Excellent thread CDawg, I always appreciate your opinions.

I think you're spot on that Dan and co. will always beat teams we are more talented than (which is 4 SEC teams) and lose to the teams we are less talented than (which is 9 SEC teams, per 247 talent rankings). There's some wiggle room to account for other variables, like Coach O being a clown or OM having the backbone of a used condom. But all in all, we're a 7-9 win program. That's all. I want nothing more than to see us compete for championships, but until recruiting picks up, that just isn't going to happen.

Some assorted thoughts I have:
- I think our offense is great for being able to knock off better teams. Out-pro-styling Bama is an almost impossible task, their talent is way better. Not having to pander to 5* pro style QB recruits is nice too. We can make our hay with a spread offense with QB wrinkles. In short, for our recruiting vs. other teams' recruiting, I like that we don't run a traditional offense.
- Some coaches are builders, and some are winners. Sometimes those coaches aren't the same people. Could Saban win the SEC within 5 years with MSU's roster? Probably not. We don't have enough talented personnel to do what he wants to do. Meanwhile, could Dan win a natty at Bama? Probably not. I don't think he's a big-game enough of a coach to make it happen. In fact, it's the reason he hasn't left MSU for a "better" program--other ADs think that about him too.
- Dan won't be leaving any time soon. Fact of the matter is that he's a good coach who gets paid like a great coach. He's probably a top 25 coach but is paid inside the top 15. That presents a problem for another big school to pull him away--if you want to get Mullen, you're gonna have to shell out 5.5 million for a guy who hasn't really accomplished much except going to bowl games. For that reason, Dan is kinda in a career purgatory right now. I think he knows this: if he ever wants to move up and get paid more, he's gonna have to win more games.
- Because of this last point, Dan has two options: (1) find a way to win big games and compete for the West, or (2) pack it in, go play golf, and make 4.5 million a year winning 6 games. I fear that he's more to the (2) side right now. And who would blame him? This isn't his fault. We are way overpaying him for his performance, because coaches have inflated market value, i.e., we have to pay him that just to get 6 wins and to keep him from going somewhere else.
- As Dan is in a career purgatory, so is MSU. We are always gonna just be paying him way more money than he deserves to win 7 games a year. We're in a bad bargaining position--if we try to light a fire under his ass he can probably go somewhere else and get a few million. Instead we're just gonna have to pay him and shrug our shoulders at the results. Related point: legitimately, after coaching Dak and getting us to number 1, what would Dan have to do to get fired? We could miss a bowl game for four consecutive years and we'll just hear lectures on ED about how we're podunk MSU and need to accept our fate. If that happened Dan wouldn't get fired. This is a serious statement: I don't think Dan could get fired by MSU barring some moral incident.

A lot of us complain about the country club atmosphere of our coaching staff, but our athletic department created that. We're the ones who gave Dan 4.5 million for getting us to consecutive bowl games. We created that atmosphere. The whole staff knows, just go to a bowl game and there won't ever be problems.

All in all, I think we just have to settle for this. And I'm okay with that. If it means that Dan will win 7-8 games a year for over a decade, and then it's up to our next coach to try to take us to the next level, so be it. The blue hairs told me I need to be happy with that. In the meantime, I think all we can do is hope to fix the small things, like OL recruiting/scholly management and WR recruiting. I think we're already starting to see some of those things get a bit better.