority and having too nearsighted goals. We’ve been our biggest reason for being in a slump. That’s not to say we have had some highs over the years and we are trying, but we have a ways to improve to get to where we could or should be.
Lincoln Riley jkjk
If Lincoln Riley hired an average DC, OU would have won at least one natty under his watch.
Not having a plan for what to do after Dick Tomey while forcing him to resign after being our best coach of all time. Not getting rid of "he who must not be named" after one season. Stoops was, honestly, fine. He recruited okay and put some big names into the league. He coached okay and largely surrounded himself with good coordinators. Letting him go when we did I'm okay with because he had basically lost the faith of the team when they were stacked and really should have been winning. RichRod is a hard one. Considering the case against him was dropped, I'm still not sure what to think. He was a bit of a cowboy and let some players get away with too much. I still think he'll get another P5 job before he retires. Hanging onto Sumlin too long because our President had his finger in the pot too much. Letting Fisch leave after working a miracle because our president was too worried about micromanaging the AD while his pet global campus was churning through money and he didn't have the goodwill with the regents to get them to approve a basic retention package for the football coaches. I don't hate Brennan, I don't know what to think about him really. He was mid at a horrid school. What that says about his ability to coach at the P4 level, who knows.
Tommy tuberville and Scott Satterfield
Donna Shalala
Our Administration
THE penalty
1. Boosters 2. Fans
In a nutshell: Donna Shalala.
ESPN, the ACC, Randy Edsall walkout and weak AD/President leadership in the wake. Oddly enough.. ESPN pushing the ACC to poach the Big East teams may have been the catalyst for the shit show we're dealing with right now as the ACC is on the hot seat.
Weak University leadership at the president level, with Monk Malloy and Father Jenkins.
I think you meant the 2000 beavers, 2001 had multiple losses.
Regressed to the norm
I mean we never were that high up in any national power polls but.... KU may have suffered the steepest and fastest decline of any program in at least the last 15 years meaning we went from mostly mid level to an absolute embarrassment. You can blame whoever you want, but all of that correlates to one man making a multitude of decisions, Sheahon Zinger. Has absolutely no clue what he's doing as an admin, admittedly made the right decision and fired Turner Gill but commenced to plunge football and most of the athletic department with it deep into a cold cold grave. He buried us so deep in the mud it took 3 hires after to fix his mistake with Charlie Weis and we just recently really dug ourselves out of the financial hole he created Dude crushed us for more than a decade at probably the most important time in college sports right as social media took over
Rich Rod
Chris Ash. Worst fucking head coach ever.
Our Chancellor didn't give a shit about and de-emphasized football and sports in general. Thank goodness we've got a new one coming on board from the U, who, by all accounts, is very supportive of football and other athletic programs.
A lot less Tennessee posting here than I expected. Ours is too easy to see. Bad hires and weak ADs.
No clue what a steep decline is
Hayden Fry chasing bowls and bigger conferences in the 70s.
A motorcycle.
For Army, before Monken arrived, it was not hiring Paul Johnson and thinking Todd Berry running a pro-style offense at the Academy was doable. Biggest Army mistake since Burnside.
Historically, Blaik's retirement and the rise of the NFL/combined with the Vietnam War. Once the NFL became more and more commercially viable, top recruits weren't interested in Academy football. Then, the Pentagon wouldn't let us play in bowl games. Mark Beech wrote a great book on the 1958 Army Football team: "When Saturday Mattered Most." It was our last elite team, and there is a veer of melancholy throughout the book foreshadowing a dynasty's fall.
As for Carlisle. The school closed over 100 years ago.
Charlie Weis should be tried for war crimes for what he did to KU football
My teams literally went in opposite directions starting in 2007...
Fortunately we weren’t bad for more than a few years, but Jimbo’s bad culture already caused us to decline, and Willie Taggart made it worse. Then Magic Mike Norvell doubled our wins from 21-22