Quote(s) of the Day:

[War Machine Dawg]

"People who aren't happy with Mullen and aren't shooting for Saban need to pass the dutchie, they've puffed more than twice. You don't get rid of arguably the most successful coach you've ever had without reason."

"I don't know if we make a bowl this year, but it's not the end of the world if we don't. Weren't all these ****ers around for the first decade of the millenium? Geez. Disappointing? Very. Coach changing? Hardly."

[CadaverDawg]

"People who aren't happy with Mullen and aren't shooting for Saban need to pass the dutchie, they've puffed more than twice. You don't get rid of arguably the most successful coach you've ever had without reason."

"I don't know if we make a bowl this year, but it's not the end of the world if we don't. Weren't all these ****ers around for the first decade of the millenium? Geez. Disappointing? Very. Coach changing? Hardly."

When you see your coach quitting and being scared to try and win a game instead of not trying to lose one....it's different than just "losing more games than you won that year". We have lost 7 of 9 and we haven't even gotten to the tough part of our schedule this year. Besides, not many teams have a coach that is arguable better than what we have waiting and wanting to come home to Starkville and coach them.

Also, who makes these rules that you have to wait until the coach loses for more than one year? Can you not see with your own eyes what he did Saturday and has been doing for the last 9 games? Why do we have to let some unwritten rule determine how far we let him bring us down from what he built before hiring a new coach?

[engie]

Cadaver has made a consistently very sound argument on this...

Everyone is making this seem like a very simple "fire" or "keep" option -- when there are more options than that...

What if we told Dan to start looking for another job by the end of the year -- and we would furnish the $1.4 mil buyout(never go public with this of course). He would probably be able to make what most consider a lateral move(just like his assistant coaches "firings" have been handled) -- He says he just wanted a new challenge -- and he/MSU both part ways on "good" terms and both come out looking reasonably good.

He stays around and gets fired here, he won't get a "lateral move" option and will likely be starting over -- and it looks bad for both of us for obvious reasons...

PR is easy. We just aren't very good at it...

[DanDority]

Cadaver has made a consistently very sound argument on this...


Can't argue with that

[smootness]

When you see your coach quitting

Can we stop with this? Nobody quit, good grief. He did what every coach in the NFL does every game, and what most college coaches do. He did it earlier than most, but just about every coach will shut everything down and go uber-conservative from time to time. It's incredibly frustrating, but let's not say he 'quit'.

And I get your argument. But the problem with that line of thinking is, every coach...and I mean every coach is going to have disappointing stretches from time to time. Everyone in every line of work will have ups and downs. The problem with firing a coach every time he has a disappointing 9-game stretch is that you don't allow him to get his way out of it and learn from it. VT would have fired Beamer, we would have fired Sherrill...there is an endless number of successful coaches whose career arc was not one constant shooting star where every year was better than the one before it.

If you believe in a guy enough to hire him, then you have to believe in him enough to stick with him through some adversity. No one has made any rules, but again, if anything fans/schools are far too quick to fire coaches nowadays, not too patient. If we took the path you seem to be advocating, a) no one would ever want to coach here, and b) we would never build any real success because we'd constantly be starting over every few years.

And you said that Hudspeth is 'arguably' better than Mullen; I agree, it is certainly arguable. You don't make a change because there's a chance what you bring in could be better. You make a change because you're sure what you have is no longer going to work. We aren't at that point.

[smootness]

Cadaver has made a consistently very sound argument on this...

I'm sorry, but I don't consider, 'We haven't won much in the last 9 games' to be a very sound argument for a reason to fire the coach. I consider it to be an easy one.

[CadaverDawg]

I'm sorry, but I don't consider, 'We haven't won much in the last 9 games' to be a very sound argument for a reason to fire the coach. I consider it to be an easy one.

Oh, is that my entire argument?? Ha. Nice try.

I don't consider, "every coach can have a bad 9 game stretch" to be a good argument for keeping him either.

[engie]

Can we stop with this? Nobody quit, good grief. He did what every coach in the NFL does every game, and what most college coaches do. He did it earlier than most, but just about every coach will shut everything down and go uber-conservative from time to time. It's incredibly frustrating, but let's not say he 'quit'.

And I get your argument. But the problem with that line of thinking is, every coach...and I mean every coach is going to have disappointing stretches from time to time. Everyone in every line of work will have ups and downs. The problem with firing a coach every time he has a disappointing 9-game stretch is that you don't allow him to get his way out of it and learn from it. VT would have fired Beamer, we would have fired Sherrill...there is an endless number of successful coaches whose career arc was not one constant shooting star where every year was better than the one before it.

