re: Boise State Article by 247 on Harsin. Lettuce discuss

Butt my arse. DAMN!!! How'd you get all that in those jeans???

found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI9YIDpqor8

Haha. It's a play on words. Everybody walk your body.

Grace

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Just looked up stats for their OL last year and they were solid. The one area they were bad in was running on passing downs.

From the little research I’ve done their OL has performed exactly how I would expect them to. They aren’t elite, but they are solid.

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They were pretty good in 2019 in all areas except for sacks, which they were pretty bad. How much of that is a true freshman QB vs the OL who knows, but that has been a problem for them. Their OL's were very bad in 17. 18 they were middle of the road.

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Hiring Harsin showed that Boise people have an unrealistic perception of theirselves. They think they are the king of the G5 and that they can sit on that title without actually doing anything. They are not some destination place that recruits are dying to get to. They thought they could live off some past successes and not keep pushing the ball down the field. See their reluctance to build appropriate facilities and join a major conference while Harsin was there as proof.

The fact of the matter is they expect every coach to be Petersen 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc. Harsin left there with the 3rd highest win percentage of active HCs. If anything it seemed like Harsin wanted Boise to be an elite program and that everyone else there already thought they were.

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This is exactly it.

Bryan Harsin was doomed in the same way that whoever follows Saban at Bama will be doomed: no matter what the results are, they just aren't the legendary guy that they are replacing. Their fanbase built Petersen up into a God-like figure, and naturally - short of competing for actual national titles, nothing Harsin did would ever "be enough". As evidenced by the fact that he won 10+ games a year and played in or won the conference title in most of the seasons he was the HC there, and yet, he supposedly drove a sinking ship.

I've spent a decent amount of time reading their forums and their critiques. You know how you can tell that there is delusion? They fail to see that a lot of the critiques they had for Harsin were already showing under Petersen in his last 3 seasons there, after they moved to the MWC. Petersen's last 3 seasons after the move went as follows:

12-1
11-2
8-4

Obviously still great output, but you can see the year over year "decline". What happened? Everyone else around them starting playing better football too, period. Like you said, their fanbase is stuck in this era where they were the only G5 school worth a damn - and they completely missed the fact that competition ramped up. So they hold Harsin to this expectation of mid-late 2000's Chris Petersen...but not even Chris Petersen was able to maintain that pace, as evidenced by his 8-4 final season before leaving for Washington. Their fans also routinely state that Harsin "loses games he shouldn't", but those final two seasons by Petersen in particular show multiple losses against teams that were either lower ranked, or finished with fewer wins than they did. That 12-1 season in 2011 saw them blow the perfect season as they were ranked #5 in the nation and lost to a TCU team that was unranked at the time. So really, it's hard to take their criticisms seriously when they can't even see that their "God" was far from infallible himself.

The other thing that needs to be brought up is that not only was Harsin not Petersen, but his personality was more grating and less likeable. That in itself made him easy to criticize - as you're seeing from their beat-writers who I'm sure weren't happy to be treated in a less-than-desirable way over his tenure.

Their fanbase in retrospect will learn to hold Bryan Harsin's tenure in a much more positive light after they find out that winning ~10-11+ games a season isn't as easy as they expect it to be anymore. How convenient that their struggles this year just so happen to be Harsin's fault, meanwhile in 7 seasons there his WORST output was a 4-loss season, and they're already sitting at 4-losses this season.

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When you can’t keep coaches on the staff because you are miserable to work under, you have to keep hiring new coaches. And when word gets out that you’re not a nice person, people don’t want to apply for your job opening.

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How many assistants accompanied Nick Saban when he left Michigan State for LSU?

Spoiler: zero

Not gonna compare Harsin to Saban, but there's another major point they have in common:

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The way he treats the media is confirmation enough.

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Kinda ironical - the Boise media complain about how Hars treated them like shite, and the AU media complain that he had his staff handing out free AU gear to them

We have better bag men than Boise.

This thread is so awesome.

Nothing about this bothers me much.

If the articles were about how he was immoral, immature, lazy and didn't want to recruit, overly wed to one philosophy or another, etc. - those things seem likely to carryover and would trouble me.

Him being a stern person doesn't bother me. Boise State recruiting declining (allegedly) while the program declined in prestige and Harsin complained of facilities doesn't bother me much either. Whether or not he can recruit or build a staff that can will be known soon enough. Whether or not his no-nonsense approach will mesh with Auburn and our situation will as well. But I don't see anything particularly inherent in those topics that means problems will follow him to AU.

Moreover, the reality is that he was there a while, had supporters and grumblers, but was nonetheless going to continue as Boise State coach for the foreseeable future without significant objection. In other words, they're complaining about a coach they probably would have continued to support as their coach, more or less.

If an employee at your company who was on completely steady ground and generally providing high-end results went to a bigger company, and you suddenly said that he actually sucked despite the fact you were previously employing him with no intention whatsoever of getting rid of him - seems a little questionable, no?

If you think about it, most of the best coaches in college football are assholes. I mean, would anyone really want to have lunch with Saban or Smart - unless you are a football guy and want to learn from them, I would expect that most of you would say no.

The overwhelming majority of people who are elite at their craft have a drive and level of narcissism that gets pretty close to psychopathy IMO. I think this is particularly true with those who are elite in fields thought to center on leadership or intellect (think politicians, CEOs, coaches, innovators/inventors, military leaders, etc.)

Not all of them are cruel or evil, but most will rub you the wrong way with frequency because they prioritize success in whatever they're pursuing above all things - family, faith, etc. Many learn to mimic kind or generous behavior, friendship, humor, etc. in part of pursuit of their craft, rather than in the way the rest of us approach those things.

The percentage of these elites who are genuinely kind, honest, caring, etc. is miniscule. Most of those appearing to be those things have meticulously taught themselves to portray someone with those characteristics.