Sunday Night Thoughts-We Have No Scheme and Less Talent

[StarkVegasSteve]

Yesterday was bad, there is no way around that fact. It was embarrassing watching us be outmanned and outmatched on every snap when Arkansas had the ball.

1. Our D is as bad as it has been and it will not get any better. It is sad we have went from Fletcher Cox, Preston Smith, Josh Boyd, Chris Jones, and Jeffrey Simmons to Sulaiman Kpapka, Kedrick Bingley-Jones, DeMonte Russell, and Deonte Anderson. David Turner needs to go yesterday and he should?ve never been brought back.

2. Coleman Hutzler?s last day of calling plays needs to be Saturday. I feel bad for the guy because we have LESS THAN ZERO talent but yesterday was not all about talent. They had guys running WIDE ASS OPEN. If it is true we are going to move him to STC then go ahead and do it and let Barnes call the defense from here on out.

3. Lebby called his worst game as an MSU coach yesterday. He continually put us in 2nd and 3rd and longs. His playcalling made no sense on multiple occasions. He probably left 17-21 points on the board.

4. For those saying Van Buren is the future, back it up. Lebby put him in a lot of no win situations yesterday but he put himself in even more. He has very little pocket presence, which can be expected from a freshman, but he also struggles when you take away the deep ball. We need to bring in competition for him. I do believe he can still be great, but I still think he needs competition to bring that out of him.

5. Davon Booth played his best game yesterday. When we got him the ball, which wasn?t enough, he showed us what we had seen in the YouTube highlight videos.

6. Kevin Coleman is our best player and it isn?t even remotely close. Pay him whatever you have to pay to keep him.

7. 3-9 is the ceiling for this team and 2-10 is the most likely. I mean even next week is 50/50 and every game coming home will take a small miracle to win

8. For those who like to know who the players are, do not follow this team. We need 45-50 new players and 25-30 IMPACT players. We got enough new players this year but not nearly enough IMPACT players.

9. For those looking for someone to blame for the state we find ourselves in let me help you. This is not the fault of Jeff Lebby, it is not the fault of Zac Selmon, and no matter how much some of you want it to be true it is not the fault of Mark Keenum. This shit lays solely at the feet of Dave Emerick, Matt Dudek, Mike Leach, and Zach Arnett. When you do not know how to recruit, or in Leach?s case at 21 of the 22 positions, refuse to recruit on the LOS then you will not win in this league. It is absolutely incredible how many recruits we have no longer with the program, much less actually contributing. This is the biggest need in the transfer portal.

10. It will be really easy to jump off the bandwagon right now, but do not come back when we get this thing rolling. Stay on the sidelines.

11. We have the right guy and he is going to get this thing headed in the right direction.

#HailState always.

[Cooterpoot]

No argument from me

[TheLostDawg]

No argument from me

What's stc

[RezDog7]

I believe in Lebby and want him to succeed but it is very hard for me to even consider going to a game right now. I watched about three plays of our game yesterday at the beginning and knew what was coming immediately. Played golf instead and had a much better time. Until next year (I guess), I'm out.

[TrapGame]

Yep.

This is a total rebuild. We are not rebuilding from the studs but actually pouring a new foundation. We haven't started framing yet. Lebby needs three years to get us back to just an Arkansas level of competition. It's time to admit hiring Leach nuked our program.

[BigDawg81]

Yesterday was bad, there is no way around that fact. It was embarrassing watching us be outmanned and outmatched on every snap when Arkansas had the ball.

1. Our D is as bad as it has been and it will not get any better. It is sad we have went from Fletcher Cox, Preston Smith, Josh Boyd, Chris Jones, and Jeffrey Simmons to Sulaiman Kpapka, Kedrick Bingley-Jones, DeMonte Russell, and Deonte Anderson. David Turner needs to go yesterday and he should?ve never been brought back.

2. Coleman Hutzler?s last day of calling plays needs to be Saturday. I feel bad for the guy because we have LESS THAN ZERO talent but yesterday was not all about talent. They had guys running WIDE ASS OPEN. If it is true we are going to move him to STC then go ahead and do it and let Barnes call the defense from here on out.