If you believe in a guy enough to hire him, then you have to believe in him enough to stick with him through some adversity. No one has made any rules, but again, if anything fans/schools are far too quick to fire coaches nowadays, not too patient. If we took the path you seem to be advocating, a) no one would ever want to coach here, and b) we would never build any real success because we'd constantly be starting over every few years.

And you said that Hudspeth is 'arguably' better than Mullen; I agree, it is certainly arguable. You don't make a change because there's a chance what you bring in could be better. You make a change because you're sure what you have is no longer going to work. We aren't at that point.

Pretty sound argument -- in the 80s and 90s. Thanks for summing up "poor ole State" so aptly...

Face facts -- in today's college football, both Beamer and Sherrill likely get fired. Just the way it is. With the money we pay, there is always going to be someone new willing to come here.

But Arky should have given John L an extra year? Auburn should have given Chizik one more to right the ship? Etc...

Here's the deal -- "more time" in the current 2 year trend = further behind. Ole Miss, Auburn, and Arky are on the upswing bigtime. We CAN NOT catch the other 3 at the top of the division. That leaves us 7th in the west with 6 "expected" losses going forward -- and make no mistake, we are NOT catching Bucky in any appreciable fashion and Malzahn is just a matter of time before he's got Auburn back at it's rightful place beside aTm just behind Bama and LSU. We'll see with Bielema -- but he hired a tremendous staff there.

So, without seismic changes from Mullen(or without Mullen) -- the writing is on the wall for the future. He doesn't have to "continue the course" anymore -- he's got to change it for the better.

[engie]

I'm sorry, but I don't consider, 'We haven't won much in the last 9 games' to be a very sound argument for a reason to fire the coach. I consider it to be an easy one.

So typical -- See a fundamentally sound and well thought out argument that you disagree with but really can't refute -- and break it down into something straw man that you can make sound ridiculous... Everyone sees through this...

[smootness]

Huh? That really is what his argument keeps coming back to. Yes, he is talking about our lack of offensive creativity...but again, even that comes back to this 9-game stretch. There was nobody talking about our lack of offensive creativity or our coach 'quitting' when we were 7-0 last year.

Believe me, in no way am I saying we are 'poor ole State' and we're never going to do any better, so why try. And yes, I fully understand that Beamer and Sherrill would both be fired today. And that's my point...they still wouldn't be good decisions. VT would have been far worse off had they fired Beamer, and who knows where we would have ended up.

But instead of trying to buck this recent trend of shorter and shorter coaching tenures, we have a bunch of fans who want to jump head-first into it.

My hesitancy at firing our coach has absolutely nothing to do with wanting the status quo. It has everything to do with realizing that sometimes staying the course is actually the right decision, and sometimes making a move for the sake of making a move puts you further behind than you were already.

I just don't see where the trend ends. If we hire Hudspeth, he will no doubt have a stretch where suddenly everything he does doesn't seem like pure gold anymore. So I guess we then fire him then. It's just a never-ending cycle. Saying 'we need to fire our coach' doesn't make anyone forward-thinking or cutting-edge or smarter than the AD; it makes them like 99% of college football fans everywhere. Sometimes those fans are right; sometimes they're not. I don't think State fans saying that are right yet.

We had a huge part of our fanbase who wanted Cohen gone. We had a huge part of our fanbase who thought Ray was a terrible hire simply because nobody had heard of him. And now we have a lot of fans calling for Mullen to go.

Perhaps he never rights the ship, but again, just because we slip for a moment doesn't mean we need to change everything.

[smootness]

You agree with his argument, so you think it is fundamentally sound and well thought out. I don't see a deep thought process behind it; he hasn't made any arguments that are ground-breaking.

He has said we have won 2 of our last 7 games and that we've become stale offensively and overly conservative.

I don't disagree with that. I disagree with the conclusion we must draw from that.

[engie]

Huh? That really is what his argument keeps coming back to. Yes, he is talking about our lack of offensive creativity...but again, even that comes back to this 9-game stretch. There was nobody talking about our lack of offensive creativity or our coach 'quitting' when we were 7-0 last year.
Yes there were. Many of us saw major issues as early as the Troy game...


Believe me, in no way am I saying we are 'poor ole State' and we're never going to do any better, so why try. And yes, I fully understand that Beamer and Sherrill would both be fired today. And that's my point...they still wouldn't be good decisions. VT would have been far worse off had they fired Beamer, and who knows where we would have ended up.
Yet there are just as many schools that "believe" and keep their coaches too long -- and become afterthoughts for 5+ years because of it AND their next coach has to rebuild rather than stepping into a good situation where he can win and build on immediate success. It's not the one-way street that you are projecting. It cuts both ways evenly.


