Travis Haney Tweet

[ShotgunDawg]

This just confirms to me that the national media expects MSU to be absolute doo doo in football despite being a consistent top 25 recruiter, having a 63,000 seat stadium, state of the art facilities, & pro caliber players in the NFL. Travis Haney just said that Mullen overachieved in a 5-7 year, where a team with all these resources lost to South Alabama, Kentucky, & BYU.

I like everyone else am excited about how the season ended, but "overachieving"? Goodness

[shannondawg]

Your reading a lot more in to what he said than I would.

I would say over achieving is a compliment rather than a knock.

And he was spot on about the Cowboys being the right place for Da.

[Eric Nies Grind Time]

Yeah we have been a really bad football program for most of our history. It takes a long time to reverse that image.

[Cooterpoot]

Tells me Haney doesn't know shit about college football.

[Liverpooldawg]

This just confirms to me that the national media expects MSU to be absolute doo doo in football despite being a consistent top 25 recruiter, having a 63,000 seat stadium, state of the art facilities, & pro caliber players in the NFL. Travis Haney just said that Mullen overachieved in a 5-7 year, where a team with all these resources lost to South Alabama, Kentucky, & BYU.

I like everyone else am excited about how the season ended, but "overachieving"? Goodness

I didn't read it that way. It sounded like a good compliment to me.

[Todd4State]

I think once Fitz does well and if we win 8 games with a different cast opinions will start to change.

[maroonmania]

Yeah we have been a really bad football program for most of our history. It takes a long time to reverse that image.

Blast me if you want but I think in a lot of ways Mullen has it made in his current job. MSU is BY FAR in its best position in the history of the school to have a competitive football program in terms of budget, resources, exposure, etc. Heck, kids all over the place want to play in the SEC. YET, Mullen is only judged in his job performance by being compared against the lackluster history of MSU football when we had WAY more disadvantages than we do today. So anytime we win 6 or 7 games and make a bowl (even if done primarily on the back of beating OOC teams) then Mullen has overachieved and State fans should count their lucky stars he is around. I like Mullen and think he has done a nice job but he also has some obvious flaws as well. If the media and outside observers are ALWAYS going to predict us to be last in the SEC West every year no matter the circumstance then Mullen will always look like he is overachieving when he does anything beyond that. I wish I had a job where expectations were so low. Sure makes it easy to excel.

[Dawgface]

Never heard of him.

[Thick]

Well, we shouldn't have lost to USA, UK, or BYU to begin with, and then the national media would be saying DM and MSU rebounded well after losing Prescott. However you chose to take Haney's comments, the fact still remains that we had no business finishing 5-7. If we had not destroyed OM in the EB, this place would be an absolute den of negativity.

[GTHOM]

The majority of the media knows absolute doo doo about football or MSU. We shouldnt have lost to USA, UK or BYU though

[dawgwhisperer]

Isn't that the guy who tried to teach charles barkley how to swing a golf club? I don't listen to golf instructors about their opinion on football teams. *******

[Leeshouldveflanked]

If we had played defense all year like we did in Egg Bowl and had a kicker, we would have at least been 8-4...

[Sundawg1974]

I thought Green Acres was cancelled years ago and that guy had died??

[BrunswickDawg]

Well, we shouldn't have lost to USA, UK, or BYU to begin with, and then the national media would be saying DM and MSU rebounded well after losing Prescott. However you chose to take Haney's comments, the fact still remains that we had no business finishing 5-7. If we had not destroyed OM in the EB, this place would be an absolute den of negativity.

We shouldn't have finished 5-7. But, I think a lot of fans and media understand that outside of the elite programs every once in a while teams have a season like ours. I kind of viewed this season like Jackie's 3-6-2 team in '93. Everything that could go wrong did. Not a damn thing bounced our way. Every mistake came at the exact wrong moment. But, we bounced back in '94 and won 8 games. Same thing happened in '95. We just couldn't recover in '96 (which I chalk up to Keifer's death)

[maroonmania]

We shouldn't have finished 5-7. But, I think a lot of fans and media understand that outside of the elite programs every once in a while teams have a season like ours. I kind of viewed this season like Jackie's 3-6-2 team in '93. Everything that could go wrong did. Not a damn thing bounced our way. Every mistake came at the exact wrong moment. But, we bounced back in '94 and won 8 games. Same thing happened in '95. We just couldn't recover in '96 (which I chalk up to Keifer's death)

The biggest thing that went wrong about this season was the total makeover on defense. Having to change DCs again and replacing the entire defensive staff while moving to a new scheme was not what you wanted in a year that you were on a learning curve with a new QB. I'm still not sold that a Sirmon defense is going to allow us to accomplish much but I guess we will find out next year since it looks like there will be no change. We looked good on defense in the BYU game and the second half of the Egg Bowl. Not a lot to hang your hat on but looks like we will get an infusion of JUCO talent on the defensive side so hopefully that will help quite a bit.