3. Lebby called his worst game as an MSU coach yesterday. He continually put us in 2nd and 3rd and longs. His playcalling made no sense on multiple occasions. He probably left 17-21 points on the board.

4. For those saying Van Buren is the future, back it up. Lebby put him in a lot of no win situations yesterday but he put himself in even more. He has very little pocket presence, which can be expected from a freshman, but he also struggles when you take away the deep ball. We need to bring in competition for him. I do believe he can still be great, but I still think he needs competition to bring that out of him.

5. Davon Booth played his best game yesterday. When we got him the ball, which wasn?t enough, he showed us what we had seen in the YouTube highlight videos.

6. Kevin Coleman is our best player and it isn?t even remotely close. Pay him whatever you have to pay to keep him.

7. 3-9 is the ceiling for this team and 2-10 is the most likely. I mean even next week is 50/50 and every game coming home will take a small miracle to win

8. For those who like to know who the players are, do not follow this team. We need 45-50 new players and 25-30 IMPACT players. We got enough new players this year but not nearly enough IMPACT players.

9. For those looking for someone to blame for the state we find ourselves in let me help you. This is not the fault of Jeff Lebby, it is not the fault of Zac Selmon, and no matter how much some of you want it to be true it is not the fault of Mark Keenum. This shit lays solely at the feet of Dave Emerick, Matt Dudek, Mike Leach, and Zach Arnett. When you do not know how to recruit, or in Leach?s case at 21 of the 22 positions, refuse to recruit on the LOS then you will not win in this league. It is absolutely incredible how many recruits we have no longer with the program, much less actually contributing. This is the biggest need in the transfer portal.

10. It will be really easy to jump off the bandwagon right now, but do not come back when we get this thing rolling. Stay on the sidelines.

11. We have the right guy and he is going to get this thing headed in the right direction.

#HailState always. I agree with most but Van Buren is the future and he is going to get better.
Also, we knew what we got into when we hired Leach. He was a great coach that recruited to a system but never was going to recruit at a high level. It was going to be a tough transition out of Leach?s system. The real problem is that our administration promoted Zach Arnett to Head Coach.

[StarkVegasSteve]

What's stc

Special Teams Coordinator.

[Mjoelner34]

The transition pains everyone knew was coming from moving away from the air raid didn't happen last year. It's happening now. We sucked last year because we were a rudderless ship with a ton of returning starters on both sides of the ball who got the majority of the snaps. Now, we are in the perfect storm of one returning starter on offense and maybe one on defense that I can think of. Couple that with a first year head coach, a first time DC, a lack of returning talent and/or experience at several position groups, some portal misses and you get the shit-show we're going through now. What happened last year set us back another year. Now if we look like this again next year, it'll be time to light the torches and get the pitchforks.
Give Lebby time but Hutzler and Turner have to go and Kennedy probably should too.

[StarkVegasSteve]

The transition pains everyone knew was coming from moving away from the air raid didn't happen last year. It's happening now. We sucked last year because we were a rudderless ship with a ton of returning starters on both sides of the ball who got the majority of the snaps. Now, we are in the perfect storm of one returning starter on offense and maybe one on defense that I can think of. Couple that with a first year head coach, a first time DC, a lack of returning talent at several position groups, some portal misses and you get the shit-show we're going through now. What happened last year set us back another year. Now if we look like this again next year, it'll be time to light the torches and get the pitchforks.
Give Lebby time but Hutzler and Turner have to go and Kennedy probably should too.

No arguments with any of that.

[RockyDog]

#4 is definitely true. Van Buren is giving us glimpses but no way you can say that he’s the man for the rest of his career. I’m sure “Lebbro” is smarter than that but many of our fans don’t have a lick of sense.

And that goes to the next point you made. The ones placing this at the feet of Selmon are pure idiots. And trying to continue the rumor that he just hired his “buddy” is stupid. The guy is out there doing his job which is a lot more than you can say for a couple of the previous sourpuss ADs that we had like Simpleton and Cohen. Selmon is trying to unite the fanbase, not just the guys that write the checks. And we have idiots that want to run him out of town because they have convinced themselves that he’s the problem.

