What is the problem with some of you ???

[smupony]

I can't believe some of you on here are [deleted] like this right now....Sure the search has been to slow and all, but look at the bright side.. I mean Steve Orsini has raised $12 MILLION DOLLARS for our new Football Coaches salaries....Whether or not you think Coach June Jones is the perfect candidate or not, if he comes here he will WIN....If he doesn't, it appears we get Fran.....I think Fran can win here too.Both would be positive for recruiting...Not Bad...Remember if it wasn't for Orsini, we wouldn't have this kind of money for a great Head Coach and quality assistants .....These guys are not my 1st choices either, but they can get the job done....I'm telling you, we are going to get this program turned around !!!

Orsini has obviously done a great job of rasing money but I can't believe he would let Johnson, then Jones delay a hire like this. From the day the boosters committed the $10 million nothing has changed for SMU. We haven't won anymore games and there is still $10 million on the table.

Jones and Johnson should have been put to a decision a long time ago. Either you want the big check that comes with this challenge or you don't.

Orsini is acting like the nerdy guy who spends two years being friends with a girl he wants to date because he's too afraid of rejection. He would have saved himself a lot of MONEY and TIME had he gone in for the kiss up front. Take a shot and live with the results.

You guys crack me up. Especially the ones who have been posting for less than a month.

SMU is not an attractive place to coach football. SMU is aiming very high for the next hire. We can't just walk in and say take it or leave it. We know we are a stepping stone, bargining chip, or whatever.

We are taking shots at top notch coaches, not falling from grace has beens. Orsini can't just live with a snap judgement. This hire will in part define his career and any job he wants after this. Settleing for a coach for the sake of saving us one month of pain and suffuring is stupid.

Let Orsini play this out. It is not like we have 30 four star commitments waiting on this decision.

Looks like your Coach Todd prediction is right on too...

[Wuba]

Finally a thread with some degree of sanity.

1. Any meaningful hire requires effort and time, especially when we are trying to change a paradigm. A quick hire for an established BCS program would yield a top tier coach. For SMU it would mean an unproven OC/DC.
2. I believe that Orsini thought that he had PJ "in the bag". But word leaked out, and GT jumped in. Quality BCS program vs. #119 program at same money. This probably extended our search.
3. JJ, maybe SO's first choice even over PJ, would not even consider an offer until after his bowl game.
4. Bowden, Barnett, Coker were never a consideration for a quality program, anywhere. Thank you Orsini for knowing more than we know and not accepting a future problem.
5. Six months ago, Fran was the laughing stock of all the local media and this board, even before the news letter deal, so why is he so great now? Fran may be where we end up, but I can't blame SO for looking further.
6. We have not given up on a recruiting class yet and if JJ comes, we might pick up 2-3 four star types. Now wouldn't that be a change.

I want to know as much as the next guy, but I am also tired of SMU running a fourth class football program. I would like our athletics to be on a par with the rest of our school. I'm ok with waiting.

(Contrary to some earlier posts, I am just an alum with no ties or sources within the AD, or any other, office of the school.)

Thank you Beanman. People on this board act like SO is unaware that he is impacting the next 5 or 6 years by impairing this recruiting class. I think it is far more likely that he is very aware and decided that the loss of the recruits we would have gotten this year by hiring a coach in Nov/Dec is more than made up for by the quality of the recruits the new coach brings in going forward.

If the decision is whether to hire Coach X in Nov/Dec or wait on the chance (somewhere between 0 and 100%) of hiring a "better" target coach in Jan, this is how I look at it. I am a bit of a geek (aren't we all if we are on the msg board?), so I laid it out in formulas.

Here is what we stand to lose by delaying the hire of the same coach from Nov to Jan:
(Value of 2008 recruits with Nov hire of Coach X) - (Value of 2008 recruits with Jan hire of Coach X) = Reduction of 2008 recruiting class value from waiting until Jan to hire Coach X

I view the reduction in the 2008 recruiting class as an investment by SO.


Here is the expected value of the 2008 class of the target coach as I would have viewed it in Nov
(Value of 2008 recruits with hire of target coach in Jan) * (Probability of hiring target coach in Jan) = Probability weighted value of 2008 recruits with hire of target coach

The probability weighted value of 2008 recruits with the target coach offsets the investment of the reduction in 2008 recruit value by delaying the hire of coach X, so the actual upfront investment is:
(Reduction of 2008 recruiting class value from waiting until Jan to hire Coach X) - (Probability weighted value of 2008 recruits with hire of target coach) = Probability weighted reduction of 2008 recruiting class from the delay

This is the net investment by SO.


I know there is room for disagreement because people have specific coaches they prefer, but I am just trying to focus on the decision to wait to hire a coach SO prefers, so I assume the following:
(Value of 2009+ recruits and overall coaching acumen of target coach) - (Value of 2009+ recruits and overall coaching acumen of Coach X) = Additional value of 2009+ recruits and overall coaching acumen of target coach over Coach X


Since he made the decision to wait, SO must have believed that:
(Additional value of 2009+ recruits and overall coaching acumen of target coach over Coach X) > Probability weighted reduction of 2008 recruiting class from the delay.

