When Did The Football Downfall Start

[StarkVegasSteve]

Loosely saw this topic on another board regarding the Arnett stuff and just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on it. It's obvious our football program hit rock bottom last year. There's no way around it. I do think we're on the way back now though. With that being said, when did this all start? What was the first snowball that got things rolling?

1. Mullen leaving. There's definitely some substance to this one. I mean we had 9 years of stability under Dan and now we are on our 4th coach in 8 years.

2. NIL and the portal. There's definitely a lot here because I think the portal took those guys like Bernardrick McKinney, Darius Slay, Ben Beckwith, etc that would've stayed to be developed and they entered the portal. We've always been a developmental program and the portal killed that. Developmental programs just don't exist anymore.

3. Leach's Recruiting. Say all you want about Mike and how he got every bit of talent out of his guys, and most played above their level. But there was no way to keep those same guys performing at that level outside of Leach's system. Dudek and Emerick just killed us with getting in late on guys, missing on guys, bad evals, etc. Mike also hated recruiting defense and that hurt us. Especially last year because the guys that he and that staff recruited were the upperclassmen. We had one SEC playmaker on the team and Gibson and Hughes did the heavy lifting in that recruitment.

4. Leach dying, hiring Arnett, and Arnett completely torpedoing the only system the players we had could run and switching to a run first offense. I honestly think this may have been the least detrimental. We gave him 10 games and not even a full recruiting cycle. He was a god awful HC and a sleazy human but we got out of that quickly. It was one of the great tragedies in the history of college football to lose Leach, but from a program standpoint we probably had 1 more year with him. He looked like he was tired and was ready to hang it up. I think he would've ultimately lobbied for Zach to get the job.


Me personally, I think it's probably a mix of the first 3 with number 1 being the biggest one. I think Mullen leaving and being replaced by Moorhead killed our edge. Yea we had it with Jeff and that D but Moorhead was too much of a player's coach and you could see the cracks forming. I mean go back to the UK game where we get 4 unsportsmanlike penalties. Had that edge carried into Leach, I think it's a seamless transition from a culture standpoint and we don't miss a beat. I will always wonder what would've happened had we hired Leach after Mullen and had Minshew with that 18 defense. NIL and Leach are kind of two fold. Leach hated NIL until his last couple of months and we were just going to have to continue to revamp the roster each and every year because we were going to lose guys who put up numbers in the offense. We were never going to be able to consistently keep guys 2-3 years. Also our defensive recruiting was crap. Arnett sucked and how it came to me was unfathomable, but credit to Selmon for moving quick and credit to Keenum and Bracky for structuring that contract to basically have him be an interim HC.

[Gutter Cobreh]

I would say it was 3a. - Leach's passing.

While Moorhead sucked, Leach stabilized the program and we were competitive. The program went completely off the rails when we had to hire a new coach without much time for a system that no one on this planet knew how to run to the level he did.

In saying all that, had we hired someone other than Arnett - we may still be where we are today. At some point, Leach would have retired and we would have had to reboot the philosophy. Maybe though, we would have had enough time in this portal era to do so without the pains we've experienced over the past couple seasons.

[StarkVegasSteve]

I would say it was 3a. - Leach's passing.

While Moorhead sucked, Leach stabilized the program and we were competitive. The program went completely off the rails when we had to hire a new coach without much time for a system that no one on this planet knew how to run to the level he did.

In saying all that, had we hired someone other than Arnett - we may still be where we are today. At some point, Leach would have retired and we would have had to reboot the philosophy. Maybe though, we would have had enough time in this portal era to do so without the pains we've experienced over the past couple seasons.

I'll go back and edit 4 now and add Leach passing into that one.

[Cooterpoot]

John Cohen and Mark Keenum

[bigbub50]

The start of the downfall was hiring Moorhead. We missed on that hire. Yes, he made bowls and beat ole miss but he lost discipline pretty quick and ole miss was down. It was about to be a disaster

Then we made bad decision after bad decision.

Hiring Leach was a bad decision in hind sight in that he only had 3 years left alive. Great coach. Great discipline. But, his reworking of the roster killed our future. Once you go leach, it takes a year or 2 or 3 to rework the roster to get back to non leach football. And Leach wasnt playing the nil and transfer portal game.

