If you talk to a nole, they will tell you that they were undefeated last year. So let's include norvell.
TWO blowouts. One by UGA. They actually had a 2 TD lead on Bama before Bama stormed back in the second half. No one is saying they were top 5, but to say they werent top 20 is silly. They finished ranked #11. Period. That was a legit win for Billy. Not good enough in the big picture, but on that day, that was a big win. Nonetheless, I agree with everything else you said. I think Billy is on a game by game basis. If he gets blown out after a bye week he should be gone. If he somehow goes 1-1 and is close in the loss over the next two games, then I will listen to objections. I still say 7 wins needs to be his line in the sand to stay.
I passively follow LU. My wife went there for a year back in the day before transferring and we have friends on faculty up there. I don't know if people realize how big an upset this was. Liberty was being discussed as a possible sneaky playoff team. KSU had never won an FBS game and came in 0-6. What doomed them? Penalties. (Sound familiar?) Also a pretty damning comment from their QB that may speak to a culture Issue: ,“I feel like it’s not a lot of fun. It don’t look like as fun as it used to be with us out there.”
I agree w/ you about this issue of not giving credit to CBN for his wins. In 21 one of our (very knowledgeable) posters kept saying Mullen wasn't a good offensive mind and downplayed the success of Dak at Miss St. It's like irrational hatred blinds people to facts, or something, so they say really stupid things. And the problem is that saying really stupid things leads to really stupid decisions. (Firing Mullen was not stupid, to be clear.) What we need is clear eyed assessment of the future, not the past. So to me, if we finish with 7 regular season wins IMO Billy has earned another year. Whether GA or TX blows us out or not. The only way I change my opinion on the above is if we are SURE we have a good replacement... (Like Smart for Richt.) But I do not want to exchange 1 Sun Belt coach for another one.
Smart wasn’t a guarantee, he just happened to work out. He was an assistant with zero HC experience. Nobody has a crystal ball. You need a ton of support in a multitude of areas, some moxy, and a whole lot of luck. To get all those things clicking together takes a perfect storm.
Of course there are no guarantees, and the people that get obsessed with "proven" are misguided. That said, you do have to look at who's available and make a judgement as to whether those dice are attractive enough to roll relative to your current situation. Some will say "always roll the dice we know what we have is bad" and that's not entirely illogical but I'm in the camp of "roll the dice reasonably."
Smart wasn’t considered a great hire until a few years in. There were multiple Kirby Dumb posts in a lot of message boards. He became a stud coach when he got QBs that could run his system flawlessly.
Cornell had a warrior at Qb. Hate that he was a Nole but that Qb (and their pathetic schedule)last year carried the Noles and Norvl. Now that he is saddled with average QBs his lack of coaching is showing through.
They were actually outside the top 20 in the CFP ranking and didn't beat a single ranked team. They were not good. That win gave me a false sense of hope. We will see how it goes the rest of the way. I hope it is great but expecting to be underwhelmed.
While I agree that he needs to beat some of the big fish, this is absolutely an historical season for Indiana. They haven't been 7-0 since what, '56? Of course FreedomGator disagrees, but, has no point.