Lets jump back to present day. Heres what I do as the brand new replacement of Scott "Give away the keys to the vault" Strickland. I hire a GM to handle player scouting, acquisition, profit share, NIL, etc. I task that GM with hiring a coach who can develop talent, and put a together a great game plan. I no longer need a coach who also needs to recruit and scout and chat up boosters etc etc. Now all of a sudden a Dan Mullen type, who could kill you on the field, but not on the trail becomes a perfectly viable coach. I also can offer that coach less, due to scope of the job and to shorter term, if you fail I replace you. The players were recruited and are being paid by the GM, hes still here. I've now made the hiring desicion I feel is a crapshoot much less detrimental for missing on. If all of that crashes and burns, you don't have enormous buyouts and the president can just go back to the old ways.
Mike Elko. Admittedly that's a purely hindsight pick. But moving forward, it shows we shouldn't rule out highly successful coordinators at the top level.
He was 40-12, with top 25 finishes at a dumpster program. They would take him back in a heartbeat BTW.
If you get the job, I’ll try my best to support you and whoever you hire until it’s not your job anymore. I don’t think all of your strategies and plans will work out exactly like you think they will, but I’ll have hope for you. You’re the guy, until you’re not, then I’ll flush you out and throw my support behind the next guy.
This. He tweets a photo of myself sipping a mojito on signing day now. Dude wants no part of the new normal with NIL.
I wanted Kiffin. I figured there'd be no drop off from Mullen's offensive playcalling and maybe even a slight improvement. The biggest difference I saw between him and Mullen was Kiffin would have embraced NIL and the portal. Based on Ole Miss's moves this offseason, I'd say that hold true.
So, your take away from repeated failed coaching hires is that we should guarantee more money to the next one? I buy Chevy, they break down every 3-4 years, I'm going to let the dealer make me pay more for the next one. Do you see how I just don't think that makes sense? I have the position of power. I am offering a 5-7x yearly salary increase. Name any other professional setting where I am being dictated to in negotiations.
Well at least the Gator program would hopefully be in better than it is now. In other words, Would we be in better shape is Napier had turn this offer down? Current history tells me YES.
I put my support 100% behind your endeavor. I do not think you’ll be as successful as you think you will, but I am willing to watch you try. It’s what I do. FWIW, most jobs where this kind of money is thrown around have these insane types of terms and insane golden parachutes for failing miserably at the job you were hired to do. You may think you hold all the leverage as the person doing the hiring, but you’re much more at the mercy of the market than you’d like to believe.
-- All hires after Steve Spurrier -- 1. We hired Zook who had how much experience as a head coach? 2. Then it was Meyer and for a time worked out well on the football field with 2 Nattys. 3. Then we hired a DC (Muschamp) who never had been a head football coach at any level. 4. Then It was McElwain who had just gotten his first gig as a head coach at CSU... greeny. 5. Then Mullen, who had been our OC that had reached some level of competence at MSU... flaked out on the recruiting. 6. Now we hire an up and comer from the Sunbelt conference (Napier) that had worked with Nick Saban and Dabo Swinny. That's a crap-shoot? Two of those hires were not even worthy to be hired as head football coaches for THE only Flagship University of the State of Florida - Zook and Muschamp... MaElwain was raw and new to the head coaching ranks... another waste of time. That's now 3 wasted hires by our great university... by the powers that be. That leaves 3 coaches with some experience. All but Napier got to the SECCG, but this is only Npaier's 3rd year. Is he getting enough time to change our team's fortune... or have we seen enough? Either way these next few games will tell us all we impatient fans need to know to make an opinion. An opinion that seems to mean nothing... to the powers that be. The one thing that seperated one coach from the rest listed above was bowl game wins. Only one coach was the head fooball coach of a new year's 6 bowl winning team, and that coach is Urban Meyer. Can we at least hire a coach that has won a bowl game next time we decide to hire and head football coach? Is that too much to ask for?
Maybe, maybe not. There’s no way to know. Maybe we hire Kiffin and he bangs the presidents wife and sets the swamp on fire. Meanwhile Billy decides to wait and stay at ULL for another year, Saban retires a year earlier, Billy takes over Bama and wins a Natty in year one while we’re in the middle of our next coaching search. You’ll never know what could have been, all you can do is try to move forward.
Agreed, that is why I think ADs should act like they have all the leverage. I have 10 canidates on my shortlist, top guy is 75% hit IMO, candidate 10 is 50/50. If canidate 1 doesn't want the pay raise with significant potential future income (you win big at UF you name your price), cool I'll lower my hit chance a couple % and go to #2 on the list. Repeat.
I understand that’s a theory. There has been very little actual evidence to back that up, though. For instance, Stricklin, who would know better than any of us, has never openly suggested that was true. And, of course, as these things go, the decision makers are usually tight lipped. Maybe it’s all true, and he was just looking to get fired and destroy his coaching reputation. But I also understand that’s an important narrative for “We had no choice but to go with Billy Napier, let him build us up from scratch, and give him an indefinite number of years to show anything that looks like progress.” What I could see with my own eyes was underperformance in recruiting and failure to see that Grantham was never going to get any better. If I’m right, then 2022 would have regressed toward the mean and been way better than Napier’s pathetic first year. If I’m wrong, we still would have dodged Napier in 2022 and would have had a shot at Kiffin.
Kirby Smart was Will Muschamp 2.0. Chip Kelly was can't miss. Frost was the hottest canidate. Mario Cristobal is a moron. Mike Norvell is a questionable hire, oh wait I hope Billy follows his trajectory, oh wait nevermind he just had superman at QB. It's a crapshoot.
