When Did The Football Downfall Start

[Todd4State]

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.

1. Dan leaving was not a bad thing for MSU. It's MSU's responsibility to replace coaches and MSU has failed to do so two out of three times with Lebby being wait and see. Dan being unhappy at MSU wasn't going to change and he would have left us years ago even if he stayed for 2018. I am of the belief that is someone doesn't want to be with you then you should let them go and leave because eventually if you force them to stay then no one is happy. Besides we overcame Dan when we hired Leach. We had two very high profile wins in 2020 over LSU and 2021 over Auburn and then in 2022 we won 9 games. 2022 was basically as good as almost all of Dan's best seasons. But it's the same thing- MSU has failed to replace Leach.

2. That's on Cohen. We don't choose the environment we are in. It is our athletic dept. leader's responsibility to work within the framework of the current environment. I think a lot of fans liked the developmental program idea because MSU fans do not like recruiting. Why? Because MSU fans don't like the drama associated with it especially back in the hat party days and they are not mature enough to handle losing a recruit. Plus MSU fans like the idea of players being around 4-5 years because then they become part of the community. Cohen did not embrace NIL and therefore Leach did not until the end. Which logically makes me think that had we promoted NIL Leach would have been all in for it. Honestly, knowing his personality I could actually see him liking it. Heck- his best QB ever came out of the portal in Gardner Minchew. But as far as NIL and the portal we got behind and we are only now catching up. But once we do thanks to Charlie Winfield we will be fine. To me, there is a lot of opportunity for MSU and the portal. You talk about the 2015 team- we could have easily attracted talent to fill in holes on the defense that year with the portal. We can get recruits we lose back sometimes because of the portal. With NIL Ole Miss can't just throw a bunch of money at a player while we're over here scared to counter because we might get on probation anymore. And that is one of the biggest problems with MSU fans and the AD in general is we tend to look at problems and not possibilities.

3. OK well a couple of things on Leach's recruiting. He recruited players that fit his system. How many times have we complained about a coach running something and the players didn't fit? That was like every year under Croom. And now we're complaining because Leach recruited players that didn't fit what Barbay wanted to run? The offense wasn't the main issue last year. Secondly, if Gibson and Hughes did the heavy lifting on defensive recruiting why are they not getting more blame? Leach gave the defensive staff carte blanche and they dropped the ball. And then the boosters spun keeping them because of their recruiting.

4. Leach passing away AND not having an AD at the same time really hurt us. And even though it was a tragic event MSU handled that as poorly as you possibly could. We had a senior laden team coming back. What MSU should have done is hire an interim- I would have begged Spurrier, Sr or Stoops to take the job for a year and give them what we would have paid Leach plus a reasonable bonus for doing a good job. Try to retain as many assistants as possible. If Arnett leaves he leaves, you hire a new DC. That could have very well happened after 2022 anyway had Leach lived. What MSU decided to do was let the boosters- the same ones that forced in Cohen and started this shitshow by the way- prioritize their friends and access to keep a recruiting class together which wasn't that impressive anyway. When fans saw Leach's assistants fired for the booster's friends and the offense being changed even though we were told the changes would be minimal plus stuff like finding out that fans were lied to about the interlocking MSU- I think that was just the final last straw for a lot of fans.

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.

And yet we have fans that would take Dan back right now.

But there is a common theme here- who put Cohen in charge and who put Arnett in charge? That group of people should not ever have any say whatsoever into who MSU hires. They have ruined MSU athletics.

And I'll say this about the portal and NIL. It's really ironic because MSU fans hated the old football recruiting stuff but NIL and the portal pretty much killed old school football recruiting. And now those fans hate the portal and NIL!