Quote Originally Posted by BrunswickDawg View Post
No. No. No.

The problem was not that we were a coaching graveyard. We have had terrible leadership in the ADs office who constantly made decisions based on a lack of funds and an aversion to risk. Murray Warmath and Darryl Royal saw that quickly and bolted. Wade Walker was a bad coach who moved from HC to AD, then became a very successful AD at Oklahoma. Paul Davis was hired with almost no experience, bombed, and went on to a lengthy 24 year career as an assistant - primarily at Auburn. Charlie Shira was a lazy hire (coach who had worked here under Royal) who we could pay for double duty as AD, and sell all of our home games to other schools. He bombed, and then stayed on as AD. Bob Tyler was a very good hire and coach who got destroyed by the NCAA. Emory Bellard was an excellent hire and coach, who probably could have gone on to coach other places - but would have had to overhaul his whole approach to offense (by '85 the wishbone was almost dead) at age 58. Rockey Felker was a good assistant coach - but a lazy hire as a HC. After his tenure here, he still had a successful career as an OC (Tulsa, Arkansas) and then came back home. Jackie knew it was probably his last job, or next to last job when he was hired here. Croom was Croom, but is still coaching.

So - in summary - we had 2 coaches who left and went on to HOF careers (Warmath & Royal), 2 who became our AD one of whom went on to a major power, 1 tanked by the NCAA, 2 who ended their careers here probably due to age and the game having passed them by (Bellard & Jackie), and 3 who continued on as assistant coaches for long careers (Davis, Felker, Croom).

Where is this coaching graveyard you speak of?? Almost all of our coaches continued in successful careers after they left MSU. The problem always was - until Don - the lack of funding and resources to compete and a lack leadership and real support from the university to make sure we had the facilities to compete.
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.