But instead of trying to buck this recent trend of shorter and shorter coaching tenures, we have a bunch of fans who want to jump head-first into it.
We're seeing that momentum is important -- and the loss of it is crippling to our program. Not much Mullen can(likely) do to get it back at this point...


My hesitancy at firing our coach has absolutely nothing to do with wanting the status quo. It has everything to do with realizing that sometimes staying the course is actually the right decision, and sometimes making a move for the sake of making a move puts you further behind than you were already.
I agreed with this right up until the end of the Auburn game. How many times can the same reality slap us in the face before we see it? Please explain to me how our hiring Hudspeth would "put us further behind" -- when our recruiting class would get drastically better basically on day 1?


I just don't see where the trend ends. If we hire Hudspeth, he will no doubt have a stretch where suddenly everything he does doesn't seem like pure gold anymore.
You are missing the entire boat on what we are saying about Mullen. It's not so much the results as how the results are being accomplished -- or not accomplished.


So I guess we then fire him then. It's just a never-ending cycle. Saying 'we need to fire our coach' doesn't make anyone forward-thinking or cutting-edge or smarter than the AD; it makes them like 99% of college football fans everywhere. Sometimes those fans are right; sometimes they're not. I don't think State fans saying that are right yet.
What will it take to change your mind? Winning 6 with 9-win talent next year? Or winning 5 with 7-win talent this year? Or do you need to see 3 years of shit while the newly expanded stadium fails to sell out to see it?


We had a huge part of our fanbase who wanted Cohen gone.
Those people were idiots. And that crowd was VERY different than the crowd now on the fence about Mullen. That was the reactionary week to week crowd. I'm as far from that as you can get.


We had a huge part of our fanbase who thought Ray was a terrible hire simply because nobody had heard of him.
Again the idiots.


And now we have a lot of fans calling for Mullen to go.
I'm not calling for him to go. I'm calling for wanting Hudspeth over him. There's a difference. It took alot for me to get off the bandwagon -- but he's done it. And he doesn't give a SHIT. If he did, he would have fixed the damn offense after it got exposed for the second year in a row. Oh, I forgot -- we point to the #48 offense in 2010 as evidence that "it can be fixed" again. And we fire defensive coaches for a #34 defense that everyone bitches about.

That's the problem -- OPPOSING fans don't have a skewed viewpoint -- it's MSU fans that do.


Perhaps he never rights the ship, but again, just because we slip for a moment doesn't mean we need to change everything.
We've slipped for alot more than a moment. And I've yet to see ANY sign of that turning for the better. Perhaps you can show me one?

[engie]

You agree with his argument, so you think it is fundamentally sound and well thought out. I don't see a deep thought process behind it; he hasn't made any arguments that are ground-breaking.

He has said we have won 2 of our last 7 games and that we've become stale offensively and overly conservative.

I don't disagree with that. I disagree with the conclusion we must draw from that.

If that's all you can make out of his well-laid-out actual argument, you are too simple-minded to have this discussion... No offense.

[Todd4State]

Huh? That really is what his argument keeps coming back to. Yes, he is talking about our lack of offensive creativity...but again, even that comes back to this 9-game stretch. There was nobody talking about our lack of offensive creativity or our coach 'quitting' when we were 7-0 last year.

Believe me, in no way am I saying we are 'poor ole State' and we're never going to do any better, so why try. And yes, I fully understand that Beamer and Sherrill would both be fired today. And that's my point...they still wouldn't be good decisions. VT would have been far worse off had they fired Beamer, and who knows where we would have ended up.

But instead of trying to buck this recent trend of shorter and shorter coaching tenures, we have a bunch of fans who want to jump head-first into it.

My hesitancy at firing our coach has absolutely nothing to do with wanting the status quo. It has everything to do with realizing that sometimes staying the course is actually the right decision, and sometimes making a move for the sake of making a move puts you further behind than you were already.

I just don't see where the trend ends. If we hire Hudspeth, he will no doubt have a stretch where suddenly everything he does doesn't seem like pure gold anymore. So I guess we then fire him then. It's just a never-ending cycle. Saying 'we need to fire our coach' doesn't make anyone forward-thinking or cutting-edge or smarter than the AD; it makes them like 99% of college football fans everywhere. Sometimes those fans are right; sometimes they're not. I don't think State fans saying that are right yet.

