Most of us right now

No lol. Saw it and found it relevant.

I just wanted to share the funny picture ;_;

I may have been one of those people. I can't remember.

If I was, I claim denial.

See ... that's worth recognizing.

Hindsight is 20-20. Our classes were not that bad. I mean they were better than the great majority of D1 programs ... so it really wasn't that our staff was lazy, per se, nor was it that SPURrier, Jr., was completely inept. More accurate would be that SPURrier (frick why is my phone doing that) said the wrong words and it cost us a couple of classes and, on top of that, we lost some close ballgames in 2014 that also cost us some recruits ... it was a perfect storm and we were ripe for the fall. I mean a head coach a lot of people loved to hate, a program that had been on an unprecedented run, social media following closely and waiting on the collapse, a couple of our players who took their attitudes to social media to help feed the collapse, then we hire mUSChamp ...

I mean it's all crazy if you stop and think about it ... but it cannot be blamed on just one person.

Wanna know why we will succeed under mUSChamp? Because he knows how to hire people who know how to use social media ... none of SPURrier's people knew how to do it. Then you take what you lure in with social media and coach it up.

A lot of fans see this as a very frustrating time .... but I see our program in a transition period into the big time. We're a sleeping giant. We've just about put everything in place. We've gambled some, taken our hits but we keep moving forward. It hasn't always been that way.

I'll run something by y'all that may make sense to some of you ... I dunno.

When I was a young man we fought hard and lobbied to get the hell outta the ACC. It was a corrupt league on a lot of levels. Old timers back then fought hard against it ... but it was the smart move brought about by our first great hire, Paul Dietzel. He forced us into the modern age of college football.

Them came Jim Carlen, ... then a drop. Then Joe Morrison, then a collapse. Then John Palms, then Mike McGee ... but Brad Scott almost ruined us. McGee saved us with the Holtz hire, then Spurrier. Sorenson and Pastides were two great President hires in the process ... and even Hyman did what we needed him to do.

Us being invited into the SEC was always what Dietzel said would happen, and it did ... we owe him a lot.

For the better part of fifty years I've seen this thing go up and down ... always a little further up the ladder than the falls down the rungs so we've been making progress ... we're getting there just like always.

We've never been a cheating program. I wish we had been more aggressive at times honestly.

So anyways - I was with int there watching the game Saturday surrounded by the same fans we've been sitting around for years ... Club Section, East Side, thinking about some of the things I've seen from those seats ...

We're in better shape than most realize I think. Bentley was a bigger get than I realized at the time. Think about how that came about though.

It's all a matter of time now. This current dip we're in right now is already trending upwards. Hard to see but it's there.

I was not a big fan of the mUSChamp hire but I think I am now. We'll need to get a surprise win this year to really cement what I think I see ... who that will be against, who knows.

There is something to be said for seasons like this - they can be character builders for both players and fans. The coaches, this staff, is already pretty well focused in my estimation. It's not an un-fun thing to watch really ... frustrating at times, but not un-interesting.

I understand how it wasn't obvious that our coaches got lazy recruiting to everyone, but you have to look at the whole picture.

Spurrier's last 4 full classes, using rivals team stats for 2012-2015, were 19th, 16th, 17th, and 19th. On the face of things, not that bad, and historically about where we would fall in recruiting. So it appears there was no glaring issue, until you take the following into account:

We were coming off our first ever SEC division title. We won 11 games in a season for the first time in our history, and we did it three consecutive times. We finished in the top 10 three straight years, and had our first ever top 5 finish. We beat Clemson a historic five times in a row. We won 4 straight NYD Bowl games over prominent programs. We had a national freshmen of the year. We had back to back SEC freshmen of the year. We signed the top player in the country, and we got him to be the number one pick in the NFL draft. We were putting multiple players in the NFL every year at all positions. We made historic leaps in our facilities, support staff, and overall athletic department.

Now with all of that going in our favor, how did our recruiting not improve at all? There was no bump. We were one of the hottest names in college football, had one of the biggest named coaches, and all the exposure we could ever hope for and our recruiting did not improve one bit. None, it's almost impossible to believe. Our coaches did not capitalize on everything we had going our way, and that was a huge failure on their part. As much as it pains me to say it, look how Dabo did it at Clemson. He took advantage of the first few Morris years to consistently improve their recruiting and built it up a little each year until now they are a top 10 recruiting school every year. That should have been us.

Even more damning was the fact we lost nearly our entire linebacking corps one year so we had to sign a class full and hope they could contribute immediately. Next year, we had the exact same problem with our secondary. The following year, again we had the same issue with our defensive line. How does that happen at a Power 5 school? It was incompetence, plain and simple.

