re: That other Mississippi school joining AAC?

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What has led to Southern Miss' fall? (from their level where they always won their conference, were consistent and gave SEC teams fits) Was it bad conference alignment, improvement in scouting that led to fewer diamonds in the rough slipping through, the improvement and/or rise of Troy and Louisiana Lafayette? Did SEC revenue just put State and Ole Miss on too high a plane facility wise? Or were they poorly managed by the athletic department? Maybe ghost of Jeff Bower?

Anybody's thoughts? I think its a combination of bad athletic leadership and the rise of the Troys and ULaLa's that hurt them the most. They never really out-recruited anybody, they just evaluated and developed talent better (imo). We they couldn't automatically get the best second tier players from south Alabama and Louisiana it hurt them.

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They got used to winning 7 games at a minimum and started getting irritated at Bower only going 7-5 after going 8-3, 9-3, 7-5, 9-3, 8-4 from 1996-2000 even though Bower seemed to be a guy who was happy staying at Southern Miss for forever. On top of that, the "spread" was starting to catch on across mid-major football and they were still trying to win games 13-10 with great defense and just enough offense. My guess is people got bored with that, especially when it stopped winning 9 games a year.

They fired him, hired Fedora and Fedora had very similar years for the first 3, then had a big year in 2011 and bolted (unlike Bower). When he left the roster had some major holes (how major, who knows) and Ellis Johnson came in and was an all-time disaster. I can't believe that he took them from 12-2 to 0-12 all by himself, as Fedora must have left the cupboard pretty clean.

Then they hired Monken and he has come in and pretty clearly built them back to a competitive squad.