[RockyDog]

Yep.

This is a total rebuild. We are not rebuilding from the studs but actually pouring a new foundation. We haven't started framing yet. Lebby needs three years to get us back to just an Arkansas level of competition. It's time to admit hiring Leach nuked our program.

Bbbbbut Will Rogers! Leach threw the ball! If you don’t like that you just want caveman RTDF!!

Yes. He did. He torpedoed our program. Could we still have been competitive had he lived? Probably so. But this was coming when he left whether it was 2 years ago or 5 years from now.

[parabrave]

Don't forget the Oline and for that matter the goaline play selection. Couldn't punch it in from the 1 ft line how many times?>

[Todd4State]

We would be at worst a 6-6 team and probably have a chance at winning 8 games with even a decent defensive coordinator. You can't blame Leach, Emerick, Dudeck, and etc. for hiring an inexperienced first year DC. That was a stupid typical MSU football hiring decision and to no one's surprise it hasn't worked out. We do stupid shit like hire Coleman Hutzler and we wonder why we don't win. Don't tell me we didn't have a choice because I'm not going to buy for one second that we couldn't get some G5 DC to take a SEC job for 1 million dollars.

Ole Miss- Pete Golding. Former DC at Alabama
Alabama- Kane Wommack. Former head coach at South Alabama
Auburn- Durkin. Former DC at Ole Miss and others
LSU- Blake Baker- Former DC at Miami and Mizzou
Arkansas- Travis Williams- Former Co-DC at Auburn and DC at UCF
Tennessee- Tim Banks- Former DC at Central Michigan, Illinois, and Co-DC at Penn State
Vanderbilt- Steve Gregory- NFL defensive assistant
Florida- Austin Armstrong- former DC at USM and Ron Roberts former DC at ULL, Baylor, and Auburn
Georgia- Glen Shuman- Co-DC at Georgia under Smart, Mel Tucker, Dan Lanning, and works alongside Will Muschamp
Kentucky- Brad White- Works under Mark Stoops, from NFL
South Carolina- Clayton White- former DC at Western Kentucky
Texas- Pete Kwiatkowski- former DC at Boise State and Washington
Texas A&M- Jay Bateman- former DC at Army and North Carolina
Mizzou- Corey Batoon- former DC at Hawaii and South Alabama
Oklahoma- Zac Alley- former DC at Jacksonville State

Coleman Hutzler- Alabama ST coach

One of these things is not like the others. The only guys with comparable resume's experience wise work under defensive minded head coaches like Kirby Smart and Mark Stoops and then there's the guy from Vandy. Literally everyone else in the SEC has some form of legit DC experience. And we hired a guy to learn on the job and he sucks. The bottom line is it was an absolutely unacceptable hire by MSU. And it's absolute bullshit that MSU made it one year after it put fans through Zach Arnett and Kevin Barbay.

Leach may not have left us with a loaded team but it looks to me like the offense is fine and I kind of find it hard to believe that Arnett left us with something worse than Vanderbilt talentwise on the defensive side of the ball.

[Todd4State]

Don't forget the Oline and for that matter the goaline play selection. Couldn't punch it in from the 1 ft line how many times?>

Lebby needs to stop giving it to Booth in those situations and give it to Daniels instead and he needs to top running it up the middle in those situations. Not sure how many times it has to fail before he tries something else. A swing pass in that situation probably would net at least a first down if not a TD.

[Todd4State]

And one more thing- the blame still goes to MSU. Because it's always about saving a buck and not spending any money on recruiting. Always. Look at Dan Mullen. What did they say about Dan? He's great because he can identify and develop players. Which was great for MSU because then MSU didn't have to spend money on trying to get the bluechips. Which is code for we don't have to invest in recruiting. Same thing with Leach. He's great because he doesn't have to have a lot of talent to win. Which is also code for we don't have to invest in recruiting.