[Johnson85]

I didn't read it that way. It sounded like a good compliment to me.

It was a compliment to Dan, but it definitely shows that they have an overly negative perception of State. The reality is that Mullen did a great job of keeping the team and recovering and building after a shitastic job getting the team ready for the season. That's not to say it's all on Dan; sometimes you just get a bad mix of players that won't take instruction until they bottom out.

But in no way was this year over achieving. We lost to a USA team that we never should have lost to, lost to BYU and UK teams that most charitably to Dan should have been toss ups that we should have split. I'm excited about the way we finished and Dan did a good job during the season of keeping things together (and handling Fitz the right way after USA), so plenty to be positive about and plenty of positive you can say about Dan's overall tenure (in which he has overachieved), but to say Dan overachieved this year is laughable.

[blacklistedbully]

Yeah we have been a really bad football program for most of our history. It takes a long time to reverse that image.

To me, this is a common misperception...or at least an overstatement. If you actually dive into the numbers, taking away the forfeits that should never have happened, we have not actually been "really bad for most of our history".

In fact, we've only been "really bad" a total of about 29 years of our nearly 120 years of playing football. We've just been so bad during a lot of those chunks that our overall record looks pretty bad.

I'm not talking about the occasional losing season or 3 in a 10-year-or so stretch, but rather when we've been mostly below .500 in those chunks. That's only happened from:
1928-1934
1958-1973
2001-2006 (Really bad)

Outside of those chunks, we've been mostly average...sometimes good, and sometimes pretty damn good. If you take away the 19 forfeits, we'd actually have a winning record all-time.

Furthermore, if you took away just the Bama series, you know, the most dominant football program of all time, we'd then be 542-464-36. BTW, did you know we've played Bama in Tuscaloosa 52 times, but in Starkville just 22 times? Did you know from the beginning of our Bama series through 1968, we had to play them as a visiting team 37 times, vs just 14 as a home team?

Would it surprise you to learn...if you look at seasons where we played at least 7 games, we have:
54 winning seasons
50 losing seasons
4 break even

Certainly we have not been a powerhouse, or even a very-good team throughout our history. But we not actually as historically bad as most of our fans seem to think.

[Liverpooldawg]

It was a compliment to Dan, but it definitely shows that they have an overly negative perception of State. The reality is that Mullen did a great job of keeping the team and recovering and building after a shitastic job getting the team ready for the season. That's not to say it's all on Dan; sometimes you just get a bad mix of players that won't take instruction until they bottom out.

But in no way was this year over achieving. We lost to a USA team that we never should have lost to, lost to BYU and UK teams that most charitably to Dan should have been toss ups that we should have split. I'm excited about the way we finished and Dan did a good job during the season of keeping things together (and handling Fitz the right way after USA), so plenty to be positive about and plenty of positive you can say about Dan's overall tenure (in which he has overachieved), but to say Dan overachieved this year is laughable.

That's not what he said. He said we overachieved in two games.

[Johnson85]

That's not what he said. He said we overachieved in two games.

I was responding to the posted tweet, where he said "Even in a 5-7 season, his team overachieved, beat rivals, and made a bowl." Not sure what he said elsewhere, but that tweet is incorrect if you're looking at the season.

[Thick]

I don't dwell on the past too much. Who cares what happened back in the 80's and back. The players, the media/coverage, the money, coaches' salaries, etc have all changed by gigantic leaps and bounds. What MSU has done since '91 is not bad, and could have been better in all honesty. The present is what really counts in moving forward. We had a down year because of some poor coaching decisions, lack of team leadership, some lack of talent, etc, but we could have and should have been better, period! While you can get upset over some nobody's opinion or not, we should still hold our staff accountable for the results.

Yes, we put it on our rival. We beat aTm and USCe, but all 3 of those teams would have beaten at LEAST 2 out of the 3 (USA, BYU, UK) we lost to on any given Saturday. That's what bothers me the most about this season, and IMO, that's a great deal of underachieving.