re: Can Bama win a championship with a mediocre coach?

go re-read the thread. and don't come at me with some ludicrous shite like that

The argument you're trying to make supports my point far more than it supports yours.

If I'm following you, you're asserting that the admission of women (and I'll throw in desegregation too) led to growth of the university and thus improved the attractiveness of aTm. I don't have one problem accepting that as fact, but here's where your theory falls apart.

According to Wiki, aTm wasn't opened to any female applicant until 1965 and even then every female applicant had to be individually approved by the president. That change isn't going to have an immediate impact on all programs because reputations don't change overnight.

Stallings, for the most part, wasn't the beneficiary of those changes. They were just starting to take hold when he left. For example, again using Wiki as a source, between 1960-1970 your enrollment grew from 7,500 to 14,000. In 1970, enrollment at Alabama was 32,000.

The cherry-picking, unfair comparison is the one you're doing where you compare Stallings' record to that of coaches that came after the effects of male-only, segregated had been eliminated. It probably also didn't help that Stallings was trying to recruit to a military school at the height of the Vietnam war.

No, I think my position is pretty solid. It may have been due to forces outside the control of the coaches but from the end of WW2 to the end of the Vietnam war your program was a dumpster fire with Stallings being the most successful coach other than Bryant.

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If I'm following you, you're asserting that the admission of women (and I'll throw in desegregation too) led to growth of the university and thus improved the attractiveness of aTm.

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I don't know if that is a fair claim, we had a lot of success in the pre-women era (our only national titles date from that era). It's more that Stallings was the first coach to be a part of a changing era for our university (the stadium increased more during his time than in any expansion before him), and the more that change accelerated the worse his teams did.

He did win the conference his second year at A&M so its not like he didn't have any success, but it was all downhill from there. That is probably a better way to make your point- he and Bear were our only A&M coaches to win the conference post-1941 but prior to Bellard.

Sure they can, with outstanding talent.

Bill Curry came pretty close to a NC in '89, and Ray Perkins and Dennis Franchione could have made it happen with the proper talent mix.

Don't think Mike DuBose or Mike Shula could have won a NC even if you handed to them on a silver platter. Those were two really rotten coaches.

They have with Saban. Give him average talent and he wouldn't win half his games. The question should be could Bama win anything without cheating. The last 2 coaches they've won anything with were both caught cheating.

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Stallings at Alabama 7 seasons
70-16-1 (44-9-1 SEC)*
1 National Title
1 SEC Title
4 SECW Titles
3 Top 5 Finishes
5 Top 15 Finishes
5 10 win seasons (when they only played 11 games)

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* Officially, Bama was 62-25 (39-15 SEC).

Here's a list of the teams who finished with 9 or more wins during the season in which they faced a Stallings-coached Bama team, and how the Tide faired against them:

1990:
Florida - L
Tennessee - W
Penn State - L
Louisville - L

1991:
Florida - L
UGa - W

1992:
Tennessee - W
Ole Miss - W
Florida - W
Miami - W

1993:
Tennessee - T*
Auburn - L
Florida - L
UNC - W

1994:
Auburn - W
Florida - L
tOSU - W

1995:
Tennessee - L

1996:
Tennessee - L
LSU - W
Florida - L

So against decent competition he was a .500 coach.

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Langham signed a fvckin cocktail napkin after the Sugar Bowl.

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It wasn't the cocktail napkin that was the problem. It was the signed, witnessed contract he signed with the same agent in his hotel room the next day that led to his ineligibility.

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They have with Saban. Give him average talent and he wouldn't win half his games. The question should be could Bama win anything without cheating. The last 2 coaches they've won anything with were both caught cheating.

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You really are the poster boy for Bama Derangement Syndrome.

I mean, sure, but taking away wins for 1 player signing a contract and playing in a discussion about whether a guy could coach or not seems a bit silly.

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So against decent competition he was a .500 coach.

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So, like most solid coaches? There aren't many coaches who both win all the games they should AND win most games against very good teams. Nobody said Stallings was Bryant or Saban. He was, however, a very good football coach. I mean, a team that won 9 games in the 1990s went 9-3. That's a Top 20 level team. Going roughly .500 against those teams and winning 95% of your games against everybody else will make you a pretty solid football coach.

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It wasn't the cocktail napkin that was the problem. It was the signed, witnessed contract he signed with the same agent in his hotel room the next day that led to his ineligibility.

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And the fact that he lied about it led to him playing in games as an ineligible athlete.

Shula was paying for the SINS of Mike Price and NCAA Probation. Alabama was dang lucky to have him. He was a much better coach than most Bama fans give him credit for.

I think he would make a great head coach now....