At some point MSU is going to HAVE TO invest in recruiting. Because the ceiling for an offensive genius coach at MSU is 9-10 wins which is what Dan and Leach did at their peak. Which is great but doing that we're never going to ever break through the glass ceiling. And most years it's going to feel like underachieving. Like 2015. You can only outscheme a superior opponent so much. We have to have more players like Coleman to succeed.

[MBDawg601]

"Hiring Leach torpedod our program"

Yep. Hiring a proven coach that has won everywhere he has been, sent us in a downward spiral. We are in much better hands now with a first time head coach that has won 1 game against EKU, oh and he hire a special teams coach to come be our DC.

Say what you want about Leach, but decision making at the AD and President level after Leach passed has bombed our program, we are seeing the same thing in baseball. We will be a bottom feeder in the SEC for the 3rd year in a row, because our AD can't make the right decisions.

[Leeshouldveflanked]

If Leach was still alive, the NIL era would have sent him into retirement.

[Jacknut]

We're so freaking cheap. Trying to hit a home run hire with Hutzler and save a few dollars. Any former average DC would have done a better job. Promoting Arnett instead of a real coaching search. Are we that broke or just lazy?

[CaptainObvious]

It's not from being broke. It's from being dumb. Selmon says we have to put athletics upgrades on hold for now? Why? Not like we are spending it on coaching talent or top line players. Maybe there is a "deep state" at State being overpaid that we fans don't know about!

[parabrave]

It's not from being broke. It's from being dumb. Selmon says we have to put athletics upgrades on hold for now? Why? Not like we are spending it on coaching talent or top line players. Maybe there is a "deep state" at State being overpaid that we fans don't know about!

Or time for an Audit to where all the TV money goes??

[Coach34]

Or time for an Audit to where all the TV money goes??

Soccer, volleyball, women's basketball, golf, etc

All those sports lose millions per year

[Homedawg]

Or time for an Audit to where all the TV money goes??

it goes straight to running to Athletic dept. Thats how we have a 100+ budget. Otherwise we'd be really broke.

[DawgFromOxford]

Don't forget the Oline and for that matter the goaline play selection. Couldn't punch it in from the 1 ft line how many times?>

Watching Parson come in and then try to run right up the middle on 4th down made me want to rip the TV off the wall

[Matt3467]

Watching Parson come in and then try to run right up the middle on 4th down made me want to rip the TV off the wall

He might as well have no arms and a basket hanging from his neck for the ball to fit in. If we're going to use him for goodness sakes at least give the defense something to think about other than run.

[gtowndawg]

Watching Parson come in and then try to run right up the middle on 4th down made me want to rip the TV off the wall

Especially considering on that drive (or maybe the one before) Parsons came in on a random 1st and 2nd down, took the snap, ran up the middle and came out. So it was pretty obvious what was about to happen when he came in. But in his defense, if he's told to take the ball and run with no options, it's not his fault.

[MBDawg601]

He might as well have no arms and a basket hanging from his neck for the ball to fit in. If we're going to use him for goodness sakes at least give the defense something to think about other than run.

Would have been a perfect fake QB run jump pass situation. We are not that creative, though.

[Rawdawg]

On bullet point 8, the $15 million number that keeps being thrown around isn?t nearly enough to make this a real competitive SEC caliber roster. We need to spend $20+ to repair it. Add to that, we need to buy out Hutzler and will 10000% have to overpay for a real experienced DC and then spend money on fan experience in the stadium, we need a $40 million dollar investment into football. And that may be on the low end. That?s reality.

[StarkVegasSteve]

On bullet point 8, the $15 million number that keeps being thrown around isn?t nearly enough to make this a real competitive SEC caliber roster. We need to spend $20+ to repair it. Add to that, we need to buy out Hutzler and will 10000% have to overpay for a real experienced DC and then spend money on fan experience in the stadium, we need a $40 million dollar investment into football. And that may be on the low end. That?s reality.

Well if we can reassign Coleman to STC, that'll save money. And realistically 15 mil will get you back to where you're competitive in every game but 2-3. I'm not saying we win all those games but you'd be competitive again. I mean realistically 10-12 will get you there normally but we are bad so we need more.

