Quote Originally Posted by StarkVegasSteve View Post
89 and 90 were kind of the last high water marks for Polk. He scuffled after that and kind of backdoored into Omaha in 97, since those were the days that you bid to host a regional and we were a 2 in our regional. If Polk wanted to leave in the early 90s then we probably should've let him go, but you can look who our AD was at the time and figure out pretty quickly why we didn't. We would never have spent the money to bring an Augie Garrido to Starkville as long as LT was the AD, and it's the same reason we didn't hire Mainieri in 01 when he was begging for the job. We were always going to hire Pat after Polk left and Templeton probably would've paid UGA to get Polk back in 01.
You're absolutely right. And I have heard stories that in addition to LT there were rumors of some very prominent Left Field Loungers who had a lot of say and influence in bringing Polk back. People that really shouldn't have ever had that kind of say.

As far as Garrido though- he was at Illinois I believe at the time. He wanted the job and we didn't give him the time of day. So I don't think it would have taken a ton of money to get him. He ended up going back to Cal State Fullerton and MSU has always had more resources than them- although Kevin Costner would have made it interesting. Same with Manieri about 10 years later.