Is $2 Million worth a new coach???

[EastStang]

The truly interesting fact in this is that after thinking about it Rodriguez turned them down. Now I'm sure RR is not going on food stamps any time soon, but he turned down $2M per year. Which answers a question I have long held, are there jobs that great coaches will not take no matter what they're offered. Clearly, Alabama is a job that established coaches are looking at as a dead end. So for those who come from the school of thought, that SMU can afford a great name established coach if we just give him enough money, I think that question has now been answered in the negative.

[SMU Football Blog]

It is completely different. Going from West Virginia to Alabama, aside from history, is barely better than a lateral move. Rodriguez is paid very well and will be paid better soon. He gets $1.1M plus bonuses, nearly all were met this year, to the tune of about $1.5M. Plus he is a Eest Virginia alum. Plus Alabama is a tremendous pain in the @ss.

There are still fewer than 120 IA jobs and SMU pays better than a third of them and as far as non bcs is compensation wise competitive with all but a few. And relatively few head jobs come open every year.

[OC Mustang]

It is completely different. Going from West Virginia to Alabama, aside from history, is barely better than a lateral move. Rodriguez is paid very well and will be paid better soon. He gets $1.1M plus bonuses, nearly all were met this year, to the tune of about $1.5M. Plus he is a Eest Virginia alum. Plus Alabama is a tremendous pain in the @ss.

There are still fewer than 120 IA jobs and SMU pays better than a third of them and as far as non bcs is compensation wise competitive with all but a few. And relatively few head jobs come open every year.

So can I infer from your comments that you think SMU would ostensibly be an easy sell to the better coaches from the last third and perhaps a few from the 2nd third were one to come available?

Don't know if I buy that. Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong, but I wonder if SMU is simply a dog job. May pay well, but it's got fleas. Thoughts?

[Pony Soup]

smu should spend $2million...then we could win 7 games. thats not that much money - probably the average annual tax bill of every phidelts dad

[J.T.supporta]

Yea if you got $2 mil you want to spare to our Athletic Department go ahead and donate it so we can get a coach worth it.

In my mind there are only coaches worth $2 million: Bob Stoops, Jim Tressel, Lloyd Carr, and Mack Brown.

The ridiculous thing that Bama was going to do was give WVU $2million to take RR from them...then they were going to pay in over $2mil a year.

SMU doesnt need to waste over a $1million for a coach.

[Pony Soup]

Yeah - mack brown... one of the worst coaches ever. Why would you even pay him $100k? Texas won the title DESPITE his coaching. Sure, he can recruit, but until he trusts another QB like he did VY, they can sign up for not first place again and again.

For now, its back to the good old days of playing the 2nd best quarterback and sticking with the 5-7 yeard slants - let's just call it the chris simms offense.

Major applewhite for smu OC anyone?

[mr. pony]

Mack Brown ... what a joke.


But, SMU does need to get into the $1 mil+ bracket soon.

[Stallion]

Mack Brown has won more games or damn close to it than any Coach in America over the last 5 years. That's why he's paid. Some of you simply don't understand what a head coach is supposed to do. No. 1 Recruit No. 2 Recruit. No. 3 Win so you can recruit some more. Mack Brown does that job better than just about anyone in the Country-the rest of you don't have a leg to stand on in this argument.

[Mountain Mustang]

Mack Brown has won more games or damn close to it than any Coach in America over the last 5 years. That's why he's paid. Some of you simply don't understand what a head coach is supposed to do. No. 1 Recruit No. 2 Recruit. No. 3 Win so you can recruit some more. Mack Brown does that job better than just about anyone in the Country-the rest of you don't have a leg to stand on in this argument.

If Mack's the next coming of Jesus, as you seem to think, then why was his job security in serious question the year before he won the national championship?

BECAUSE HE HADN'T WON ANYTHING, WITH ALL OF HIS GREAT RECRUITS.

Face facts, he's only had one great season which was last year. The Longhorns had a very good '04 season but lost to rival OU 12-0 and didn't win their division. You left out a key ingredient to being a coach at UT and that's being able to beat OU. Brown's 3-5 against the Sooners, and 1-5 in his first 6 seasons.

There's no doubting he's a great recruiter, but he should have won at least a few more Big 12 South titles with all of the talent he has brought in. He's a great recruiter and a decent coach at best. If you're looking for better coaches, you need to look no further than one state north and Bob Stoops at Oklahoma. He recruits AND he's a great coach.

Yes recruiting is a very vital ingredient, but winning is just as important if not more. If you don't win you're not going to stay around very long, especially if you're viewed to have recruited superior talent and can't win with it.


You come off like such a pompous [deleted] when you say there's no leg to stand on in opposing this argument. To think that there's no logical argument against your statement is arrogant as hell.

[Stallion]

OK let me state this S-L-O-W-L-Y. You say he has to win. Mack Brown is either the winniest Coach in America or damn close to it over the last 5 years.Mack Brown's job was never ever for a mili-second in danger at any time during his tenure at Texas. They are making so much money down there they can't count it fast enough. The whole damn stadium is sold out. They make more money on outside merchandising than any school in the Country. They completed their recruiting class about 9 months before signing date . THEY LOVE MACK BROWN. Get a Clue about what's it all about.

