curmudgeon
11-09-2013, 01:05 PM
I haven't had this "I really don't care about this game" attitude since the Croom era. We are playing the 2:30 CBS game against a Top 15 opponent and my attitude is like many- first quarter we'll look like we can win, second quarter we'll fall behind but be within a score at halftime, then we'll get blown out in the second half.
We are sitting at 4-4. No team in America has four "better" losses. We've lost to four top 15 teams. Very possible after next week we will be 4-6 with six top 15 losses. That may have never been done before in the history of college football. I can't remember a tougher stretch of scheduling than we have seen since 2009. Next year, the schedule is the most manageable I have ever remembered, and it looks that way for a few years to come.
Which is why I, for one, am not ready to fire Mullen. We don't have the right to compare ourselves to the upper echelon of the SEC West. We haven't earned it. We can compare ourselves to our history, which when you do - we are in the middle of the most successful five years we have ever had. Have there been disappointments? Sure. Is it incredibly frustrating that Mullen can't seem to get that big win? Yes. But we have been to three bowl games for the second time in school history, and it isn't going to take the unbelievable to get that fourth straight bowl win.
Which brings me to a topic that really needs to be discussed. We have the worst athletic director in the SEC. If anyone needs to be fired, its Scott Stricklin. He's in over his head, and now that Bjork is at Ole Miss, there is none worse in the SEC. Here are five of the many things that he has done as athletic director that need to be addressed.
1. He whored us out in a rebuilding year to the Texas Kickoff Classic. If we would have played a manageable out of conference game instead of chasing a few extra dollars and national exposure (that became national embarrassment), we'd be at worse 5-3 and probably would have beaten Auburn to be 6-2. That judgment may very well have cost us a bowl game this year. We aren't an elite team, we're not ready to play in elite games.
2. His idea of marketing is selling ads. The gameday experience at Mississippi State has gone from borderline elite to horrible in his tenure. Games are unbearable and there is no Gameday experience at MSU. Even last year when we were undefeated in the top 15, it was boring. On top of it all, he ran off the Assistant AD of Marketing and hired a fundraiser whose idea of gameday experience is a free frisbee to the first 50 fans. We are back to the days of LT as far as marketing goes, and its all on Stricklin.
3. The student problem is on him. We've killed the gameday experience, made students into cash cows, and are back to catering to the big dogs instead of the entire fanbase. We are starting to get back to the days where we have Bama and LSU fans that are "just students" at MSU. Part of this is on the "everybody gets a trophy" generation of students that we have, but we aren't giving them a reason to bleed maroon.
4. We refuse to put money into assistant coaches, in any sport - which is the key to winning. I'd rather have a $65 million expansion than a $75 million expansion so that we can put $2 million a year into our assistant coaches' salaries. And its not just coaches, we let our PR guy, a MSU grad, be hired away by Clemson for a fraction of that.
5. Compliance. While everyone else is hiring big name lawyers to run their compliance operations and basically daring the NCAA to come in - we have a unsuccessful coach with a degree in PE running ours. He's over his head, just like Stricklin is. If you want to be loyal to Brackey, fine, let him stay on staff in some role, but we need an attorney that is not scared to dare the NCAA to play. Only then will we stop having suspensions for playing in charity basketball games and season and a half suspensions for a winter coat while other schools are blatantly paying thousands of dollars cash.
So before we lose a game today where we trail 21-17 at halftime and lose 42-24, think about who really needs to be fired. Because if you think the gap between Freeze and Mullen is huge - the gap between Bjork and Stricklin is bigger.
We are sitting at 4-4. No team in America has four "better" losses. We've lost to four top 15 teams. Very possible after next week we will be 4-6 with six top 15 losses. That may have never been done before in the history of college football. I can't remember a tougher stretch of scheduling than we have seen since 2009. Next year, the schedule is the most manageable I have ever remembered, and it looks that way for a few years to come.
Which is why I, for one, am not ready to fire Mullen. We don't have the right to compare ourselves to the upper echelon of the SEC West. We haven't earned it. We can compare ourselves to our history, which when you do - we are in the middle of the most successful five years we have ever had. Have there been disappointments? Sure. Is it incredibly frustrating that Mullen can't seem to get that big win? Yes. But we have been to three bowl games for the second time in school history, and it isn't going to take the unbelievable to get that fourth straight bowl win.
Which brings me to a topic that really needs to be discussed. We have the worst athletic director in the SEC. If anyone needs to be fired, its Scott Stricklin. He's in over his head, and now that Bjork is at Ole Miss, there is none worse in the SEC. Here are five of the many things that he has done as athletic director that need to be addressed.
1. He whored us out in a rebuilding year to the Texas Kickoff Classic. If we would have played a manageable out of conference game instead of chasing a few extra dollars and national exposure (that became national embarrassment), we'd be at worse 5-3 and probably would have beaten Auburn to be 6-2. That judgment may very well have cost us a bowl game this year. We aren't an elite team, we're not ready to play in elite games.
2. His idea of marketing is selling ads. The gameday experience at Mississippi State has gone from borderline elite to horrible in his tenure. Games are unbearable and there is no Gameday experience at MSU. Even last year when we were undefeated in the top 15, it was boring. On top of it all, he ran off the Assistant AD of Marketing and hired a fundraiser whose idea of gameday experience is a free frisbee to the first 50 fans. We are back to the days of LT as far as marketing goes, and its all on Stricklin.
3. The student problem is on him. We've killed the gameday experience, made students into cash cows, and are back to catering to the big dogs instead of the entire fanbase. We are starting to get back to the days where we have Bama and LSU fans that are "just students" at MSU. Part of this is on the "everybody gets a trophy" generation of students that we have, but we aren't giving them a reason to bleed maroon.
4. We refuse to put money into assistant coaches, in any sport - which is the key to winning. I'd rather have a $65 million expansion than a $75 million expansion so that we can put $2 million a year into our assistant coaches' salaries. And its not just coaches, we let our PR guy, a MSU grad, be hired away by Clemson for a fraction of that.
5. Compliance. While everyone else is hiring big name lawyers to run their compliance operations and basically daring the NCAA to come in - we have a unsuccessful coach with a degree in PE running ours. He's over his head, just like Stricklin is. If you want to be loyal to Brackey, fine, let him stay on staff in some role, but we need an attorney that is not scared to dare the NCAA to play. Only then will we stop having suspensions for playing in charity basketball games and season and a half suspensions for a winter coat while other schools are blatantly paying thousands of dollars cash.
So before we lose a game today where we trail 21-17 at halftime and lose 42-24, think about who really needs to be fired. Because if you think the gap between Freeze and Mullen is huge - the gap between Bjork and Stricklin is bigger.