Now this is solid, informed thinking from a fellow SEC West member.

We are fine with exactly what you described; as those are reasonable expectations and ones that spell football season excitement.

The bad part about playing in the SEC West is that you have to play so many perennial power programs (and lots of very solid ones too), but the good part is that you get to play those programs, and when you win, it's fun as hell.

Like another poster said, keeping the big boys "honest" is a big factor in how the State fanbase measures a coach's success. JM failed miserably at this.

You give me perennial 6 to 9 wins with an occasional run into the 10 win territory and throw in an upset or two, thereby wrecking the shite out of one of the big dog's seasons, I will personally help pay for the statue.

That's fun football, and doing it in The West means you are in the top tier in overall teams regarding how solid your program is. It's the exact template that got us out of the perennial shitditch dwelling tier of teams (not winning titles and championships) and for that, we cannot complain.

On the contrary, any State fan who has been around for awhile is quite thankful for our current situation, and the template you described can be attributed to this satisfaction. At the end of the day, what most (if not all) college football fans want is not titles, but rather, excitement. If games and seasons are exciting then that's money well-spent.

Hell, excitement is the entire reason for the invention of competitive team sports. That's what we pay for; that's what we want.