re: Top teams winning with youth

Thanks les?...

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and I thought CFB was mostly immune to that because the physical rigors and complexity of the playbook far exceed those of CBB.

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With so many entering the draft instead of staying for their senior season, it's bound to become more commonplace.

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had absolute disaster seasons

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Yes LSU had a terrible season. 3 loses in last second that could have went either way and tied with Bama in 4th quarter. O my god it was the worse season ever. How will they ever recover from the beatdowns they took. Poor LSU.

Bama and tOSU are NOT normal teams. They also had experience where it mattered most and have the kind of rotations where it's not as though new starters are completely new. Hurts and the occasional true and/or RS frosh is the exception rather than the rule. Hell even Clemson has gotten to the point where it's not as though they're playing guys with zero PT a lot or even a ton of underclassmen.

But even if y'all were playing complete noobs you've raked in the top class for countless years. tOSU has been outside of the top 7 and Clemson has been at 8 or above for the past two cycles.

Typically there are two ways to produce great teams. The first is the BAMA/tOSU top class way and tbh it's the most sure fire way. The other is to leverage experience like Washington has but typically that method works best against teams that really only pull top 20 (or lower talent) which is just one more reason BAMA will stomp Washington.

The single most important factor that predicts success isn't experience but your 4 year recruiting average. In fact, several stats models have shown that returning starters/experience simply does not matter/matters only so much. Kicker, oddly enough, matters more than any other position when it comes to returning starters. All that's not common wisdom but common wisdom is rarely correct. What truly matters is the talent you've pulled in.

Valid points, Prof. But, is Butch not at least partly to blame for not making the S&C coaching & program a higher priority? Was it totally just bad luck that UT had so many injuries compared to other teams?

And as you noted, UT started the year healthy, but still did not perform as well as they should've.

Butch definitely has some things he needs to fix.

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Valid points, Prof. But, is Butch not at least partly to blame for not making the S&C coaching & program a higher priority? Was it totally just bad luck that UT had such an extensive number of injuries compared to other teams?

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Absolutely. That said, I think they thought they could make it through the year since the main guy who was fired had already done most of the work before being dismissed and the replacement was that guys main assistant. That thinking was driven by the hiring cycle, imo, as I'm fairly sure we had an NFL guy (forget his name atm in mind -- he's all but a done deal) but even so it should've been dealt with far better.

TBH, I really wonder what impact losing the director of football ops had. The guy was well liked and CBJ's right hand man in some ways but then an audit revealed that the money wasn't accounted for and he was placed on leave. Adding to it all, we lack an AD. Dave Hart is on his way out and has been since early on and we're awaiting an AD hire (hope to God it's Blackburn -- a super-competent guy who at one point worked within the AD at UTK and one who has done a fantastic job at UTC.

BUT the biggest things I blame CBJ for are 1. the rumor that they didn't go as hard in practice as they have in prior years because they worried about injury (fwiw, I believe that rumor) and 2. letting Jalen Hurd get so out of control/develop such a bad attitude that I believe it really hurt the team (players didn't like him this season and grew to really resent him when it became clear that Kelly and Kamara were performing better while Hurd had begun to sandbag).

I mean I really do get that Hurd was super-important for mid-state recruiting and that him quitting was the best thing that could've happened recruiting wise. BUT I think he should've been benched/handled better and blame CBJ as well as Coach G (who is a fantastic RB coach) for what went down.

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VABuckeye

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Mea Culpa. That was simply a typo. Meant to say *hasn't been.*

FWIW, I'm pretty sure age has caused the need for glasses but my stubbornness has won out thus far since errors like that don't occur terribly often (and in fairness the statement in context should've been clear despite the typo). That said, I blame the small boxes we use for post writing. My resistance probably won't make it much longer tho'.

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Hopefully Butch succeeds in making the changes he needs to make to get momentum turned more upward again. Beating Nebraska would help a lot.

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It wouldn't fix the season but it would be a start. But the way I look at things with CBJ is that I hope for the best while he's our coach but should he fall on his face and/or things not go right next season he'll have left us in far better shape than he found us. We'd be a much better landing spot than we were.

It's all about the jimmies and joes. This is what hog fans don't understand. We get 2/3* kids and think we can coach them up and are surprised when the top teams beat the brakes off us.