And where's Merlin right now? At Flur-a-da with Loafers. A guy he pushed around for years until Keenum said enough. Merlin couldn't push The IB around like a Jackson Prep cheerleader.
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We haven?t had a coach leave here and have a successful head coaching career since the 50s Brunswick. That is FACT. The perception of MSU has been since the 50s that you can?t win at MSU and you will never even be able to go higher from there. JWS changed that a little bit. Mullen blew it up, for now. If he continues he to win then it is blown up. You will never get a coach that we will want to stay a long time if he won?t come to begin with. We all love MSU and none of us would want to leave here ever if we were a winning coach, but that?s not the case with most non-alumni coaches. Heck it might not be WITH an alumni, as loafers proved. I wanted Mullen to stay, but if you can?t see how him leaving in his own for what is perceived nationally as a much better job helps us in future coaching searches then you are just blinded by hate. Heck the evidence was there to see on the search to replace Mullen.
That's the whole point Liver. I would say basically we all wanted to keep him. Wanted him to be one of us. He's the one shopping himself around every year. Personally I got tired of it and cared not weather he stayed or went and told my son so, going home from the egg bowl. I question if his heart was ever at MSU.
One thing he will never know is, was he a good enough coach to win a championship at Mississippi State University. And that is the reason I hope Joe does so.
When you make statements like ?coaching graveyard?, you imply that we took Head Coaches, ruined their careers, and you never heard from them again. The fact is that we hired a number of unqualified coaches on the cheap and gave them no money to build a program with and crappy facilities. They were doomed from the start. And - like Mullen - they almost all moved on and continued their careers.
The difference that everyone will recognize is that Mullen - a good coach and a great hire - was given resources and support no one else has had at this school. Bob Tyler, Emory Bellard, and Jackie all showed you can win here. But, they all showed without the resources it was not sustainable. Mullen just reinforces that. You can win here with a committed admin and Top 30 budget.
Yeah, some things have been forgotten or overlooked in this thread.
What I heard,
Jimbo Fischer wanted the State job after Jackie. LT turned down Jimbo for Croom. Hiring Croom was to lessen the NCAA penalties.
Jackie interviewed for a few NFL HC jobs in 92 and after 94. He didn?t get either job obviously. There was a lot of smoke around Jackie to Bama after the 2000 season. My Bama friends say he interviewed but didn?t get it. Regardless of how the Bama job got filled, I always thought Jackie lost his drive when he didn?t get that job. Also Peggy got sick I believe.
So I don?t hold a grudge against Don for looking for jobs. 9 years is about all you will get out of a coach now a days anyway because of the pressure from fans placed on administrators.
I imagine if CJM keeps us going as Don did, we will Look back in 5 years and appreciate Don more.
This more than anything is why our history wasn't great prior to Jackie. The only reason we were able to get Jackie was the Southwest cloud hanging over him. We hired Croom on the basis of 1) he interviewed at Bama even though it was just a cursory interview that would have never resulted in getting the job and 2) he was the first African American Head Coach in the SEC so the NCAA supposedly gave us a lighter sentence. We now know the NCAA hit us almost as hard as UM with their Network, prostitutes, burner phones, giving out red backpacks full of cash, moving families to Oxford with non existent jobs, and everything else they were doing. There was also a lot more qualified black coaches we could have hired but Templeton was lazy.
Mullen was a top 15 paid coach in the country and we now have facilities on par with any top 25 team. There are a few upgrades we can make, mainly finishing bowling in the stadium and upgrading the locker room but most of the facilities for the football team are pretty damn good. This isn't the same university and program that had to hire Jackie Sherrill or Croom. You can look at the past but concentrate on the present and future.
This is very true. If Coach JoeMo keeps us winning an average of 8 games or even wins 10 or more then Lateral gets appreciated more than he is now. I actually think that CJM might be a better fit for us long term because Don didn't have what it takes to win games that he was outmatched in players. He wasn't a risk taker in big games and that caused us to not win many games if we were at least equal in talent. CJM has proven when he was at Fordham that he can pull the upset so he might can use the great foundation left by Mullen and build something bigger.
I know exactly what you are talking about, and you are wrong. Most people?s frame of reference is about 25 years. The majority of the country knows MSU as a team that won under Jackie, had down years under Croom, and won under Mullen. They aren?t living with old fart MSU stereotypes in their heads like you have. Maybe because I wasn?t raised an MSU fan and become one in 1990 when I got a letter in the mail asking me to apply I have a different perception then you do.
17 MERLINS WITH NO END!!!
You come home to divorce papers signed on the table...wife gone to live with her exboyfriend that she used to badmouth...then sends for all the furniture to be sent to her...then calls your kids to convince them to come live with her...you don't thank her for the 9 years you were together...you fight to keep what you can, rebuild your life, and never forget the bull$hit way she ended it...I dont really care that Merlins left, just the way he chose to handle himself on the way out is my point...
That's probably the frame of reference you should have. Pre-Jackie and Post-Jackie for MSU is as important as talking about pre- and post-integration. I know national perception is what it is but in reality to compare anything football related pre-Jackie to what is going on now is irrelevant. About as irrelevant as OM talking now about what they accomplished under Vaught. And given I went to MSU in the early to mid-Eighties I think I have a decent perspective in the evolution of MSU football.