We had a huge part of our fanbase who wanted Cohen gone. We had a huge part of our fanbase who thought Ray was a terrible hire simply because nobody had heard of him. And now we have a lot of fans calling for Mullen to go.

Perhaps he never rights the ship, but again, just because we slip for a moment doesn't mean we need to change everything.

The reason no one said anything about lack of offensive creativity when we were 7-0 was because we assumed we were holding some things back. We were wrong. We know better now. But actually plenty of people expressed concerns over it even before the Alabama game.

The reason a lot of our fans wanted Cohen gone was because of political ties to other past coaches. And shortsightedness. Thank God a few of us were paying attention to college baseball outside of MSU and East Mississippi Community College.

[CadaverDawg]

You agree with his argument, so you think it is fundamentally sound and well thought out. I don't see a deep thought process behind it; he hasn't made any arguments that are ground-breaking.

He has said we have won 2 of our last 7 games and that we've become stale offensively and overly conservative.

I don't disagree with that. I disagree with the conclusion we must draw from that.

First of all, get your facts straight...it's 2 of our last 9.

And secondly, read Engie's post about what I'm actually saying rather than picking a few sentences and running with it. You conveniently left out several key points to my argument.

Why don't you actually make a case for yourself instead of trying to tell me what I am saying...because you obviously do not know what I'm saying, or just fail to try to see the truth of it.

[Homedawg]

When you see your coach quitting and being scared to try and win a game instead of not trying to lose one....it's different than just "losing more games than you won that year". We have lost 7 of 9 and we haven't even gotten to the tough part of our schedule this year. Besides, not many teams have a coach that is arguable better than what we have waiting and wanting to come home to Starkville and coach them.

Also, who makes these rules that you have to wait until the coach loses for more than one year? Can you not see with your own eyes what he did Saturday and has been doing for the last 9 games? Why do we have to let some unwritten rule determine how far we let him bring us down from what he built before hiring a new coach?

Arguably- key word. HUD might be he might not be. My best guess is this. Mullen at some point will get canned. 3 years or 6 years from now. Doesn't matter. And when he does, someone will replace him, HUD or whoever. But whoever it is, people on this board and others will call for his head prior to his 5th year. I'm not saying accept mediocrity- I am saying the odds aren't on our side- just sayin. And won't be anytime soon. Not when a person who has nevet given a nickel to the university can give $ 1500 and jump 40% of bulldog club members in rank. We have a whole lot of people who want change and that's what they give-change. (and cavender the money part had nothing to do w you-just making a point)

[WeWillScrewItUp]

The reason no one said anything about lack of offensive creativity when we were 7-0 was because we assumed we were holding some things back. We were wrong. We know better now.

Exactly. I have also heard "winning deodorizes everything" and it is very true.

[CadaverDawg]

Arguably- key word. HUD might be he might not be. My best guess is this. Mullen at some point will get canned. 3 years or 6 years from now. Doesn't matter. And when he does, someone will replace him, HUD or whoever. But whoever it is, people on this board and others will call for his head prior to his 5th year. I'm not saying accept mediocrity- I am saying the odds aren't on our side- just sayin. And won't be anytime soon. Not when a person who has nevet given a nickel to the university can give $ 1500 and jump 40% of bulldog club members in rank. We have a whole lot of people who want change and that's what they give-change. (and cavender the money part had nothing to do w you-just making a point)

I can understand your point, I just don't agree. Do you not think that Hud could beat Troy, Kentucky, Alcorn St, Jackson St, South Alabama, and all of the other teams that Mullen has beaten? It's not like we are asking him to come in and beat Bama and LSU like Mullen has...because he hasn't. I think people should quit focusing on the mystery that is Hudspeth, and think more about exactly what he would, or wouldn't, have to do to match what Mullen has done or to be better.

His chances are a lot greater if we bring him in BEFORE Mullen destroys everything he's built though, rather than after. Not saying Mullen will 100% destroy it, but based on what we're seeing, we are much more likely to tank than to turn it around anytime soon. We aren't exactly trending up these days. And his coaching is getting worse, not better.

[Todd4State]

Arguably- key word. HUD might be he might not be. My best guess is this. Mullen at some point will get canned. 3 years or 6 years from now. Doesn't matter. And when he does, someone will replace him, HUD or whoever. But whoever it is, people on this board and others will call for his head prior to his 5th year. I'm not saying accept mediocrity- I am saying the odds aren't on our side- just sayin. And won't be anytime soon. Not when a person who has nevet given a nickel to the university can give $ 1500 and jump 40% of bulldog club members in rank. We have a whole lot of people who want change and that's what they give-change. (and cavender the money part had nothing to do w you-just making a point)

Well, thank God for ESPN.