[Rawdawg]

The problem we face is two fold:

1. We need 40-50 new P4 caliber players. We don?t even have what I would consider depth pieces on defense.

2. Defensively we have nothing to sell but playing time, and so does everyone else. We?re going to have to overpay and probably overpay heavily. With the amount of players we need it?s going to add up fast.

[Johnson85]

Yesterday was bad, there is no way around that fact. It was embarrassing watching us be outmanned and outmatched on every snap when Arkansas had the ball.

1. Our D is as bad as it has been and it will not get any better. It is sad we have went from Fletcher Cox, Preston Smith, Josh Boyd, Chris Jones, and Jeffrey Simmons to Sulaiman Kpapka, Kedrick Bingley-Jones, DeMonte Russell, and Deonte Anderson. David Turner needs to go yesterday and he should?ve never been brought back.

2. Coleman Hutzler?s last day of calling plays needs to be Saturday. I feel bad for the guy because we have LESS THAN ZERO talent but yesterday was not all about talent. They had guys running WIDE ASS OPEN. If it is true we are going to move him to STC then go ahead and do it and let Barnes call the defense from here on out.

3. Lebby called his worst game as an MSU coach yesterday. He continually put us in 2nd and 3rd and longs. His playcalling made no sense on multiple occasions. He probably left 17-21 points on the board.

4. For those saying Van Buren is the future, back it up. Lebby put him in a lot of no win situations yesterday but he put himself in even more. He has very little pocket presence, which can be expected from a freshman, but he also struggles when you take away the deep ball. We need to bring in competition for him. I do believe he can still be great, but I still think he needs competition to bring that out of him.

5. Davon Booth played his best game yesterday. When we got him the ball, which wasn?t enough, he showed us what we had seen in the YouTube highlight videos.

6. Kevin Coleman is our best player and it isn?t even remotely close. Pay him whatever you have to pay to keep him.

7. 3-9 is the ceiling for this team and 2-10 is the most likely. I mean even next week is 50/50 and every game coming home will take a small miracle to win

8. For those who like to know who the players are, do not follow this team. We need 45-50 new players and 25-30 IMPACT players. We got enough new players this year but not nearly enough IMPACT players.

9. For those looking for someone to blame for the state we find ourselves in let me help you. This is not the fault of Jeff Lebby, it is not the fault of Zac Selmon, and no matter how much some of you want it to be true it is not the fault of Mark Keenum. This shit lays solely at the feet of Dave Emerick, Matt Dudek, Mike Leach, and Zach Arnett. When you do not know how to recruit, or in Leach?s case at 21 of the 22 positions, refuse to recruit on the LOS then you will not win in this league. It is absolutely incredible how many recruits we have no longer with the program, much less actually contributing. This is the biggest need in the transfer portal.

10. It will be really easy to jump off the bandwagon right now, but do not come back when we get this thing rolling. Stay on the sidelines.

11. We have the right guy and he is going to get this thing headed in the right direction.

#HailState always.

Selmon isn't the only problem, but it appears he hired a first time head coach with no discussion of what plans that coach had to make the transition from coordinator to head coach easier. That really is incompetence. If we have a competent defensive coordinator, that probably flips ASU and Toledo and puts UF and Arkansas in play. That's just a massive difference.

And that's on Keenum too. We have a young AD making his first major hire and we don't give him any 17ing coaching? No discussion about what he is looking for and some of the pitfalls to watch out for? Are you 17ing kidding me? After watching the Arnett hire, you could have asked the posters on this board with zero experience to describe some good basic practices for the next coaching hire and probably 20% of them would have said to make sure any first time head coach isn't paired with an inexperienced coordinator on the opposite side of the ball. if you had explicitly asked them, should we hire a first time head coach if he proposed an inexperienced coordinator on the other side of the ball, probably 95% would have said 17 no. It was just a bad, bad process by Selmon.