Getting out to a slow start on NIL killed this program. AD left because he knew he had screwed that up and Auburn already had it rolling. He fell up hill. We couldnt re work the roster because we didnt have the money to do it.

His death was at a horrible time. Our president choosing to hire Arnette before hiring an AD was the next bad decision. I get that it was horrible timing but AD first, then head coach.

Mullen also made a horrible decision. I know he was burned out with us and wanted to move up and we didnt have a target. But, he would have won 11 games with the team coming back. And now he is at UNLV.

Hiring Moorehead started the downfall. And I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when he was asking our players their ring size when he was introduced.

[Coursesuper]

John Cohen and Mark Keenum

Bingo

[StarkVegasSteve]

John Cohen and Mark Keenum

Keenum got played on that one. He will tell you that as well. Mark got backed into a corner by the old Templeton boosters and the baseball boosters and caved. Cohen was not going to be the baseball coach the next season anyways. He had already decided that in his mind. He was either going to be our AD or sit out the year and then go get the Bama job in the offseason.

[TrapGame]

Moorhead. It started with Moorhead. However, Dan should have sucked it up, coached his ass off in 2018 and he would have had more than Tennessee or Florida wanting him. Dan could possibly have found himself in the NCAA championship game with that team.

We play for that Natty and we aren't looking at hiring Moorhead for anything.

[gtowndawg]

I was going to say 1 but it's 4. I know how we all feel about Moorhead but to the outside observer around the country we still had a good program, won 8 games, went to a new Years Day Bowl. Same with Leach, we had a TON of national recognition, we won some games, bowl games, and he sent us to a New Years Day bowl as well. After he passed we went drove off the side of a cliff going 100 MPH.

[Cooterpoot]

Keenum got played on that one. He will tell you that as well. Mark got backed into a corner by the old Templeton boosters and the baseball boosters and caved. Cohen was not going to be the baseball coach the next season anyways. He had already decided that in his mind. He was either going to be our AD or sit out the year and then go get the Bama job in the offseason.

Cohen is who Ron Polk said he was. A good coach but-

[Ranchdawg]

IMO it was all that was listed. If Arnett had kept the leech system just to some degree the NIL and portal would have worked to our advantage because we were running a very pass happy system that hardly anybody else was running and receivers/QB’s that were in the portal would have wanted to be a part of the system because it would increased their stats and make them more attractive to NFL. This may idea may be somewhat of a stretch but I believe it is not that far off.

[CaptainObvious]

It was DAN! He proved a good coach with a good scheme and a decent defense could win at State regularly and with the right QB, RB and O-line you could win without Top of the line WR's. Remember the school up north was getting all the wide receivers and we were getting the scraps and those scraps became more than adequate with a mobile QB who could throw it to them because he had time!

So DAN killed the program when he left, because the powers that be thought they could catch lightening in a bottle by going for another coordinator fell flat on their face by not going after Leach right then and there! If he came in 20, he would have come in 18! And I think with that 18 defense, even Leach could have gotten something out of our QB room.


But let me add this. Kiffin has essentially finished the program off! Because for whatever reason. The same powers that be that keeps hiring coordinators instead of going after a big fish and paying the money to get him, have allowed Ole Miss to prove what it takes to be a 9-10 win program when you are handicapped by you geography and recruiting pool!

Ole Miss spends like drunken sailors to be a Top 20 team year in and year out now. They are even willing to take out loans against their mortgages to support their Football program.

Hell, our leaders are afraid to tear down Dorman. They would rather give it an enema and a facelift!

[BrunswickDawg]

I'm going to go further back and say after the 2015 season under Dan Mullen.

Post Dak, Dan realized that he couldn't win at MSU unless he worked harder then he wanted to and/or cheated like Ole Miss.
He also knew that cheating like Ole Miss would never be tolerated at MSU by the NCAA/SEC. He tried to get out, and couldn't.
So he pouted. And that pissed people off. He made a terrible and lazy hire at DC in Sirmon. We then lost a lot in the 2016 recruiting class on Signing Day (which took a great class down to a good class). He refused to do what was best for the program and name Nick Fitz QB1 after spring camp in '16 and split the team. That season really started the chain of events that caused a lot of the issues - for football and the athletic department as a whole. Yes, he recovered for 2017 - saved by a ridiculously large JUCO haul that blessed us but also created a majorly unbalanced roster that hurt Leach as he was coming in. It also helped push Stricklin out the door and puts Cohen in the drivers seat.