But that's history, and nothing that can be done about it now. I don't know if Muschamp will be a great coach, or even a good coach, but I know he will bust his arse on recruiting. That's how we get back to where we were, so I'm more than happy to be patient a couple years until Boom gets some help in here.

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You can't just look at the 2012-2015 numbers, you have to look at the non-qualifiers too. For example, look at the disaster that was the 2014 Class, where 1/3 of the class never made it to campus.

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Oh, I agree completely, but I was just pointing out even if you gave them the benefit of the doubt and took non-qualifiers into account it was still terrible that our recruiting never improved. Given what he was selling when he got here versus what he could sell his last few years as far as tangible positives, our recruiting actually was significantly worse.

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I understand how it wasn't obvious that our coaches got lazy recruiting to everyone, but you have to look at the whole picture.

Spurrier's last 4 full classes, using rivals team stats for 2012-2015, were 19th, 16th, 17th, and 19th. On the face of things, not that bad, and historically about where we would fall in recruiting. So it appears there was no glaring issue, until you take the following into account:

We were coming off our first ever SEC division title. We won 11 games in a season for the first time in our history, and we did it three consecutive times. We finished in the top 10 three straight years, and had our first ever top 5 finish. We beat Clemson a historic five times in a row. We won 4 straight NYD Bowl games over prominent programs. We had a national freshmen of the year. We had back to back SEC freshmen of the year. We signed the top player in the country, and we got him to be the number one pick in the NFL draft. We were putting multiple players in the NFL every year at all positions. We made historic leaps in our facilities, support staff, and overall athletic department.

Now with all of that going in our favor, how did our recruiting not improve at all? There was no bump. We were one of the hottest names in college football, had one of the biggest named coaches, and all the exposure we could ever hope for and our recruiting did not improve one bit. None, it's almost impossible to believe. Our coaches did not capitalize on everything we had going our way, and that was a huge failure on their part. As much as it pains me to say it, look how Dabo did it at Clemson. He took advantage of the first few Morris years to consistently improve their recruiting and built it up a little each year until now they are a top 10 recruiting school every year. That should have been us.

Even more damning was the fact we lost nearly our entire linebacking corps one year so we had to sign a class full and hope they could contribute immediately. Next year, we had the exact same problem with our secondary. The following year, again we had the same issue with our defensive line. How does that happen at a Power 5 school? It was incompetence, plain and simple.

But that's history, and nothing that can be done about it now. I don't know if Muschamp will be a great coach, or even a good coach, but I know he will bust his arse on recruiting. That's how we get back to where we were, so I'm more than happy to be patient a couple years until Boom gets some help in here.

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I agree with this totally, and voiced my concerns back well before Spurrier quit on the program. The best we could say with those 3-4 classes after the Clowney 2011 class, was the average star ratings of the classes were among the best of Spurrier's time at USC, and were the most consistent. Not up and down like the first half of his tenure.

But I also agree and bemoaned the fact that our staff didn't capitalize on the program's unprecedented success: we are comparing classes to past classes when the program was averaging 7-6 seasons and losing in bottom-tier bowls, for seasons when the program was among the elite of college football.

You look at the staffs of James Franklin, Mark Stoops, Hugh Freeze, or really ANYONE else in the SEC: if those staffs had suddenly had that kind of consistent success (from 2010 through 2013), you damn well know their staffs would by pounding the trails doing their best to pull in top classes. Basically all we did was keep to the norm, but just get more consistent...

The best talent we brought in during our best seasons came from in-state talent. So we already had a heads-up in those cases, like most top programs in other states do with their in-state prospects. That should always be expected to be a given, regardless of what our records are IMO.

But our staff settled to use our newly gained prominence in CFB by going after projects and academic red-flaggers that most other Power Five programs avoided, and it ended up biting us hard in the arse. But why even settle for that? I could understand it when we were a 7-6 program, but not a 11-2 one. Other 11-2 programs simply don't do that. They don't have to, unless they reside in the Sunbelt....

I understand that Spurrier didn't like to recruit, but even a head coach with his history should understand the importance of recruiting, and he could have still stressed its importance to his staff and let them do the leg work. But apparently that didn't happen, and even he now admits he dropped the ball big time regarding that.....

That failure to capitalize on truly BUILDING the program reminds me of a bit of family history: my family comes from the south, and comes out of the farmland territories: cotton, tobacco, corn. A lot of Deliverance type shite lol. There is a story my mom told us about a Great Uncle of hers who lived a long time. He had a wife (my Great-Great Aunt, of course) who he loved dearly, and they lived in a small wooden farmhouse on the corner of a dirt road out in the Greenwood community outside of Conway. They lived for a long, long time.

