Why do I keep hearing you can't fire a coach after one season?

I keep hearing this and it's confusing me.

The argument seems to be two-fold:

1: You have to let them get things corrected and their system installed.

2: No one would want to coach here if we fired a coach after one losing season.

I 100% disagree with both of these statements. Let me explain.

We have a VERY talented team. This is not my opinion rather it is a fact. It can be demonstrated by by on-the-field results from last year, reviews by NFL recruiters/analysts, draft projections, records set, and recruiting rankings. Sure..we have some holes on the team but nothing that is insurmountable.

With that understood we have to look at the "installation" argument. A good coach would take this wealth of talent and adjust their scheme to match the strengths of the team. No one would expect to install their offense in one off-season but...you would also expect a good coach to adapt their philosophy to a teams strength in order to win big. I'm sure Moorheads offense will be better in 3-4 years when he has "his players" in but do we sacrifice the wealth of talent and progress that this program has made for the next 3 years? Why would a coach do that in the first place? No...this argument doesn't work.

No one would coach here if we fired our coach after one year. This is simply not true. Good coaches thrive on competition. They believe they are better than the previous guy and aren't afraid of the challenge. It would be very simple to tell prospective head coaches "we had talent unlike MSU has had in 20 years and the coach just couldn't get it done. It didn't work out." Easy as that. Also, we have 5-6 million to spend on a head coach. Money talks and that kind of money will get people interested with real head coaching success.

I agree with Hadad on Thunder and Lightning this morning: no coach is unfireable after one season. If our AD is serious about winning and we, as a program, are serious about being competitive in the West we are going to have to nut up and pull out the check book.

Now...with all that being said if Moorhead somehow turns this dumpterfire around and we win out or finish 10-2 or 9-3 then we are good but it's beginning to look like a 4-5 win season and that is a tragedy. IF we allow that to continue for another 2-3 years it will be the end of our football program for our lifetimes.

The biggest issue to me is that if you decide Moorhead isn't going to get it done, you can't just let him hang around because it's "too soon" to fire him. Anger and disappointment are fine, but apathy kills college sports programs. We *still* can't get crowds back to the Hump after the Rick Ray debacle. If Moorhead crashes this program into a ditch and we let him do it for 3+ years, it's going to be a long walk in the wilderness in this age of SEC play.

SEC Football is a huge business. No coach should be safe after a putrid first year. So, year two marginally better? 6-6 bowl game?

If a first year CEO takes a Fortune 500 company and runs it in the ground year one he doesn't get a second year.

Who has the $9M to buy him out? Because that's the rumor on his buyout. Again, rumor.

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Originally Posted by Cooterpoot

Who has the $9M to buy him out? Because that's the rumor on his buyout. Again, rumor.

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If that's his buyout then it is larger than his actual salary over four years. My understanding is that he was hired for around 1.5-1.8 per year. We can only sign a 4 year contract so that would put him at 6 - 7.2 mil over 4 years. Typically buyouts are 50%-70% of the remaining contract and he already has one year under his belt so the buyout should be in the neighborhood of 2.5 - 3.75 mil or so. If he managed to broker a higher buyout than his actual salary then we got duped big time.

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Originally Posted by TrapGame

SEC Football is a huge business. No coach should be safe after a putrid first year. So, year two marginally better? 6-6 bowl game?

If a first year CEO takes a Fortune 500 company and runs it in the ground year one he doesn't get a second year.

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Exactly. We talk about giving someone 2-3 years to wreck a program then we are talking about hundred's of millions in potential revenue lost. Not just by the school but the communities surrounding the school. A Fortune 500 CEO that ****ed up this big wouldn't even be given 6 months, honestly.

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Originally Posted by Dawgology

If that's his buyout then it is larger than his actual salary over four years. My understanding is that he was hired for around 1.5-1.8 per year. We can only sign a 4 year contract so that would put him at 6 - 7.2 mil over 4 years. Typically buyouts are 50%-70% of the remaining contract and he already has one year under his belt so the buyout should be in the neighborhood of 2.5 - 3.75 mil or so. If he managed to broker a higher buyout than his actual salary then we got duped big time.

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He's making about $2.6M+ from what I've seen. But again, rumor on that buyout. But that maybe part of how we got him cheap.

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Originally Posted by bluelightstar

The biggest issue to me is that if you decide Moorhead isn't going to get it done, you can't just let him hang around because it's "too soon" to fire him. Anger and disappointment are fine, but apathy kills college sports programs. We *still* can't get crowds back to the Hump after the Rick Ray debacle. If Moorhead crashes this program into a ditch and we let him do it for 3+ years, it's going to be a long walk in the wilderness in this age of SEC play.

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On the bright side those seats I want might become open.

You can’t because nobody does it for the simple fact you have just informed any possible candidate you only get a year and you better succeed immediately in the hardest division in college football with the smallest budget vs the schools in your division, in a sparsely populated state that shares recruits with a division rival....the talent pool of candidates shrinks dramatically.

