Coaching Changes

Not sure if you all follow college football in the SEC that closely, but, in an absolutely shocking move to me, Georgia has fired our head football coach Mark Richt. I couldn't help but think of the coaching changes that have happened at UP recently: baseball, volleyball, women's basketball, men's soccer, and rowing. While not all of those changes were firings, it really does scare me what coaching as a profession has come to in terms of standards.

Mark Richt was, by all means, what we call a "Damn Good Dawg." He produced more NFL talent than any other coach in his time. He was good for 10 wins a season. If you committed an academic fraud or crime then you were off the team cause he only wanted good, dedicated student-athletes. In his press conference about his "stepping aside," he said his greatest accomplishment was developing men into good citizens, fathers, and husbands. He ran the program the right way, which is called the "Georgia way." We fired an 8 to get a 9 or 10 because the standard is championships or nothing. Call it the Nick Saban effect. It just seems scary to me.

It makes me happy at UP to know that we have managed to keep people like Garrett Smith and Eric Reveno despite the ups and downs of the programs. They are good people who run their teams the right way. I hope they can keep their jobs based on their whole tenure and not just W-L records. I really wish Georgia had not fired Mark Richt, although I am hopeful about this Kirby Smart guy.

I study sport as a graduate student and although my research is focused on the Olympics, World Cup, and UEFA, I know people who do research on coaching and I understand the issues at hand. I get that college sports are a business and that at a P5 school its wins or nothing, but it scares me to think that the whole record of a coach is no longer good enough to keep your job (a la Les Miles rumors).

Just my two cents. UP had better keep these good people around.

Sell ya Bobo back for $5 million.

How did he do for you all in his first season?

I just spent the better part of a week in SEC country, and it is totally unreal the way the student-athletes and coaches are revered or despised based upon their latest performance.  

I've lived in South Carolina and Florida over the years and remember the wonderful rivalries, but now it seems like war every time the SEC teams lace 'em up.

Don't know what Coach Richt's record against Alabama was....but if he's been fired, I doubt it was a winning one.

And the discussion about LSU Coach Miles leading up to the game against Auburn last week knocked Trump and Paris out of the headlines....yep, unreal.

OBTW, I also went to the Timbers game in Dallas (Frisco) and the turnout was very light.....apparently because it was Timbers weather, 47 degrees and raining.  The Timber Army was in full force....it was fun, and we didn't have to battle our way out of the stadium or parking lot afterward....probably because everyone headed to the car to get out of the wet.

DoubleDipper wrote:

And the discussion about LSU Coach Miles leading up to the game against Auburn last week knocked Trump and Paris out of the headlines....yep, unreal.

Insanity. Didn't Nebraska fire their coach about 10 years ago after going 9-3? Where I'm from that gets you an extension.

Here's an interesting article on the coaching change discussion.  The same thing is going on regionally, with some fans clamoring for Oregon to fire their defensive coordinator, a long time coach in the program.  And of course Mike Riley is under fire after one year at Nebraska, their worst year in ages.  They hired Riley because they fired Bo Pelini, who only won 9 games every year (of course he was also a bit of a jerk).  They won 5 this year.

The case for not changing a damn thing

pilotram wrote:

DoubleDipper wrote:

And the discussion about LSU Coach Miles leading up to the game against Auburn last week knocked Trump and Paris out of the headlines....yep, unreal.

Insanity. Didn't Nebraska fire their coach about 10 years ago after going 9-3? Where I'm from that gets you an extension.

Yeah, they fired Osborne and replaced him with  an Osborne assistant who also was never under 9 wins or out of the top 25 despite moving from the cupcake Big12 north to the pretty stout B1G West. He got fired after 7 years.

But Pelini got the axe largely because he was such a warm guy.

I just learned that some QB that Georgia recruited (I guess he is pretty good, but what do I know?) might decommit and go elsewhere because of our coaching change. The problem is that he signed a financial aid agreement with UGA, which meant that UGA had unlimited contact with him. If he decommits, then that contact becomes retroactively an infraction. Wow, NCAA.

Here's another coaching change that has the author of this article head-scratching:
ruffin-mcneill-fired-east-carolina-university-pirates-football

This thread was started after the firing of Georgia coach Mark Richt, but today he was introduced as the coach of his alma mater, Miami (not the one in Ohio).

Richt was making close to $4 million annually at Georgia, and his salary at Miami will probably be in that same neighborhood.  Richt stated he expected the "Miami job to be his last."

OBTW, the rumored firing of LSU's Les Miles that didn't happen might have been based upon his results vs. his salary.  I'm too lazy to look up his results, but I saw an article today that listed his salary at over $9 million per year!!!!

In contrast, the LSU president's annual salary is $600K per year....but he does get a $15K car allowance and a $36K housing allowance.....

The assistant basketball coach make a salary on par with the five highest paid faculty. About $245,000