I really think Yurachek is worse than Long. For JLS, we fired our coach in mid-April. It was just about the worst timing we could have had in doing such a thing. No one on the current staff had any HC experience to be put in charge of what was supposed to be a returning top ten football team. This instinct was correct, as the following year Paul Petrino landed the Idaho job and proceeded to have eight out of nine straight losing seasons, and Paul Haynes went on to have five straight losing seasons at Kent State. Garrick McGee had just taken the UAB job and would go 3–9/2–10 before getting fired.

JLS built Louisville into a G5 winner, was Petrino's mentor, and set him up for success at Louisville when he left. Before that he build Idaho into a perennial contender, winning nine games almost every year. He sucked at Michigan State, but he did manage to go 8–5 once, and it's not like MSU is an easy place to win. I think of everyone available for an interim tag, it made sense to give a guy with his experience, previous success, and ties to the system a chance to win with what should have been a top ten team. Im fact, when you look at it without the benefit of hindsight, to this day I think that was the safest call. Really, Long fricked us by firing Petrino in the first place, not by hiring JLS as the interim coach.

Bert was great on paper, and I think it's pretty accepted now that he became a barely functioning alcoholic during his time in Fayetteville, and he likely could've been a bit better for us. I think Long's mistake there was giving him a ridiculous extension after the 2014 and going a whole 7–6, and then refusing to fire him after the 2016 season and making us suffer his bullshite through 2017. To this day I have no idea why Jeff Long was so ride or die with Bielema, but it's baffling why he wouldn't just cut the cord when it became clear Bert couldn't handle an SEC job after the Missouri and V-Tech meltdowns in '16.

At the end of the day, this coaching shite is way more crapshoot than we like to admit most of the time. A steady winner everyone they go can flame out in a horrible way somewhere they're expected to have resources to win, and God knows what goes into it all. All I really want is to see football hires that make sense on paper and give us the maximum possible return for the minimal possible risk. Just... fricking try. Bert was a hire that screamed "we tried." Chad? No. Pittman? No. Silverfield? A little, sure, but at this desperate time, we needed a bit more than "holding steady at a previously built G5."

Look at Calipari in basketball. Is he still a championship caliber coach? Likely not, but he's better than his last couple of years at Kentucky suggested, and most of all, it shows we still fricking care and tried to keep the momentum of Musselman going. Why is it so hard to apply this concept to football?