[smootness]

If that's all you can make out of his well-laid-out actual argument, you are too simple-minded to have this discussion... No offense.

Haha. K.

[smootness]

First of all, get your facts straight...it's 2 of our last 9.

And secondly, read Engie's post about what I'm actually saying rather than picking a few sentences and running with it. You conveniently left out several key points to my argument.

Why don't you actually make a case for yourself instead of trying to tell me what I am saying...because you obviously do not know what I'm saying, or just fail to try to see the truth of it.

He didn't say anything. He said that we have lost a lot of games recently, we haven't shown a lot of offensive creativity for the last year and 3 games, and that we have no momentum going right now, he's too loyal to Hevesy and Koening, etc....and then assumes Hudspeth would do better in all areas and thinks it's time to hire Hudspeth because we're not trending in the right direction.

That is exactly what I've said your argument is, and it is exactly what engie just said in all of his replies. I'm not saying that's a dumb argument; I'm just saying that it isn't exactly ground-breaking or profound, and I happen to think it's not quite time to fire him, that he actually can still do good things here. His recruiting is improving, regardless of whether you think Hudspeth would do better in this area. His offense, for 3 quarters last night, was light years ahead of what we've seen since the beginning of last year. Sure, it was frustrating that we went conservative in the 4th and ultimately lost because of it. He deserves the blame for that loss. But it is also his offense that looked so great for the first 3 when a QB it was actually designed for took over.

I think he is too loyal to certain guys that have started for us. I think he's too loyal to some assistants. I think he gets too 'cute' at times and too conservative at others. And yet his tenure has overall been a positive one, as I think everyone would agree with, and every coach has things that rub their fanbase the wrong way.

I promise you, if we hired Hudspeth, he would do things that would drive us crazy, and there would be times where his offense looked stale due to personnel, or inexperience, or something else. He wouldn't come in like a rocket and start dominating.

You said it yourself - it's arguable that he's better; we simply don't know, and I'm not yet ready to get rid of someone we know is good for something who might be better.

[CadaverDawg]

He didn't say anything. He said that we have lost a lot of games recently, we haven't shown a lot of offensive creativity for the last year and 3 games, and that we have no momentum going right now, he's too loyal to Hevesy and Koening, etc....and then assumes Hudspeth would do better in all areas and thinks it's time to hire Hudspeth because we're not trending in the right direction.

That is exactly what I've said your argument is, and it is exactly what engie just said in all of his replies. I'm not saying that's a dumb argument; I'm just saying that it isn't exactly ground-breaking or profound, and I happen to think it's not quite time to fire him, that he actually can still do good things here. His recruiting is improving, regardless of whether you think Hudspeth would do better in this area. His offense, for 3 quarters last night, was light years ahead of what we've seen since the beginning of last year. Sure, it was frustrating that we went conservative in the 4th and ultimately lost because of it. He deserves the blame for that loss. But it is also his offense that looked so great for the first 3 when a QB it was actually designed for took over.

I think he is too loyal to certain guys that have started for us. I think he's too loyal to some assistants. I think he gets too 'cute' at times and too conservative at others. And yet his tenure has overall been a positive one, as I think everyone would agree with, and every coach has things that rub their fanbase the wrong way.

I promise you, if we hired Hudspeth, he would do things that would drive us crazy, and there would be times where his offense looked stale due to personnel, or inexperience, or something else. He wouldn't come in like a rocket and start dominating.

You said it yourself - it's arguable that he's better; we simply don't know, and I'm not yet ready to get rid of someone we know is good for something who might be better.

Not sure why you keep trying to dilute what we're saying...but NO, that's not "exactly what our argument is"...not even close. But you obviously aren't going to do anything but cherry pick certain things and then say "I don't think it's time", so I'm not sure what we're doing here.

[smootness]

Not sure why you keep trying to dilute what we're saying...but NO, that's not "exactly what our argument is"...not even close. But you obviously aren't going to do anything but cherry pick certain things and then say "I don't think it's time", so I'm not sure what we're doing here.

Then please lay out your argument. I haven't yet read a post where anything more than what I've summarized was said, and everything else is just 'that's not what my argument is'. So perhaps I didn't read the posts where you laid all this out. If you could either elaborate on exactly what you are saying, or point me to where you've already said it, it seems like that would help. Seriously.

[I seen it dawg]

Thank you Engie.

[FISHDAWG]

a good start to that would be not extending his current contract by a year like we have done in the past