That being said it’s an easier task to fire the coach if he only wins 0-3 games vs winning 5-6 games. So that can come into play if it’s a complete abortion of a season and they lose the team in one year

I think you can justify firing him if he has a losing record. Other coaches in America know the talent we've got. They know we should be winning games. People know a complete bust when they see it. Plus, expectations will be lower next year. And if you're offering bigger money, you'll get candidates.
That said, we aren't firing him after one year unless he loses the rest of the games. I think Cohen almost has to at that point because his ass in on the hot seat if he doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Cooterpoot

I think you can justify firing him if he has a losing record. Other coaches in America know the talent we've got. They know we should be winning games. People know a complete bust when they see it. Plus, expectations will be lower next year. And if you're offering bigger money, you'll get candidates.
That said, we aren't firing him after one year unless he loses the rest of the games. I think Cohen almost has to at that point because his ass in on the hot seat if he doesn't.

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This is where I am. IF he isn't let go after a disaster like this and then you look at the Cann/Lemonis situation things start looking grim for our AD.

You can fire him if, through agents, you already have the next coach basically lined up. If you don't, it could be a Tennessee level mess

I've never seen the MSU fan base this angry and I'm happy to see it. Garbage results should not be accepted at this school.

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Originally Posted by Cooterpoot

I th
That said, we aren't firing him after one year unless he loses the rest of the games. I think Cohen almost has to at that point because his ass in on the hot seat if he doesn't.

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This is where Keenum has to show great leadership. You can't allow Cohen's ego to drag down the football program.

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Originally Posted by Dawgology

This is where I am. IF he isn't let go after a disaster like this and then you look at the Cann/Lemonis situation things start looking grim for our AD.

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Cann was a great hire. On paper he was a superstar in the making and he showed that year 1. Now the personal stuff is another story and if it's true that Cohen knew about that then I do question his hiring ability. However, his major hires since then have been pretty meh

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Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg

You can fire him if, through agents, you already have the next coach basically lined up. If you don't, it could be a Tennessee level mess

I've never seen the MSU fan base this angry and I'm happy to see it. Garbage results should not be accepted at this school.

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Agreed......Moorhead is 'Rick Ray' level bad right now....if it starts to affect recruiting I would dump his ass when the the clock runs out at the Egg Bowl

At the very least Moorhead should be told: You lose to ole miss, La Tech and Arkansas you are gone.

Now, I think we beat them and go 6-6...but...

Most are making good points but here?s the deal. First this was not a typical Hire. Joe inherited a stacked roster with depth unlike anything we have seen and he proceeded to make this team worse. I?m not sure how. Now if this was a team that in which we will have next year, then yes he would need time or he was replacing a fired coach that didn?t win then yes we need to give him time on those example
Why I?m so adamant that we made a bad hire is that he had a ready made team and really all he has to do was just adjust his system to fit the personnel. Instead he wants to die on the sword so to speak and try to implement his system even though he doesn?t have his players.
To me the baseline is 6-7 wins now and he gets next year. At the best he will end up being fired in nov of next year based on what we have returning. Less than 6 wins this year he needs to go. We cannot afford to be set behind we must act accordingly.

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Originally Posted by Really Clark?

You can’t because nobody does it for the simple fact you have just informed any possible candidate you only get a year and you better succeed immediately in the hardest division in college football with the smallest budget vs the schools in your division, in a sparsely populated state that shares recruits with a division rival....the talent pool of candidates shrinks dramatically.

That being said it’s an easier task to fire the coach if he only wins 0-3 games vs winning 5-6 games. So that can come into play if it’s a complete abortion of a season and they lose the team in one year

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Coaches aren't that stupid. They'll recognize the difference in expectations between a coach coming into a rebuilding situation versus a coach coming in to a situation with a team ready to win on day 1.

I'm not arguing that we should fire Moorhead after one year, but if we continue to play like this, we're probably going to go 5-7. If we were to fire him, coaches would be able to recognize how bad a job he had to do to manage that, but it'd still probably cut down on our potential hires by quite a bit. If we lose to Arky and go 4-8, I think we could fire him and it wouldn't hurt us much more than following that up with another 4 wins or less season (which we almost assuredly would do). It'd hurt some, but I think potential coaches would recognize that as a different situation than they'd have coming into a rebuilding job.

We had guys on SECN and ESPN calling us contenders for the West and talking about how talented this team is. This is not a rebuild. Cohen gave Moorhead the keys to a damn 2018 Corvette and it's in the ditch right out of the garage.

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Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve

Cann was a great hire. On paper he was a superstar in the making and he showed that year 1. Now the personal stuff is another story and if it's true that Cohen knew about that then I do question his hiring ability. However, his major hires since then have been pretty meh

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I have a well connected source that Cohen was well aware of thenof field issues before hiring Cann. LSU gave us a fair warning and for whatever reason Cohen didn?t listen. He probably thought LSU was making it up to prevent poaching, but it turns out they were spot on.

With Joe, if we score less that 14 points again this week, he needs to be on the 1st train headed north next week. Any old slapstick off the street could have this roster undefeated at this point. You have to purposely try to score less that 7 PPG these last two weeks.