Alabama's next coach will be filling shoes the size of the Grand Canyon.
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Speaking of Saban, I heard him say during an interview that when he accepted the Alabama job, he told Mal Moore (AD), flying back on the plane from Miami to Tuscaloosa, that he may not have hired the greatest football coach, but he assured him that nobody would out-recruit him.
I think that is Mullen's primary problem. He does not emphasize recruiting enough, except for his QB signees. He keeps an OL coach out of friendship who is clearly not getting the job done, and he is content with lazy recruiting by his other coaches.
I've heard a lot of people say you can't recruit top talent to Starkville. I don't think Tuscaloosa is any better town than Starkville, so how does Saban do it? Answer-he works his butt off.
So let's say some MSU grad is a billionaire, and tells Keenum here is a check for $100M, I want MSU to compete. Where does that money need to go immediately to bump us up? Because if it is just to pay the same assistant coaches more money, we would not get better results. Where does the money go?
I don't have a problem with winning 8 regular season games a year with the occasional 10+. I mean, if you put our team into the SEC East over the last 5 years, we would probably have an average of 9 to 10 regular season wins per year. When you play Bama, Auburn, LSU, A&M, and cheating Ole Miss, it's very difficult to go 3-2 in those games. That's assuming that we have easier competition from the East and no top 20 OOC games. If you add in Georgia from the East, you have to go 4-2 against teams that are probably in the top 20. That's just to get to 10-2. We can do that, but to think that we have the reputation and street cred now to pull in the recruits year after year to pull off that 10-2 record with our completion in the West is just wrong. We can get there and I think that we are heading in the right direction.
It would go to the recruiting budget. We would hire a bunch of extra analysts and recruiting type coaches like Alabama. Other than that the money is not going to help all that much in the W/L column. Lots of factors to include hires/fires would determine that. Just look around at our league at the teams with twice the money of us that we beat regularly.
Yeah- it's only 9 years. Enough to get a good idea of where we are and what the results will likely be short term. Want to bet v-cash that we don't win 8 or more this year and next? I also included a couple of Croom's years which take it out to 10- actually 11 to be precise. We're an eight win team now period.
As has been stated, since Dan's arrival at State (09), there has been 3 teams that win 9+ in the SEC on average-Bama, Georgia, and LSU. In the last 5 years since the addition of A&M, same teams average 9+ wins/year. So, yes it is inconceivable that State could ever be more than an 8 win program over the course of an extended period. As currently constructed we will jump up and have a 10 or more win season (I think it's coming in 2018), but then there's always going to be a backdown similar to 2016 where we are at 6/7 wins to average things out. It's just not feasible for State to be a 9+ win program. We don't have the natural resources to do such. Our supporters and talent pool are too poor (relative to rest of league) for us to be at that level. The only thing that can change that is major industry and population booms within the state. That's literally all that could change that. But Mullen is doing awesome work and it's ok to complain and wish utopian thoughts about the program, just setting up the reality.
Yeah, guess you're probably right. We can wish "utopian thoughts about the program", but in reality we should be satisfied with about 7 or 8 wins and going to some mediocre bowl game. Our supporters and talent pool are too poor, compared to a prosperous state like Alabama, and the rest of the states in the SEC.
Averaging 8 wins/year over a 5-10 year stretch would put you in the top half of the league with the 13th largest budget, smallest populated town, poorest state in the conference. I love the school. I bleed Maroon, but these are just the facts. Check the waiting list on club seats/boxes for Bama games. The sheer number of sidewalk Bama fans could fill our stadium every Saturday. They have almost a hundred years of winning, championship football. The best we can achieve is what we are currently achieving. Win 8/year and when the opportunity presents itself, we have to strike. We almost did it in 2014 and look well positioned to give it another run in 2018. If winning 10 games once every 4 years while hanging around 8/year average doesn't satisfy you, then you're following the wrong school.
There is one other way that we can continue to build toward a more regular occurrence of us being a 9-11 win team (yes I'm going up a notch) - a continued, and long running ineptitude by the 2 other D1 programs in Mississippi. Southern Miss is a complete afterthought now because of CUSA and their facilities. They have dropped from a respectable program to a stepping stone in a very short timeframe. That has helped our in-state recruiting depth. If Ole Miss gets hit hard, makes a Croomtastic hire, and wanders in the woods for the next 5-10 years, it could set us up to close the recruiting gap some. If the Network is neutered and is no longer buying out top talent, those 3-4 players a year could make a huge difference. We may already be seeing that in our next 2 recruiting classes. This year we are dominating the top in-state talent, next year looks good. String together 5-6 straight years of that and it could change the face of our program.
Label it what you will, but it's realistic and factual. A&M and Florida have budgets almost twice our size with two of the best recruiting bases in the entire country and even they haven't averaged 9 wins/ year the last 5-10 years. No amount of bootstrap pulling on State fans parts is going to change the natural landscape nor demographics of the region.