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Now, I understand that we raised a substantial amount of money, and that Orsini is serious about finding a good coach.

However, we should really take a look at what situation we are in, and what got us here.

How we got here:

Part I:
My freshman year was fall 2003. I went to every home game, and a couple of away games. It was horrific, I personally remember calling for PB's head in the DC. I firmly believed any coach who loses every game should be fired immediately.

I heard some stories about how Bennett is a great guy and a great example for the players. I felt bad for criticizing a good person.

Bennett started to win a little and we kept him around, even gave him an extension. after 2005 I regretted my earlier statements. I set out to improve myself as a fan, I made a D and a Fence and brought them to every home game and a couple away games in 2006 (my senior year).

Bennett relapsed this year and I realized the err in my ways.

The Lesson:
A good coach can win with his players.
A great coach can take your players, and beat his players.
A really crappy coach can take your players go 0-12 and will eventually take his players and go 1-11.

Side Lesson:
We're not paying a football coach because he's a good person. We're paying him because he's a good coach. A good coach helps his players grow, but he also wins games. If we want to be taken seriously, we need to take winning seriously. Not just being a quality individual. Good Players and coaches are capable of doing both.

Part II:
By not firing PB in 2003 or 2004 we missed out on several favorable coaching options such as Solich, Zook, and Willingham (off the top of my head).
All of whom were top tier coaches more than willing to step down a tier to coach sub-par programs. At least two of which we really wish we could get our hands on now.

Part III:
Fall 2003/Spring 2004 we killed our Track program which was demonstrating strong National success.

(This becomes important later)



Current situation:
Coaching limbo in a year where several BCS Schools, such as UCLA, Arkansas, and even Michigan are searching for coaches. If I had to pick a year to not fire your coach simply because of the slim pickings, this would be the year not to do it.

We just learned a hard lesson from PJ that it is really difficult to compete with BCS conferences when searching for coaches.

We fired our coach midway through the season, yet we didn't seem to care to find a new coach until roughly 2 weeks ago. Yet when Michigan and Nebraska and Ole Miss fire their coaches (Carr retired) they immediately begin pursuing new coaches quite actively.

Lesson: if we want to be taken seriously, we need to be proactive. We can't wait for other teams to enter the market before we start shopping. Otherwise it won't matter how much money we have, the shelves will be bare.

What to do from here:
Well, Steve O has to ask himself a serious question:
Are you Serious?

If you are, you need to do things to be taken seriously.
These things may take time (a long time).

1. Throwing money at coaching candidates is not going to solve anything. Getting a valuable Coach who can take our program in the right direction is what we need to do.
2. The coach who can take us in the right direction may not be a long term solution. Fran might be a good candidate, not because he's a superb coach, but because he can win in C-USA, and he can Recruit Texas. He will also probably use us to open a new opportunity and move on. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
3. Do not be afraid to put the next coach on a short leash. Be demanding of the new coach to produce. Why? well, odds are good that even if we split ways in 3-4 years, the market for a new coach won't be near as poor as it is this year. And if they're not succeeding, it would be best if we stop wasting time.
4. Take all SMU athletics seriously, you'd be surprised how they come in handy. Ask yourself, why is Baylor in the Big 12? Why are they in a BCS conference taking in the big $$$ for being a part of that conference? It's because they have several top athletics programs outside of football. The big 12 recognizes that Baylor is valuable even thought their football team is not. Should Baylor someday decide to play football, they can pull a Kansas and walk into a BCS game. We need to improve our athletics as a whole. Soccer, swimming, tennis, basketball, etc.. all serve to benefit the school when they succeed.
5. Get media exposure. This doesn't just mean national media. In fact, local media is probably much more valuable to building a program up than national media. Why is it that I get to hear TCU adds all the friggin time on ESPN radio? I'm in dallas, not Fort worth, FW is a two bit sideshow compared to Dallas. Demand coverage, advertise your teams, get local news to cover stories, not just for athletics. Get the positive message out there that SMU is a great school. If you can rally the community, you can raise a militia. If you can raise a militia you can start the fight. (The pony up slogan was a decent start)

END

(holy crap that was a rant)

tex23bm wrote:(holy crap that was a rant)

but in a good way! Excellent post.

Wow. Well said and right on the money. I feel the same way. You get my vote for fan of the week!

tex23bm wrote:Part II:
By not firing PB in 2003 or 2004 we missed out on several favorable coaching options such as Solich, Zook, and Willingham (off the top of my head).
All of whom were top tier coaches more than willing to step down a tier to coach sub-par programs. At least two of which we really wish we could get our hands on now.

Only problem I see here is that in 03 and 04 it still would have been a Copeland hire...... enough said.

I think everyone shares your frustration but . . .

Michigan has looked much worse than us in this process, and despite the high profile coaching changes I don't know that there's that much more turnover than normal.

We've shown a commitment to other sports. We hired Doh and are building new basketball facilities. Our soccer, and at least when I was there, our tennis, golf, and swimming teams are all solid to top notch.

I think we're doing what we need to be doing now, it's just hard after so many years of neglect.

But you're right, it won't be a problem if we bring in a career builder coach who jumps ship so long as he rights the ship in the process.

OH, I agree that a lot of our athletics are heading in a positive direction, and I'm fairly satisfied with some of the efforts Orsini is making to Improve. I was just stating that we need to utilize our athletics programs as a whole to move forward.

Also, are you aware that there is a serious push among some within the student body to bring Baseball back to SMU?

Personally I'm all for it.

Bring Back Baseball! (although C-USA is not a great conference for that, but maybe that's a good thing!)