[Roach]

.... Some of you simply don't understand what a head coach is supposed to do. No. 1 Recruit No. 2 Recruit. No. 3 Win so you can recruit some more....

Absolutely not true. A coach's job, first and foremost, is to win games. If he does that by recruiting a team full of future NFL-ers (see Mack Brown) or by being a brilliant strategist or through a combination of the two, then he has done his job. Win games, put butts in seats, get on TV and of course MAKE MONEY. You're right that in order to win, a coach has to recruit players, and nobody does that better than Coach February. But to suggest that recruiting is the primary focus of his job is not true. A coach who wins constantly can escape culpability for nearly anything else, whether it's cheating, player arrests, etc. It's a Catch-22 -- winning brings top recruits, while top recruits bring victories. But regardless of what players are thrown out there, winning -- not recruiting -- is job #1.

[EastStang]

I have a close friend who is a former Tar Heel football player. He said the lowest day in UNC history was the day they let Mack Brown leave. The guy is a recruiting machine. That's why he's worth the money.

[Roach]

OK let me state this S-L-O-W-L-Y. You say he has to win. Mack Brown is either the winniest Coach in America or damn close to it over the last 5 years.

OK, while we're saying things S-L-O-W-L-Y .... "winningest" isn't a word, even though it's used by sportscasters all the time, and "winniest" sure as hell isn't even close to a word.

Mack Brown's job was never ever for a mili-second in danger at any time during his tenure at Texas. They are making so much money down there they can't count it fast enough. The whole damn stadium is sold out. They make more money on outside merchandising than any school in the Country. They completed their recruiting class about 9 months before signing date . THEY LOVE MACK BROWN. Get a Clue about what's it all about.

Exactly -- it's about winning, and subsequent truckloads of cash. At Jock U. campuses across the country, that's all it is -- winning and cash. Coach February wins because he has an absurd collection of talent and a bottomless pit of cash at his disposal, so he has the biggest and the best of everything. He also has a terrific staff of assistant coaches, and you're right -- as long as they sell 100K tickets every Saturday and sell lots of hats and t-shirts with that stupid cow on them, who cares that he can't coach? Brilliant manager of a staff and a program, and obviously a first-rate recruiter. But great coaches can make halftime adjustments against the likes of a decent-but-not-great Kansas State team, and he looked overmatched against a first-year KSU head coach.

He's safe as long as he wants to stay in Austin, but that's for his CEO skills, not his coaching ability.

[Stallion]

OK who are the National Champions over the last 10 years USC, USC, OU, UT, LSU, Ohio St, Florida, Florida St. Miami et al. Its all about RECRUITING folks-the above is a WHO's WHO in NCAA Recruiting. The best Coaches are the CEOs types who delegate authority to the best staffs and have the unique ability to recruit the best players in the Country.

[Mountain Mustang]

Mack Brown is either the winniest Coach in America or damn close to it over the last 5 years.

Winning percentages are great and all but how many conference titles has he won in the last five years?
One.
How many divisional titles has he won in the last five years?
Two.

With top recruiting classes, this isn't all that impressive.
This below is from Wikipedia, not my opinion, and talks about how Brown was under scrutiny in the beginning of his tenure in Austin.

In his early years at UT, Mack Brown was sometimes referred to as "Coach February", a nickname that indicated he performed well during the important recruiting season, but failed to follow up with equally impressive wins on the field. His detractors felt that with all the resources at his disposal at Texas, combined with the talent he was recruiting from high school programs, that he should have more to show for it than appearances in the Holiday Bowl or Cotton Bowl. They felt that he should be playing for Big 12 titles or even National Championships instead.

In five of the eight seasons under Brown, the Longhorns have been all but eliminated from either of these two goals due to losses in October to Big 12 rival Oklahoma. Since the two teams play in the same division of the Big 12, a loss by Texas to Oklahoma means that Texas cannot win the south half of the conference unless Oklahoma loses at least two conference games. That single loss can easily leave the Longhorns in third or fourth place in the conference, behind the North and South division winners. 2001 was an exception that did little to ease the criticism. In that year's campaign, the Longhorns lost to the Sooners but were given another chance when the Sooners lost to both Nebraska and Oklahoma State. Texas made it to the Big 12 Conference Championship Game, losing to Colorado, a school they had beaten by a substantial margin earlier in the year. A similar opportunity presented itself in 2002. After Oklahoma beat Texas, they lost to Texas A&M and Oklahoma State. However, Texas had lost a close road game to Texas Tech so they did not make the championship game.

Although Brown consistently led the Longhorns to a bowl game to cap off each season, his first six years he was not able to lead them to a Bowl Championship Series game, having to settle each year for the Holiday Bowl or Cotton Bowl. His record in these games was 3 and 3, with two of the 3 losses coming at the hands of supposedly inferior teams as judged by the rankings headed into the games.

RECRUITING IS KEY, BUT WINNING IS MORE IMPORTANT. This is why he was under so much scrutiny early in his tenure at UT.