re: Someone tell me why we shouldn’t offer Mike Leach $4.5m/yr to coach the Rebals?

I understand your point, I just don’t think it’s true. Oh, and if you don’t win with schemes and you win with talent instead, why exactly is auburn struggling? They’re loaded.

Leach has won everywhere with “inferior” talent. Oxford would be no different.

Although they lost to Southern Cal, Wazzou also beat several other teams with more highly rated prospects: Oregon, Stanford, etc.

Let me begin by saying I'm not opposed to a Mike Leach hire, nor am I thrilled by it.

Everyone keeps stressing how good Leach was at Texas Tech. Ole Miss actually has direct experience with coaches from Tech. Remember Steve Sloan? Took Vandy to bowl games 2 out of 3 years, and then won at Texas Tech (just like Leach). Everyone back then made many of the same arguments for Sloan that are now being proffered for Leach. Do we really want a rehash of the 5 soul-destroying years of the Steve Sloan regime?

For what its worth, there are multiple coaches here in the Southeast who would be viable coaches for Ole Miss. Unfortunately, it seems the new "excuse" for Luke is the limited number of scholarship players. He'll end up with a decent recruiting ranking this year based almost strictly on the numbers, not the quality. Thus, no one in the administration will have the balls to do what is needed. Luke will not be replaced this year, and I seriously doubt both or even any of the coordinators.

I do agree with the focus on recruiting being a primary factor and Mike Leach's shortcomings in that area would be a huge limiting factor. There's a reason why Alabama is dominating the league and also why their players are overwhelmingly average to mediocre at best in the NFL.

You pool all of the top talent in the nation to one program and you're basically playing the equivalent of a bad professional team against a bunch of kids week in and week out.

You could put Matt Luke on the field as the HC of Alabama and it wouldn't change the trajectory of that team one bit. If you swapped Tua and Ta'mu, Jordan would be in the Heisman race and Tua would be completely irrelevant.

This is why recruiting is important above all else, especially for sustained success.

I'm holding on to the hope that if we get absolutely obliterated in the Egg Bowl the option for another year won't be on the table.

Don't poo poo my hopes and dreams right now.

Luke isnt the guy.

Leach isn't either.

Freeze provided the blueprint here. You can recruit big here. Not every year but you dont need to every year. Dont get in your own way like Freeze did and you can succeed.

But Wazzou, Iowa, Iowa State, UCF, Utah, Boston College. West Virginia, etc., all beat teams with more talent. You can’t hold talent in a vacuum. It’s simply not the be all end all. Sure, good players help, but teams with high crootin’ rankings get whipped all the time.

We got whipped by less talented teams several times under Freeze:

2013 Egg Bowl
2014 Auburn
2014 Arkansas
2015 Florida
2015 Memphis
2015 Arkansas
2016 Vanderbilt
2016 Egg Bowl

Hell, Luke has done that too. 2017 Cal and 2017 Arkansas come to mind.

2016 Florida state

Freeze missed a bunch of guys in 2014 and 2015 which certainly would’ve changed our current predicament in every way. Hell he just keeps Leo and offers Kobe Jones like he wanted when he found out AJ was coming and he’s still making 4.5 million scrolling Eros.com like Dan Blizerian

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Hell he just keeps Leo and offers Kobe Jones like he wanted when he found out AJ was coming and he’s still making 4.5 million scrolling Eros.com like Dan Blizerian

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So, 2 defensive players and the Ole Miss defense wouldn't have any problems?

My point, genius, is that even with those 2 players, even without the NCAA crap, the defensive coaching still would suck.