Eagle Rocked: Southern Miss, Conference USA...

[SMU Football Blog]

Has anybody seen this?

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/southern-miss-golden-eagles-college-football-realignment-losers/

Article is interesting for 2 reasons. First, it illustrates that for all our warts, we could be in a much worse situation. Conference USA is abysmal.

Second, this is what 2500 words on Southern Miss football? This guy doesn't use the name Jeff Bower once. Bower was the most successful football coach USM ever had and ever will have. He got fired after 14 (!) winning seasons and his last season was 7-5. He was run out of town because some folks had an illusion of what USM football was and should be and recruiting had slipped. They hired Larry Fedora (A guy I thought SMU should have at least considered, but we hired JJ) who stuck around 3 years and won 12 games before leaving for UNC and USM went 0-12 the next season and has sucked ever since.

[smupony94]

We should have kept June

[East Coast Mustang]

The firing of Jeff Bower was absurd at the time and in retrospect. Has he ever caught on anywhere since?

[Planter's Punch]

The firing of Jeff Bower was absurd at the time and in retrospect. Has he ever caught on anywhere since?

Doesn't look like it.

[Fresno Mustang]

Usm, an example of how a mid major with solid past success gets leap frogged on the totem pole for having a weak media market

[PonyKai]

And, I'm guessing, a limited pool of top-end donors. While the weak media market obviously hurts (maybe fatal), they might have made the Big East/AAC cut if they had the ability to fund a top-flight staff and drop top-flight facilities to support their revenue sports.

[RebStang]

Being from Mississippi, I've long believed that USM should actually be shut down entirely. It serves no real purpose other than to draw funding away from the only two schools in the state that could ever hope to be top 100 academic institutions (and have a long way to go to get to that level).

That said, USM has nothing going for it athletically and everything working against it.

A previous poster mentioned a "limited pool of big donors". Frankly, that's generous - USM essentially has no big donors.

Compound that with the fact that their enrollment is actually declining during a period when enrollments are up nationwide and it's not a good indicator of long term health of their athletic programs or even the university, as a whole.

Next, the NCAA eliminated things like the partial qualifier rule. Bower lived on partial qualifiers and players with "character issues" (as in, he signed a kid that enrolled after being released from prison for manslaughter). Take those away and their pipeline of functionally illiterate but "learning disabled" players that didn't want to go to a junior college for 2 years dried up.

To make matters even worse, Dan Mullen at Mississippi State has decided to build his entire program around Mississippi players. He is actively choosing to take lightly recruited 2 and 3 star players from Mississippi instead of recruiting more talented players from elsewhere. Throw in the fact that Mark Hudspeth at ULL is also going after the marginal Mississippi talent with the offer of playing in front of actual fans (USM couldn't sell out its stadium even when they were good) and USM simply doesn't have any natural talent base to recruit from left.

[Digetydog]

Being from Mississippi, I've long believed that USM should actually be shut down entirely. It serves no real purpose other than to draw funding away from the only two schools in the state that could ever hope to be top 100 academic institutions (and have a long way to go to get to that level).

That said, USM has nothing going for it athletically and everything working against it.

A previous poster mentioned a "limited pool of big donors". Frankly, that's generous - USM essentially has no big donors.

Wow - shut the entire school down?

With the Student Loan Bubble already starting to burst and low-cost distance learning already starting to gain traction, there is likely to be significant consolidation in higher education.

[NTXCoog]

The firing of Jeff Bower was absurd at the time and in retrospect. Has he ever caught on anywhere since?

Interesting artcile from 2012 (http://www.mssportsmagazine.com/msm-fea ... jeff-bower) about Bower after coaching. Doesn't look like he'll coach again.