Quote Originally Posted by Ari Gold View Post
Dan loved and ate up the “developer of player” and turning 2 and 3 stars into sec players that the media labeled him as.
It was safe for Dan. If they were just average or didn’t contribute oh well they weren’t suppose to be good. If they became SEC guys and Pros, Hey look at me I’m a genius and can find talent and develope it.
An excellent post that I agree wholeheartedly with.

If I may take Ari's point and extrapolate a bit (too far): I think that was Dan's entire mindset about the football program. It was safe to take 3 star kids and try to develop them (which he was good at). If they don't pan out, you can't call the kid a "bust" and blame it on Dan. But I also think Dan thought that way about MSU as a whole. He could take safe/conservative philosophies on playcalling, coach staffing, recruiting, etc., and if he wasn't successful, the media would always blame it on po old 3* MSU not being meant to be a major program. Meanwhile, if Dan had been aggressive and failed, it might have looked bad on him--like his ideas didn't work.

Let's face it. Two things can be true at the same time:
1) It isn't that hard to win 6 games at MSU and go to a bowl. We're an SEC school and have 4 or so automatic wins every year. But the media doesn't spin it this way. Their narrative makes it such that winning 6 games here is a major accomplishment.
2) For Dan, because of (1), there weren't a ton of incentives to excel. He could coast for a few years, go to bowl games, enjoy the country club, and some bigger program was going to have to hire him eventually.

Because the media spins six wins in Starkville as an accomplishment of monumental proportions, Dan was smart to just do simply that and coast. Just take 3* kids and coast. Just hire your friends as coaches and coast. As long as you win 6 games at MSU, you'll always be considered a good coach by the media.

There are programs that people call "sleeping giants." MSU isn't one of them, probably, but I think MSU had an awakening of its own a few years ago: modernizing the football program. Before Dan, our horrible athletic leadership had led us to CUSA-level facilities and expectations. Dan played a crucial part (along with Stricklin) in updating facilities. But once the facilities were updated, Dan had the easiest job in football. We gave him top notch facilities, and then only asked for 6 wins a year for him to be considered an excellent coach.