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re: Will Muschamp was head coach in waiting at Texas. Would he have done well as UT HC?
Posted on 8/17/19 at 1:07 pm to RoyalAir
Posted on 8/17/19 at 1:07 pm to RoyalAir
quote:
Tanner whiffed on options A (Herman), and B (Smart), and didn't have the stones to pull the trigger on Lincoln Riley. Only other major candidate was Willie Taggart, and even though he's repairing a broken FSU program, I don't think he'd be a good fit here.
That’s sorta a strange way of putting things.
Herman was a done deal if we were willing to give him an out clause, without a buyout, if Texas came calling. The proverbial straw happened when we lost to The Citadel and Herman called Tanner and said he was no longer interested, immediately after the game. I know that for a fact.
Smart wanted the UGA job and we had no chance at him unless we had gone after him at the end of 2013, which we didn’t.
Lincoln Riley was basically the coach in waiting at Oklahoma. There was no chance there. Stoops let it be known that he was close to retiring and rumor has it that he had even flown to Columbia to speak with Spurrier a year prior about them both getting near the end of their coaching careers.
Willie Taggart got an interview strictly as part of an EO initiative. He wasn’t qualified and he would have been a terrible fit. Word is he also did not interview well. We dodged a bullet there.
quote:
Tanner needed to feel comfy with the coach's ties to the SEC, and muschamp checked the boxes. Tanner settled for who would take the job. Tennessee did the same thing, albeit significantly worse, when they had their abortion of a search two years later.
Tanner didn’t settle for anything. I agree, at the time, I thought it was a bad hire but Tanner didn’t settle .... and everyone knows I am no fan of Ray’s as an AD. But Ray met with mUSChamp and he genuinely liked him. People forget that SPURrier and Tanner had reached out to Boom for the DC job when he was fired at Florida. mUSChamp had taken his family and gone to the islands and he had received over a dozen calls from coaches all over the country wanting him as a DC. In the end he chose Auburn because of ties there and that soured him, in the eyes of a lot of us.
Fast forward a year and Elliott finishes the season in a shite show, Herman bails after the Citadel loss, Smart is already doing a deal with UGA, and HR is telling Tanner he has to interview Taggart who had reached out for an interview. Riley got his salary doubled to stay with Oklahoma until Stoops retired.
There were two other candidates that were going to be interviewed but Tanner decided to talk to mUSChamp one more time. He made the call and they decided to meet face to face. The rest is history but one of the things Tanner said to some people was that he connected with mUSChamp in terms of drive and competitiveness and he appreciated that out of mUSChamp.
Also, the deciding factor was, of course, that you can’t spell mUSChamp without USChamp.
:wink:
3
Posted on 8/17/19 at 1:12 pm to scrooster
quote:
I know that for a fact.
Posted on 8/18/19 at 4:38 am to scrooster
quote:
Smart wanted the UGA job and we had no chance at him unless we had gone after him at the end of 2013, which we didn’t.
Lincoln Riley was basically the coach in waiting at Oklahoma. There was no chance there. Stoops let it be known that he was close to retiring and rumor has it that he had even flown to Columbia to speak with Spurrier a year prior about them both getting near the end of their coaching careers.
Willie Taggart got an interview strictly as part of an EO initiative. He wasn’t qualified and he would have been a terrible fit. Word is he also did not interview well. We dodged a bullet there
Yeah, as soon as UGA fired Richt, I knew Smart was their only play. They don't pull one trigger unless they know they have the other in the bag.
As for Riley, I didn't know he was as on deck at Oklahoma as you are saying. I thought he was a name outta left field when be interviewed, and was more than a little surprised that he got the Oklahoma job just a year later.
Taggart was a do-not-want. I was more willing to see a RichRod (shudder) situation than him. Just not enough track record.
Posted on 8/18/19 at 3:49 pm to scrooster
quote:
Tanner didn’t settle for anything. I agree, at the time, I thought it was a bad hire but Tanner didn’t settle .... and everyone knows I am no fan of Ray’s as an AD.
I've gone back and forth with what I think of Muschamp over the past three years.
Hated the hire. Loved it after the first year. Now I'm really not sure.
The positive thing about him, is he doesn't mind or actually likes to recruit. And he seems to have a good idea of how a kid will project in college.
He also seems like he avoid signing the kind of kids who are a debacle waiting to happen, unlike some other schools (and I'm talking about crab legs and the like).
The kids he coaches are the better for having had him as a coach.
On the negative side, I'm not totally sold on him as a recruiter. It seems like he usually loses whenever he recruits a kid a big name program also wants. Xavier Thomas and KJ Henry to Clemson, Channing Tindall to Georgia, Murphy/Miles/Conley/Two different tight ends to Mack and UNC this year.
And apparently there is some real smoke about Burch going to Georgia. Come on, Burch's coach is a former USC QB, Muschamp's son plays there, Huntley signed with USC,...
If he can't win that battle, he isn't going to win any. Pickens is about the only really contested guy he won on.
And sure the programs he is going against are doing great right now. But Dabo found a way to win against equally big names on his way up.
At the end of the day, recruiters recruit.
And right now, we are ranked what, 7th or 8th in the SEC in terms of recruiting? Probably still top 20 nationally, but that doesn't help us much.
Then we have his actual coaching performance. After four years at Florida, and three here, he doesn't seem to now how to get his team up for a game.
Or adjust to what the other team is doing. Matt Campbell at Iowa State has collected a number of scalps in his career so far, with a roster Vandy would laugh at.
Maybe I'm too hard on him. Bentley... has the potential to create nightmares in any game he plays - and usually for us. He actually has the luck of the Irish, because I have seen him make so many questionable decisions that the defense hasn't exploited for touchdowns.
He has had craptastic games, but he has also been incredibly lucky in a lot of other games, including some where he had big stats.
Think another thing about it, is defense really doesn't matter as much as it used to (IMHO). I have a feeling it is going to be harder for defensive guys to get HC gigs going forward than offensive guys.
Anyway I wouldn't replace him yet. He does some good things, and we aren't going to have things like the Baylor scandal (or what Florida calls a quiet offseason).
Let him finish out five years, then think about where to go. Heck even at that point, you could do a lot worse.
Unless you have a Lincoln Riley or the mentioned Matt Campbell ready to go, it could be a lot worse.
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