Hey, Elsa. Let it go.
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He didn't destroy it and you know that. Dave Emerick and Matt Dudek destroyed our program. Leach, God rest his soul, had a hand in that. He hired them, or signed off on it, and they were in charge of recruiting. The fall off was never going to be evident under Mike because Mike got more out of his players and knew his scheme so well that he schemed G5 guys consistently open against top tier P4 defenders. But we all knew the minute Mike left, we were going to be rebuilding because we knew we had to build up recruiting. You could look at our roster and see that.
You have captured the situation perfectly. It is so evident that we were looking at a significant loss of talent more so on the defensive side of the ball where they really dropped the ball. That pair hurt us and burned some bridges in this state that we are still trying to repair.
Oh damn. Maybe what happened was worse than I thought. But I definitely see your points. My hope would be that it would be something that would make him look better and give him some redemption but maybe not.
MSU is definitely making an effort to kind of black out 2023. The press release almost entirely skips over the fact that he was the head coach outside of one sentence.
I mean what was the press release going to say, "Arnett returns to Mississippi State after being the HC for a whole 10 games culminating in 51-3 loss against, also outgoing coach, Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M. During his short tenure as coach he hired one of the worst offensive coordinators P4 football has ever seen, gave a scholarship to Ryland Goede, and somehow managed to make Mississippi State fans realize that the backup was in fact WORSE than the starter. During his sabbatical from Starkville, he somehow made Ole Miss fans miss him and he learned that, the social media era, What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas."
I mean we fired the guy after 10 games, that's Mississippi State admitting we made a mistake.
He didnt really destroy it. As SVS said- we were going to suck in 24 regardless. The cupboard was bare and we had just started getting NIL on the right track. It hasnt been that long ago that Charlie had to take the bull by the horns and get things organized there. Arnett did us no favors but destroying is a little overboard. The Air Raid toll had to be paid in 2024 regardless
I think everyone had a part to play in it. To say Arnett destroyed the program is far fetched.. as one man can't just do that IF the surrounding pieces are trying to build and improve the situation. I think Arnett knew he was over his head and fully expected help along the way. Instead of getting the help, he just became a "tool" for boosters and others around him and ultimately the fall guy. And I'm not saying he did not wrong, he did. I'm just saying it's hard for one guy to destroy a program if everyone around him is trying to accomplish the opposite. I think he was set up to fail.
That's not the point. No one is arguing that offensively he probably made a mistake by hiring an idiot. What we're all saying is that no matter what happened, we could've hired [insert name AR name we were discussing] and we probably are still going to suck. It cannot be understated how BAD we were roster wise under Leach. But it also cannot understated how incredible he was at taking a pre Pavia type Vandy roster and winning 8 games. There was always going to be a massive drop off. We knew that. Leach didn't recruit SEC caliber athletes, for the most part, because he didn't need them. He won with low level P4 and G5 guys. I mean go to our 2023 roster, in which we won 8 regular season games. We had MAYBE 5 P4 skills players. That team won 4 conference games. Our whole roster costs MAYBE 5 mil that year. We were beating teams with 10 million dollar offensive rosters.
I'm afraid you are missing the point. That pair did some real damage to our recruiting, they damaged many hard earned relationships throughout our recruiting footprint. We are still working to repair some of these, one example is with some of the " handlers" in the south part of our state. We will play hell trying to get an player out of Picayune or George County.
Only State could find a way to drown in a dry bathtub