Anyhow, my G-G Uncle promised his wife when they were young that he would build her a nice house, much bigger and newer than the old farmhouse they had. He bought a lot of lumber and other building supplies, and had a huge pile in the backyard. But then he waited and waited, and never would get around to doing it.

The day would come when he would pass away, and my G-G Aunt lived on to old age to where she was around even after I was born (although I don't remember her as I was very young). But even after she passed away, the old farmhouse stayed within the family, and we would always ask our parents why that yard had such a huge, ancient pile of lumber sitting in the back yard, covered in weeds.

That pile of lumber is like our 11-2 seasons under Spurrier, and that house that was never built is like our FB program under Spurrier. Wasted opportunity.....

Good reads in this thread.

There was more to the recruiting issues than laziness though ... a lot more.

Those big classes were built around instate big time players.

That dried up.

Spurrier Junior did not do a good job with some of the instate HS coaches ... hubris was his issue in retrospect.

Shane Beamer was not, is not, the end-all be-all RC some have made him out to be. He was the benefactor of a couple of great classes instate.

We lost Ellis Johnson ... that was beyond our control. Ellis is not, was not, a great DC IMHO but he was a very decent recruiter with the US coaches and the Mommas. I spoke to him Saturday for a little while.

We lost Jay Graham and that one hurt but he went home to UT ... we had no control over that.

We lost Brad Lawing and that hurt. Brad messed up with the girlfriend and the ex and had to move ... we missed him immediately.

Whammy was in over his head. Great guy, really connected in Atlanta, but he was not a DC.

Spurrier was getting older and he wanted to be loyal to his guys in his final years. That was costly to us in some regard but I had it explained to me this past thusly ...

Players our coaches were recruiting hard were being told Spurrier could retire any day. Spurrier's age had become a negative recruiting tool the final couple of years beginning in late 2012 and it was frustrating to his assistants.

Spurrier was not always where he was supposed to be during visits ... it cost us with several big time players. Some say Arden Key, some say Nick Chubb plus there were some others. The Fields kid was swayed for other reasons.

Oh, BTW, Dabo at Clemson ... they're cheating their asses off up there and that was brought to Spurrier's attention I know that for a fact ... and he wasn't about to play that game and risk destroying his legacy that late in his career, although there were some who wanted to fight fire with fire. Anyways, I just wanted to touch on the Clemson thing. frick Dabo's hypocritical lyin' cheatin' Mr. Religious church goin' arse. He uses church for all the wrong reasons.

Back to us though.

It wasn't so much that our coaches were lazy - they were not. They were frustrated, maybe in over their heads a bit. Plus there were some internal issues too ... Botkin and Deke had their very public squabble which was not a good look. Everette didn't have the pinnace to compete for the big name backs on his own ... he wasn't considered cool enough or thug enough or whatever. Super nice guy, didn't drink or party ... didn't really know how to talk the lingo. Needed support from Spurrier and didn't really get it. Junior was a decent WR coach but he got too friendly with his players towards the end. And he had favorites .... that cost him.

I though Joe Rob was a good coach, had a good eye for talent, was loved by the players ... but Shawn Elliott backstabbed him out of a job.

GA Mangus ... Elliott bent him over too.

Elliott needs to go but that's been discussed in other threads.

There was a lot more to what went on other than laziness.

There is some level of blame to be placed on Tanner as well.

McGee and Hyman would have both been ready with a coaching search and list of candidates before the end of the 2014 season. Tanner dropped the ball and was forced to beg Spurrier to stay past his expiration date because Tanner was caught with his pants down ... that cost us as much as anything.

Oh, and back to what I was told this past Saturday (we stayed late when unexpected guests stopped by for a couple of drinks when they were leaving the stadium) ... I was told to consider this.

We've talked about players not giving us consideration because Spurrier's clock was ticking.

What we have never talked about is the fact that it affected coaching replacement hires as well. Spurrier had a different idea for DC ... that didn't really work out so Whammy was the 2nd choice. Same for RB ... he had to settle on Sands. Deke was his first choice but remember Deke was a major get from UNC at the time. The final kicker was mUSChamp going to Auburn. Spurrier and he were big buddies ... mUSChamp had just been fired at UF. Why do you think mUSChamp did not ever really even consider coming here?

That tells you that the bottom line was the fact that this program revolved around SPURrier and he was going to go out his own way ... spiraling downward until he realized he had stayed too long.

We rolled the dice with him when we hired him and guys and gals it paid off. He accomplished what we needed him to accomplish ... he showed it could be done and now we've got a legend tied to our history forever. Holtz was the sprinter that got us out of a bad jam ... Spurrier was the middle distance guy that got us a little further along.

I really think mUSChamp is going to be the marathon guy that is going to be here for the long term and do very well in the process.

He's going to get us a big win this year somehow I hope.