re: 2023 Football Discussion Thread General Thoughts & Comments

I'm curious to see if Stricklin makes it to summer as AD. I just don't see moving on from Billy if it means Stricklin is hiring yet another coach. Once you get into fall, the window to get a new AD to hire a new coach gets smaller and smaller.

I suppose it's possible the other powers that be in the UAA and Sasse could have someone picked, a lá Manchen and Meyer (depending on the version of that story you believe), but I think that is a less likely scenario.

I've heard everything from Sasse and Stricklin having developed a solid relationship to Sasse being the ultimate pragmatist who isn't afraid to prune any branch once it quits being productive, which leads me to be pretty agnostic on what Sasse may or may not do over the spring.

I don't have a problem with a third year. We're post-Kiffin Tennessee at the moment, and I've accepted it. There are no slam dunks out there to hire, unless you seriously believe all coaches care about is who can pay the most, and even then, seems like most "slam dunks" don't end up that way. Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly have put together better seasons that we have, but they haven't won anything. It's yet to be determined if they will. Harbaugh seems like a slam dunk now, but he sure as hell didn't two years ago, after losing to Ohio State five times in a row.

So I'm fine keeping it as is for now, but if there isn't some remarkable improvement next year, damn the torpedos and blow it up from the AD down. I also don't give a damn about the schedule. Two of those teams next year have new head coaches. It's about damn time he finally beat Brian Kelly, and I can't abide losing to UCF and Miami in the same season.

A .500 season is the absolute minimum, and honestly, it needs to be more like seven or eight. I see two teams on that schedule who should be flat out better than us next year. After three years, we should be in every other fricking game on that schedule. We should look better at the end of the year than the beginning. We should look like we can actually make adjustments at the half and keep playing a whole four quarters of football.

If that ain't happening next year, it ain't ever happening with this staff.