[StarkVegasSteve]

IMO it was all that was listed. If Arnett had kept the leech system just to some degree the NIL and portal would have worked to our advantage because we were running a very pass happy system that hardly anybody else was running and receivers/QB’s that were in the portal would have wanted to be a part of the system because it would increased their stats and make them more attractive to NFL. This may idea may be somewhat of a stretch but I believe it is not that far off.

Oh I think all of it contributed. And you know, had Arnett kept the system we might've won a game or two more in 23. But we'd be stuck with Arnett, with coaches he didn't like, running a scheme he wanted no part of. There's also the fact that Mike was the reason the scheme worked. The scheme has been tried a bunch of different places, but the only places it ever succeeded there was one constant: Mike Leach.

[StarkVegasSteve]

I'm going to go further back and say after the 2015 season under Dan Mullen.

Post Dak, Dan realized that he couldn't win at MSU unless he worked harder then he wanted to and/or cheated like Ole Miss.
He also knew that cheating like Ole Miss would never be tolerated at MSU by the NCAA/SEC. He tried to get out, and couldn't.
So he pouted. And that pissed people off. He made a terrible and lazy hire at DC in Sirmon. We then lost a lot in the 2016 recruiting class on Signing Day (which took a great class down to a good class). He refused to do what was best for the program and name Nick Fitz QB1 after spring camp in '16 and split the team. That season really started the chain of events that caused a lot of the issues - for football and the athletic department as a whole. Yes, he recovered for 2017 - saved by a ridiculously large JUCO haul that blessed us but also created a majorly unbalanced roster that hurt Leach as he was coming in. It also helped push Stricklin out the door and puts Cohen in the drivers seat.

Yea 2015 and 2016 Dan not being locked in hurt us. It probably cost us the 15 Egg Bowl(which in turn cost us the Sugar Bowl), 16 South Al, 16 BYU, and 16 Arkansas. He got locked back in for 2017 and we saw what happened. He then zoned out after Don't Stop Believing against Bama in 17 and we were never the same. That night, up until that song ended, was the highest this program has been since and we're still searching for that moment.

[dparker]

I say it's that we keep rolling the dice on the "up and coming" coordinator route. We'll never be able to land the coaches that Bama and LSU can but we don't have to gamble as much as we have been. We can get people that have proven they can manage a program and that understand the current name of the game is "roster management" and not player development. Those type of coaches will move on to bigger and better things but after 3-4 cycles of sustained success we can start looking to be a better destination.

[was21]

Loosely saw this topic on another board regarding the Arnett stuff and just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on it. It's obvious our football program hit rock bottom last year. There's no way around it. I do think we're on the way back now though. With that being said, when did this all start? What was the first snowball that got things rolling?

1. Mullen leaving. There's definitely some substance to this one. I mean we had 9 years of stability under Dan and now we are on our 4th coach in 8 years.

2. NIL and the portal. There's definitely a lot here because I think the portal took those guys like Bernardrick McKinney, Darius Slay, Ben Beckwith, etc that would've stayed to be developed and they entered the portal. We've always been a developmental program and the portal killed that. Developmental programs just don't exist anymore.

3. Leach's Recruiting. Say all you want about Mike and how he got every bit of talent out of his guys, and most played above their level. But there was no way to keep those same guys performing at that level outside of Leach's system. Dudek and Emerick just killed us with getting in late on guys, missing on guys, bad evals, etc. Mike also hated recruiting defense and that hurt us. Especially last year because the guys that he and that staff recruited were the upperclassmen. We had one SEC playmaker on the team and Gibson and Hughes did the heavy lifting in that recruitment.

4. Leach dying, hiring Arnett, and Arnett completely torpedoing the only system the players we had could run and switching to a run first offense. I honestly think this may have been the least detrimental. We gave him 10 games and not even a full recruiting cycle. He was a god awful HC and a sleazy human but we got out of that quickly. It was one of the great tragedies in the history of college football to lose Leach, but from a program standpoint we probably had 1 more year with him. He looked like he was tired and was ready to hang it up. I think he would've ultimately lobbied for Zach to get the job.


