re: One small, silver lining

Here are the main reasons we hired Ed O (I've lived in Oxford for more than a decade so I'm not making any of this up):

1) As it's been alluded to, he is a great recruiter. A good portion of Houston Nutt's success in his first 2 years is due to the fact that Ed O recruited his arse off, but just couldn't coach them up. He got players like Michael Oher, Shay Hodge, Dexter McCluster, Kendrick Lewis, Kentrell Lockett, Mike Wallace, etc.

2) He was a defensive coach for USC (defensive line if I'm not mistaken), so we believed that it was the some of the west coast defensive schemes would help us in the SEC, as well as Ed O's hard nose attitude. Remember that this was when USC had Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart, and other godly college players who tore it up on the field, so any coach from USC looked like an attractive hire.

3) The west coast offensive stuff was part of it, but I don't think that we brought O to Oxford with offense heavily in mind. We had a great offensive scheme under Cut, and I don't think that we would have changed it too much upon the arrival of Ed o.

4) We were desperate. No good head coach wants to come to Oxford, Mississippi of all places, and have to compete with the powerhouse teams of the SEC on the field, and in recruiting, with fewer resources and a smaller fan base. We had some great seasons under Cut, but frankly it all started to crumble after guys like Eli and Deuce were gone. Cut didn't recruit well enough to have sustainable success after Eli, and it showed in the next season (2004) when we had a record of 4-7.

The rest is history.