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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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The buyout will get all the headlines here, understandably so because of how big it is. But the payout is structured as x% over a certain number of years (I'm too lazy to google it right now), so it really shouldn't have too much of an impact overall. A&M's boosters have famously deep pockets.
My postmortem take is that while it's earlier than I expected, it feels like the right call. A&M paid a ton of money for essentially no improvement over our previous coach (Jimbo's SEC record was 56%, Kevin Sumlin's SEC record was 52%). Too many times I was watching games this season and I had to remind myself that this was Year 6 in Jimbo's tenure, not Year 1 or 2...every season feels like a rebuilding season, every game feels like we're playing for the moral victory, and the mantra always feels like we're waiting for next year. Those that follow the A&M program know this is the same old story it's always been, and Jimbo was hired specifically to change that and he hasn't. Sure we've had bad luck with injuries and other teams in our division are good, but at some point those excuses have to start going away if you want to be a good football program.
We've got some really talented players that I'm sure are disappointed and frustrated right now. It will be interesting to see how many of them light up the transfer portal and how many stick it out. Either way, we're probably stuck in rebuilding seasons again for the foreseeable future.
So I guess I'll bring this up here. As a coach for a different sport, I also see coach turnover. For scandal, office politics, age, coaching carousel etc. But one thing that large and ingrained (read successful) programs often manage is a transition coaching period. Where either a standing coaching staff member or a brand new replacement comes in and over the course of a few seasons (up to a a year or two) things are handed off behind the scenes before the old head coach leaves. Would that be possible in NCAA DI football? Would it be helpful?
That's interesting. So instead of being fired on the spot, the old coach would stay on during the year-long transition? I feel like that would take a pretty large change to how D1 football works now but it's definitely an interesting thought. Does the old coach stay on as an analyst or something? And what if after being fired they want to find a new job and move on?
So it certainly doesn't always happen. A big club in my current area just let go of a coach for embezzling somewhere in the millions? of dollars via a real estate front using the team's funds? And they let him go immediately. But they have been shaky since as a result. But normally the last year or so the old head coach is kind of a lame duck coach while the new coach starts to get integrated with the board, the boosters and the season, that way when the transition happens everybody is ready. I guess the equivalent here would be if Bobby becomes the new hc next year. I think ideally the translation to cfb would be something like: year 1 new hc becomes coordinator, year 2 they're the new hc and if you're lucky you can do something like keep jimbo but with a different title, maybe something with recruiting.
That is interesting, although I don't know how that would work in the "fire, ready, aim" world of D1 football coaching. It seems like it would require a structural change to how contracts are written, or at least people in charge with cooler heads.
I don't know that it would, but I believe that our nearly 2 decades of dysfunction stem from not having a plan after Fulmer. While his old school ways may have led to his demise we still could have righted the ship with Kiffin, but he bolted and we were without a paddle for a while afterwards. We knew Fulmer was not the future for 3 seasons before we finally pulled the plug. Surely we could have embedded someone into the culture in that time. Kiffin was not at a point in his career where he wanted to settle down anywhere outside of a hc gig in ca. And his rushed hiring mirrored his hasty departure. Would it have been unorthodox? You betcha. Would it have saved us? ¯\(ツ)/¯
The problem being everybody has to be on board. "Other UT" thought that having Mack wind down with Muschamp in waiting was the perfect scenario, but it seemed like nobody was on the same page, particularly Mack and whoever decided that Mack was indeed winding down. One should never underestimate how long a CEO coach will keep CEO'ing.
Another concern is that fans/boosters clamor for the HC change the minute things start to go sideways and there seems to be a capable replacement already on the staff.
Sticking with Texas as an example: Gary Patterson seemed to be a good analyst for us and I'm glad he got a soft-landing into retirement, but whenever things went sideways, the mob wanted Patterson to take the reins. It can be a huge, dumb distraction.
Not to hijack the thread, but in the right situation, I think Gary might have one more G5 rebuild in him. I'd love to see what he could do with a UNT or Tulsa (or moving next door to his buddy Jerry Kill by taking on the UTEP challenge) if he's got the itch. I don't know if his style translates well to the modern P5 portal and NIL world, but coaching up unheralded 2- and 3-stars until they're ready to blow up in their junior and senior years can still work at that level, and you shouldn't get TOO much poaching before they produce.
And I think this is why it won't work for cfb, but especially not in this case. Coaches don't care if the program burns after they leave, fans won't want a coach around any longer than absolutely necessary to collect the last check. Both parties claim they care about the competitive environment or future of a program but the reality is fuck you so long as I am having mine right now.