[StarkVegasSteve]

Selmon isn't the only problem, but it appears he hired a first time head coach with no discussion of what plans that coach had to make the transition from coordinator to head coach easier. That really is incompetence. If we have a competent defensive coordinator, that probably flips ASU and Toledo and puts UF and Arkansas in play. That's just a massive difference.

And that's on Keenum too. We have a young AD making his first major hire and we don't give him any 17ing coaching? No discussion about what he is looking for and some of the pitfalls to watch out for? Are you 17ing kidding me? After watching the Arnett hire, you could have asked the posters on this board with zero experience to describe some good basic practices for the next coaching hire and probably 20% of them would have said to make sure any first time head coach isn't paired with an inexperienced coordinator on the opposite side of the ball. if you had explicitly asked them, should we hire a first time head coach if he proposed an inexperienced coordinator on the other side of the ball, probably 95% would have said 17 no. It was just a bad, bad process by Selmon.

I mean I don't think Lebby went into an interview and said, "You know what....I'm going to hire a first time DC just for shits and giggles". I know for a fact we were turned down by at least two DCs and were left waiting too long on another.

I also don't agree with it being on Selmon in any way. He went out and hired a guy who's known for offense. That is what we sorely needed after Barbay Bombs, checkdowns, and whatever the hell Joe Moorhead was attempting to run. Everyone from the AD to the 68 year old sitting on the 35 yd line knew our defense was going to be ass this year and we needed to score points. We knew we needed to get guys out of the portal and we missed. It happens to every program, but unfortunately because the last two staffs were so incredibly bad recruiting defense it hurt us even worse to miss on guys.

Now on Keenum, look I like Mark a lot. I think he's an extremely bright and educated guy. And he wants athletics to succeed a lot more than most university Presidents do. However, I do think he got taken to the woodshed by some overzealous boosters who saw an opportunity to hand pick a candidate and get their information back. It hurt to not have an AD at that time and Keenum will tell you to this day that not having an AD in place for what happened is one of his greatest mistakes as president of Mississippi State. We were facing an unprecedented situation that only two or three schools had ever faced in most of our lifetimes. He made what he believed to be the right decision in that moment. If you asked him today he would tell you he should've made Arnett the interim and reevaluated after the bowl game. However, hindsight is 20/20 and whether most want to admit or not now, a lot of people were onboard with promoting Arnett.

[Matt3467]

I mean I don't think Lebby went into an interview and said, "You know what....I'm going to hire a first time DC just for shits and giggles". I know for a fact we were turned down by at least two DCs and were left waiting too long on another.

I also don't agree with it being on Selmon in any way. He went out and hired a guy who's known for offense. That is what we sorely needed after Barbay Bombs, checkdowns, and whatever the hell Joe Moorhead was attempting to run. Everyone from the AD to the 68 year old sitting on the 35 yd line knew our defense was going to be ass this year and we needed to score points. We knew we needed to get guys out of the portal and we missed. It happens to every program, but unfortunately because the last two staffs were so incredibly bad recruiting defense it hurt us even worse to miss on guys.

Now on Keenum, look I like Mark a lot. I think he's an extremely bright and educated guy. And he wants athletics to succeed a lot more than most university Presidents do. However, I do think he got taken to the woodshed by some overzealous boosters who saw an opportunity to hand pick a candidate and get their information back. It hurt to not have an AD at that time and Keenum will tell you to this day that not having an AD in place for what happened is one of his greatest mistakes as president of Mississippi State. We were facing an unprecedented situation that only two or three schools had ever faced in most of our lifetimes. He made what he believed to be the right decision in that moment. If you asked him today he would tell you he should've made Arnett the interim and reevaluated after the bowl game. However, hindsight is 20/20 and whether most want to admit or not now, a lot of people were onboard with promoting Arnett.

Lol I think Akron is trying to figure that out too. That offensive genius is 6-26 in three years and the offense sucks.

[DawgFromOxford]

Selmon isn't the only problem, but it appears he hired a first time head coach with no discussion of what plans that coach had to make the transition from coordinator to head coach easier. That really is incompetence. If we have a competent defensive coordinator, that probably flips ASU and Toledo and puts UF and Arkansas in play. That's just a massive difference.

