I can’t even. This coaching search is almost as much as fun the University of Tennessee was two years ago.
I wonder if any of the OSU fans scoffing at the thought of FSU hiring Deion are any of the same ones that were clamoring for OSU to hire Gottlieb? Pretty much the same thing.
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Also appears to be pretty much the same thing for Memphis basketball so there’s that. There are significantly fewer moving parts in a basketball program than a football program too.
That being said, if Deion could put together a staff like Doug would have or like Penny has, why couldn’t it work? Sure, the floor is waaaaaaaaay lower. It is as risky as risky gets, but why can’t the ceiling be higher than, say, Willie Freakin Taggart if Deion sticks 10 big time assistants around him? Now, you’d need to keep those high school players away from those Deion Sanders barbecues… 
You know that Penny had high school coaching experience and won a state championship while doing such, right? He actually had a measurable ability to coach before taking the Memphis job. He also coached AAU and had experience dealing with recruiting and the “one-and-done’s”.
(As of this comment, I’m not aware of any experience Deion has.)
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Taggart had 18 years coaching experience prior to getting the FSU job, 8 as a head coach. Obviously when something doesn’t work out, everyone has pet reasons why, but it seems like that his rise was fairly quick is way up there. Now, taking a guy with zero experience and placing him in charge of one of the premiere programs in CFB seems like it has a low ceiling if the last guy failed after having very limited experience with similar programs.
Penny was a high school assistant and head coach for a combined 4 years I believe. They were good. I think that X’s and O’s are something you get or you don’t. I think that Doug growing up in a coaching family where understanding the game was a way of life means a ton. He also has experience with AAU type coaching. He could have thrived in the CEO/player development realm. In game coaching? Who knows. Maybe it would have been a dumpster fire. From a recruiting and fan engagement standpoint, he would have been a homerun. That isn’t the only reason to hire someone, but you didn’t exactly have many good options at that point in time.
Also, FSU football is a borderline blueblood if not full blown blueblood so I’m not saying they should hire him. I just believe that if you hire a guy to be a CEO and he surrounds himself with legit college/professional head coaches and assistants that it can work. No AD in their right mind is dumb enough to try it though because if you miss you get fired immediately.
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Didn’t have many good options after they let Ford go? Granted, Underwood hasn’t done anything at Illinois, but he was 100X better candidate than Doug. He had 25+ years of experience as an actual coach with a lot of success. Almost any assistant at a major program or HC at a mid-major would’ve a better candidate than Doug and would’ve jumped at the chance to coach in one of the better basketball conferences in the country. Sure, they may have bombed as well, but almost anybody with college coaching experience would’ve had a better chance to succeed than Gottlieb.
Sure, it CAN work to hire a popular alum with no experience, but it’s more likely to catastrophically fail. Look at Nebraska. They hire golden boy alum Scott Frost after he was hugely successful at UCF and they are still struggling mightily. He probably gets one more year and he’s out if they don’t show some major improvement.
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I was more talking about not having many options after Underwood bolted for what many experts considered a lateral move after fighting with the AD that had public disputes with Gundy. The pool was significantly worse then than before the Underwood hire. Then we hired Boynton, people were pissed, and it worked out. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t go back and change it. But I also think it is silly to just dismiss Doug because he had no high school/college in game coaching experience. I also didn’t agree with the “WELL IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR DOUG TO FAIL” crowd for what it is worth.
The point here is that it is insanely risky. For sure. But it isn’t just a complete lost cause in my personal opinion.
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Fair enough. And, I would agree that ANY hire is risky. I was one of the ones that was not impressed when Holder hired Boynton, but it’s looking more like a homerun all the time. After bungling MBB for years, it looks like Holder nailed this one. I just hope he handles the contract extension/raise appropriately if/when the great recruiting success comes to fruition in the form of more wins and trips to the NCAA tourney. Boynton is the kind of guy you can actually believe when he says he likes it in Stillwater and is loyal to OSU for giving him a chance, but other programs will come calling as the wins increase.
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Arkansas fired Bielema on the field after a game. They might fire Morris at halftime.
It’s comical how bad the state of Arkansas football is nowadays… Morris literally ran Ty Storey out of Fayetteville by bringing in Starkel and and another QB from SMU. Storey transfers to WKU and is now pounding Morris and the Hogs in Fay. How ironic.
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But “it just means more” in the SEC, right?
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Say hello to our next offensive analyst.
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Yeah, I don’t really get why people think Penny is comparable to Deion or Gottlieb.
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Storey with the biggest middle finger ever.
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Does Gundy flirt with Arkansas again if they come calling…? Their first choice is most likely going to be Mike Norvell.
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I don’t think he does. If he flirts again with anyone, he’ll get fired, buyout be damned. His gambit with Tennessee a couple years back burned what patience anyone had with him in that sense. Norvell is going to be a hot ticket though - I still think FSU pushes hard for him, despite the whole Deion Sanders ridiculousness.
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Wouldn’t surprise me.
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