Me personally, I think it's probably a mix of the first 3 with number 1 being the biggest one. I think Mullen leaving and being replaced by Moorhead killed our edge. Yea we had it with Jeff and that D but Moorhead was too much of a player's coach and you could see the cracks forming. I mean go back to the UK game where we get 4 unsportsmanlike penalties. Had that edge carried into Leach, I think it's a seamless transition from a culture standpoint and we don't miss a beat. I will always wonder what would've happened had we hired Leach after Mullen and had Minshew with that 18 defense. NIL and Leach are kind of two fold. Leach hated NIL until his last couple of months and we were just going to have to continue to revamp the roster each and every year because we were going to lose guys who put up numbers in the offense. We were never going to be able to consistently keep guys 2-3 years. Also our defensive recruiting was crap. Arnett sucked and how it came to me was unfathomable, but credit to Selmon for moving quick and credit to Keenum and Bracky for structuring that contract to basically have him be an interim HC.

Looks like you pretty much summed it up....nothing else to add

[parabrave]

Loosely saw this topic on another board regarding the Arnett stuff and just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on it. It's obvious our football program hit rock bottom last year. There's no way around it. I do think we're on the way back now though. With that being said, when did this all start? What was the first snowball that got things rolling?

1. Mullen leaving. There's definitely some substance to this one. I mean we had 9 years of stability under Dan and now we are on our 4th coach in 8 years.

2. NIL and the portal. There's definitely a lot here because I think the portal took those guys like Bernardrick McKinney, Darius Slay, Ben Beckwith, etc that would've stayed to be developed and they entered the portal. We've always been a developmental program and the portal killed that. Developmental programs just don't exist anymore.

3. Leach's Recruiting. Say all you want about Mike and how he got every bit of talent out of his guys, and most played above their level. But there was no way to keep those same guys performing at that level outside of Leach's system. Dudek and Emerick just killed us with getting in late on guys, missing on guys, bad evals, etc. Mike also hated recruiting defense and that hurt us. Especially last year because the guys that he and that staff recruited were the upperclassmen. We had one SEC playmaker on the team and Gibson and Hughes did the heavy lifting in that recruitment.

4. Leach dying, hiring Arnett, and Arnett completely torpedoing the only system the players we had could run and switching to a run first offense. I honestly think this may have been the least detrimental. We gave him 10 games and not even a full recruiting cycle. He was a god awful HC and a sleazy human but we got out of that quickly. It was one of the great tragedies in the history of college football to lose Leach, but from a program standpoint we probably had 1 more year with him. He looked like he was tired and was ready to hang it up. I think he would've ultimately lobbied for Zach to get the job.


Me personally, I think it's probably a mix of the first 3 with number 1 being the biggest one. I think Mullen leaving and being replaced by Moorhead killed our edge. Yea we had it with Jeff and that D but Moorhead was too much of a player's coach and you could see the cracks forming. I mean go back to the UK game where we get 4 unsportsmanlike penalties. Had that edge carried into Leach, I think it's a seamless transition from a culture standpoint and we don't miss a beat. I will always wonder what would've happened had we hired Leach after Mullen and had Minshew with that 18 defense. NIL and Leach are kind of two fold. Leach hated NIL until his last couple of months and we were just going to have to continue to revamp the roster each and every year because we were going to lose guys who put up numbers in the offense. We were never going to be able to consistently keep guys 2-3 years. Also our defensive recruiting was crap. Arnett sucked and how it came to me was unfathomable, but credit to Selmon for moving quick and credit to Keenum and Bracky for structuring that contract to basically have him be an interim HC.

Number 1,

[DawgFromOxford]

Downfall started at Leach's unexpected death. Everything else may have played a part but Leach had the program back to a respectable status after the Moorhead debacle. We don't know if that would've continued or if his lack of recruiting would eventually lead to poor results. What we do know is that after his passing, the powers at be made terrible decisions and that lands us where we are today. Dan leaving didn't force Keenum to hire an unproven HC without an AD.

[CaptainObvious]

The BOTTOM LINE: If Lebby doesn't work out, you go and hire a successful G5 or FBS coach and you pay him and his staff WELL based on HIGH expectations and bonus for every win over 7 each year!