And that's on Keenum too. We have a young AD making his first major hire and we don't give him any 17ing coaching? No discussion about what he is looking for and some of the pitfalls to watch out for? Are you 17ing kidding me? After watching the Arnett hire, you could have asked the posters on this board with zero experience to describe some good basic practices for the next coaching hire and probably 20% of them would have said to make sure any first time head coach isn't paired with an inexperienced coordinator on the opposite side of the ball. if you had explicitly asked them, should we hire a first time head coach if he proposed an inexperienced coordinator on the other side of the ball, probably 95% would have said 17 no. It was just a bad, bad process by Selmon.

This is a dumb take. Unless you were in the room you have no clue the conversations they did or didn't have. How do you know Lebby didn't come in with a plan? Based on the other posters on this board it doesn't seem like Hutzler was candidate number 1. Sometimes plans change or don't work out how you'd like. How do you know Keenum didn't give Selmon pointers on the hire? Even if Keenum did give Selmon guidance you'd have guys crying foul because our president who made Arnett HC was telling our AD how to run the football program. Unless you were in the room, you don't have a clue what process Selmon went through to get to Lebby.

[Johnson85]

I mean I don't think Lebby went into an interview and said, "You know what....I'm going to hire a first time DC just for shits and giggles". I know for a fact we were turned down by at least two DCs and were left waiting too long on another.

That doesn't make it much better (possibly not any better depending on who the three candidates were and how plausible of candidates they were)? Even assuming Selmon asked Lebby for the plan and Lebby gave Selmon three names who had prior DC experience and Lebby had some obvious reasons to think each of the three would be a candidate the he could hire, that doesn't mean it's time to panic. That's when an experienced athletic director would have been helpful, both for the process and for the relationship with the boosters to be able to tell them they are having problems getting a DC and need to think about whether they want to pony up more to overpay or let the investment with Lebby ride without him having hte resources to be successful.





I also don't agree with it being on Selmon in any way. He went out and hired a guy who's known for offense. That is what we sorely needed after Barbay Bombs, checkdowns, and whatever the hell Joe Moorhead was attempting to run. Everyone from the AD to the 68 year old sitting on the 35 yd line knew our defense was going to be ass this year and we needed to score points. We knew we needed to get guys out of the portal and we missed. It happens to every program, but unfortunately because the last two staffs were so incredibly bad recruiting defense it hurt us even worse to miss on guys. Hiring somebody known for offense is great. But you still need a good process. A good process doesn't guarantee a good outcome but it's something you can control, so you have to control it.



Now on Keenum, look I like Mark a lot. I think he's an extremely bright and educated guy. And he wants athletics to succeed a lot more than most university Presidents do. However, I do think he got taken to the woodshed by some overzealous boosters who saw an opportunity to hand pick a candidate and get their information back. It hurt to not have an AD at that time and Keenum will tell you to this day that not having an AD in place for what happened is one of his greatest mistakes as president of Mississippi State. We were facing an unprecedented situation that only two or three schools had ever faced in most of our lifetimes. He made what he believed to be the right decision in that moment. If you asked him today he would tell you he should've made Arnett the interim and reevaluated after the bowl game. However, hindsight is 20/20 and whether most want to admit or not now, a lot of people were onboard with promoting Arnett. Again, that was a tough situation, but a good process would have avoided that mistake. You don't hire Arnett without interviewing other candidates unless you are doing it for continuity. And we immediately trashed any continuity we might have after we hired Arnett when he went completely away from air raid concepts.

I have no problem with the Arnett hire. If we had followed a good process, I think the end result very likely could have been: Get me some OC's that run air raid concepts that are realistic candidates, commit that you are going to run an air raid concept for at least one year, and you are the guy. But there is no way that not interviewing and not keeping continuity was the result of a good process. Just completely nonsensical. I'm not asking for perfection, I'm just asking that they do the basics with what they can control.

[Bothrops]

If Leach was still alive, the NIL era would have sent him into retirement.

I agree with this.