Now that would be great. You can't throw a stone in the suburban Dallas area and not hit a good baseball prospect. And it's only something like 15 scholarships so we could compete with the big boys. If Rice can win a NC in a sport . . .

Cash McMogulson wrote:Now that would be great. You can't throw a stone in the suburban Dallas area and not hit a good baseball prospect. And it's only something like 15 scholarships so we could compete with the big boys. If Rice can win a NC in a sport . . .

But you have to do women's softball as well, which is not all bad. Personally, I want a full men's and women's track program. That is where you can really compete with the big boys.

We need women's softball, men's track and baseball back. Dump equestrian. Geez.

tex23bm wrote:Why is it that I get to hear TCU adds all the friggin time on ESPN radio?
END

Take solace in the fact that you are probably the only one listening to ESPN Radio. Over at the ticket we used to get a spot every once in a while (not sure anymore).

tcu blows

...are you at a sleep over at MrMustang1973's house...nice rambling rant. WOW!

chipper wrote:Bring Back Baseball! (although C-USA is not a great conference for that, but maybe that's a good thing!)

Rice and Tulane are consistently top 5, top 10 programs. If football had two teams performing like that, no way would anyone be saying "C-USA is not a great conference for that"

tex23bm wrote:Now, I understand that we raised a substantial amount of money, and that Orsini is serious about finding a good coach.

However, we should really take a look at what situation we are in, and what got us here.

How we got here:

Part I:
My freshman year was fall 2003. I went to every home game, and a couple of away games. It was horrific, I personally remember calling for PB's head in the DC. I firmly believed any coach who loses every game should be fired immediately.

I heard some stories about how Bennett is a great guy and a great example for the players. I felt bad for criticizing a good person.

Bennett started to win a little and we kept him around, even gave him an extension. after 2005 I regretted my earlier statements. I set out to improve myself as a fan, I made a D and a Fence and brought them to every home game and a couple away games in 2006 (my senior year).

Bennett relapsed this year and I realized the err in my ways.

The Lesson:
A good coach can win with his players.
A great coach can take your players, and beat his players.
A really crappy coach can take your players go 0-12 and will eventually take his players and go 1-11.

Side Lesson:
We're not paying a football coach because he's a good person. We're paying him because he's a good coach. A good coach helps his players grow, but he also wins games. If we want to be taken seriously, we need to take winning seriously. Not just being a quality individual. Good Players and coaches are capable of doing both.

Part II:
By not firing PB in 2003 or 2004 we missed out on several favorable coaching options such as Solich, Zook, and Willingham (off the top of my head).
All of whom were top tier coaches more than willing to step down a tier to coach sub-par programs. At least two of which we really wish we could get our hands on now.

Part III:
Fall 2003/Spring 2004 we killed our Track program which was demonstrating strong National success.

(This becomes important later)



Current situation:
Coaching limbo in a year where several BCS Schools, such as UCLA, Arkansas, and even Michigan are searching for coaches. If I had to pick a year to not fire your coach simply because of the slim pickings, this would be the year not to do it.

We just learned a hard lesson from PJ that it is really difficult to compete with BCS conferences when searching for coaches.

We fired our coach midway through the season, yet we didn't seem to care to find a new coach until roughly 2 weeks ago. Yet when Michigan and Nebraska and Ole Miss fire their coaches (Carr retired) they immediately begin pursuing new coaches quite actively.

Lesson: if we want to be taken seriously, we need to be proactive. We can't wait for other teams to enter the market before we start shopping. Otherwise it won't matter how much money we have, the shelves will be bare.

What to do from here:
Well, Steve O has to ask himself a serious question:
Are you Serious?

If you are, you need to do things to be taken seriously.
These things may take time (a long time).

1. Throwing money at coaching candidates is not going to solve anything. Getting a valuable Coach who can take our program in the right direction is what we need to do.
2. The coach who can take us in the right direction may not be a long term solution. Fran might be a good candidate, not because he's a superb coach, but because he can win in C-USA, and he can Recruit Texas. He will also probably use us to open a new opportunity and move on. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
3. Do not be afraid to put the next coach on a short leash. Be demanding of the new coach to produce. Why? well, odds are good that even if we split ways in 3-4 years, the market for a new coach won't be near as poor as it is this year. And if they're not succeeding, it would be best if we stop wasting time.
4. Take all SMU athletics seriously, you'd be surprised how they come in handy. Ask yourself, why is Baylor in the Big 12? Why are they in a BCS conference taking in the big $$$ for being a part of that conference? It's because they have several top athletics programs outside of football. The big 12 recognizes that Baylor is valuable even thought their football team is not. Should Baylor someday decide to play football, they can pull a Kansas and walk into a BCS game. We need to improve our athletics as a whole. Soccer, swimming, tennis, basketball, etc.. all serve to benefit the school when they succeed.
5. Get media exposure. This doesn't just mean national media. In fact, local media is probably much more valuable to building a program up than national media. Why is it that I get to hear TCU adds all the friggin time on ESPN radio? I'm in dallas, not Fort worth, FW is a two bit sideshow compared to Dallas. Demand coverage, advertise your teams, get local news to cover stories, not just for athletics. Get the positive message out there that SMU is a great school. If you can rally the community, you can raise a militia. If you can raise a militia you can start the fight. (The pony up slogan was a decent start)

END

(holy crap that was a rant)

tex, very good post and rant.

however, i think you oversimplified a number of highly complex and deeply embedded perceptions that exist as it pertains to Pony football....

for example: not sure how you can "demand (media) coverage".... i guess we can call the Ticket and talk to Mike Fernandes/Freido/Catman and demand coverage. those idiots are not interested in promoting SMU. especially with the heavy influence of North Texas Community College that exists up there.