Obviously, for this to be the case it depends on a number of things, all of which reasonable people can disagree on:
What is the probability of hiring the target coach? If it is near 0% then hiring coach X would have been a no brainer. SO must believe it is high enough to take the risk, but he could very well be wrong.

What is the future value of target coach vs Coach X. Potentially Coach X night be better, would definitely make pursuing target coach the wrong decision. Obviously SO believed target coach's future value > Coach X future value.

Is the probability weighted reduction in value of the 2008 class so large that it outweighs any benefit (if there is one) of target coach? If so, should have hired coach X, but again SO obviously believed the payoff is worth it.


In summary, while reasonable people can disagree about whether it was the right move, I do not think it is reasonable to argue that the potential impact on the 2008 recruiting class definitely makes going for the target coach the wrong decision as some people here seem to. Also, I am not ignoring that the original target coach was PJ, but once he is gone you move on to the next target.

That got much longer than it looked in my head when I pictured it, apologies to the very few who have read this far.

[RednBlue11]

Don't forget Terry Bowden. How can you consider Larry Coker and Chan Gailey and not Bowden. Dumbest thing I have ever seen.

espn reported that Bowden has been repeated rebuffed by SMU before and after Bennet was fired...turner doesnt want him.

[Junior]

Are some of you REALLY reaching the conclusion that having the longest ongoing HC search is validation that Steve-O is doing a great job? HAve you really been hitting the bottle this early in the morning.

I understand that some of you blindly trust this guy, but I trust someone who delivers results. 9 weeks? Why do you think this is reasonable?

Didn't Steve-O say that by getting rid of PB early ier in the season, that would allow us to better recruit a coach?

We're not even competing against anyone else now that all other D1 jobs are filled and we still can't land a coach.

Pull the freakin' trigger on something.

[EastStang]

We're not competing against anyone- you're right. So we should just hire the coaches that every major program and every minor program with a vacancy passed on like Bowden, Barnett, Fran, Coker, Gailey, Applewhite, Dodge, Graham, or Gill. Makes sense to me. Let's settle, just like we've done for the last 20 years.

[Junior]

We're not competing against anyone- you're right. So we should just hire the coaches that every major program and every minor program with a vacancy passed on like Bowden, Barnett, Fran, Coker, Gailey, Applewhite, Dodge, Graham, or Gill. Makes sense to me. Let's settle, just like we've done for the last 20 years.

Fine by me. I'm ok with most of those guys in your list. But don't forget Jones.

[jtstang]

Oh good lord, "settling" for Barnett, Bowden Gill, Dodge or Franchione would be NOTHING like what we've done for the last twenty years. And we most probably could have settled for them a month ago. SMU is in no position to base its decisions on who other schools will or won't consider, we're lucky to be sniffed by anybody these days as the length of this process demonstrates. Get real, EastStang.

[ponyboy]

We are taking shots at top notch coaches, not falling from grace has beens. Orsini can't just live with a snap judgement. This hire will in part define his career and any job he wants after this. Settleing for a coach for the sake of saving us one month of pain and suffuring is stupid.

Agreed, it's unbelievable. We [deleted] and moan about how much this program stinks and that we're not willing to make a committment to play ball with the big boys. They we pony up to actually do that and we whine about that too.

The search has taken a long time and there are some negative consequences to that, particularly with respect to this year's class. But I'll submit that the press we've been getting is a positive, not a negative. We're getting more than our fifteen minutes, that's for sure. Couple that with a big coaching catch and we've got yet more momentum. I for one am thankful we have an AD with a pair who will dare go out and try to get Lombardi here.

[westexSMU]

[quote="Junior"]Are some of you REALLY reaching the conclusion that having the longest ongoing HC search is validation that Steve-O is doing a great job?

We're not even competing against anyone else now that all other D1 jobs are filled and we still can't land a coach.

[/quote].................We all wish it went quicker, but to say "we still can't land a coach" will not be correct when we have an excellent new coach in less than a week. The new coach will be someone guys will want to play for and coach will be able to recruit alot better athletes to SMU than we have had in the past..

[jtstang]

I disagree ponyboy, you need look no furhter than some of the linked articles today to see that the press is now laughing at us.

And a "snap judgment" is one thing, this process is something else.

Anything short of landing Jones at this point will be an unmitigated PR disaster.

[jtstang]

The new coach will be someone guys will want to play for and coach will be able to recruit alot better athletes to SMU than we have had in the past..

Dude, can you pick next week's lottery numbers for us too?

[westexSMU]

The days of SMU being horrible in football are about over...

[jtstang]

The days of SMU being horrible in football are about over...

How many years in a row have you said that?

[Big Hoss]

The days of SMU being horrible in football are about over...

Please, PLEASE, God, let westexSMU be right!!!

[westexSMU]

[quote="jtstang"][quote="westexSMU"]The days of SMU being horrible in football are about over...[/quote]
How many years in a row have you said that?[/quote].....Just today...and we are in fact getting alot of "Positive Press" right now from ESPN etc. with the fact that we are offering $2Mil/YEAR checks to quality coaches. Even Mark May and Coach Lou Holtz said last night that it would be hard for JJ to turn that down. Those guys haven't been positive at all about SMU Football in the recent years, but they all know now that SMU is serious about rebuilding its football program.