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anon_1nb5kgc7kwlls
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I'm not watching that game. I'm bored by this.
At least with men's basketball you get variation.
Georgia and Alabama are too big, too fast, too strong. It is a short list of programs that can handle them.
If you want to beat them you have to out coach them. You have to bring a better scheme that eliminates their physical advantages. Essentially you need great ideas to overcome their great players. Something to level the field.
What is it? Dunno. But you aren’t going to out Alabama Alabama.
If you want to beat them you have to out coach them. You have to bring a better scheme that eliminates their physical advantages. Essentially you need great ideas to overcome their great players. Something to level the field.
What is it? Dunno. But you aren’t going to out Alabama Alabama.
While I’m not excited about the matchup I’ll be watching. It’s clearly the best two teams in CFB and what TF else am I gonna do on Monday Jan 10th?
This is pretty much accurate, at least this year. And the generic concept is always true, but the names of the teams can vary from year to year. But what can we expect over the next 5 years? Here is my New Year's prediction. Fairly long, so skip over this post if you don't have a couple of minutes.
First, let's look at how the SEC minus their two best teams have done this year in bowls....mediocre at best, and unless they pick up a few wins today, downright poor. What does that tell us? That the league has two great teams this year, and a clear drop off to a second tier of decent but not great teams. Looking back, there were a lot of years when I could say that about the PAC, or the B10, or the B12. I don't pay much attention to the ACC, but I suspect that is probably true for them, as well. In the past decade, USC, Michigan and Texas have struggled. Not because they lacked resources, but because they lacked the right coaching staff. As Biggs is prone to say, "coaching matters". A HC is like a program CEO. His program has to have recruiting, fundamentals coaching, game planning, in-game coaching, knowledge of how to work the alums and his own school's system, and a host of other things...including some basic psychology (remember, you are dealing with a lot of kids who are not always mature or logical). As long as NCAA football continues to generate cash, coaching salaries will reflect that. Do I think coaches are overpaid today? Frankly, it does not matter what I think. The market will deal with the salary issue. And since, under the fig leaf of being "being fair to the kids" the programs with more money have manoeuvered us into direct "pay for play" to further reinforce their advantages (rather than keeping it under the table, so there would at least be some limits), what will we see over the next 5 years?
The single change that has kept this all from turning into a strict "cash is king" hegemony is the portal. Yes, Georgia and Alabama have great players from which to build a team. But they can only give PT to so many, and most of the rest will be dealing with a failure to be the star for the first time in their lives. A great many of those will choose to leave for what they perceive to be greener pastures when they don't get PT. Some will actually be pushed out. Some will simply have been over-rated from the start, but others will be fully capable and have failed to make it in their first program for a variety of other reasons. And they won't simply be coming from GA or AL; they will be coming from all directions in D1, including the guys who exceeded expectations and want to move up from FCS.
Just being willing to pay a lot does not guarantee getting the right HC. SC, UT and UM all failed in that area. Nobody is ever 100% when it comes to hiring. I've been hiring for almost 40 years, and I think my success percentage (somewhere in the 65% ballpark) is as good as anyone. But obviously, when the stakes are highest, a hiring mistake costs you a lot. Jen had one with Jimmy Lake. We had one with Paul Wulff. Anybody who hires Todd Graham (who clearly must interview very well) has probably made a mistake. MI, TX and SC all made mistakes, and it was not because they refused to pay the going rate. Proven coaches will get big premiums to stick around; look at Mel Tucker at MSU. It is not just the Fortune 500 CEO's who are being overpaid; the same standard is now being used with football HC's. And since the player's "pay to play" thing is now formalized, that trend will only be reinforced.
I think that USC with Riley will, within just a few years, become the dominant PAC team. Oregon has money but has not been able to overcome some cultural issues. UW has less money than Oregon and less competent leadership, so I don't see them reaching the top tier. The mystery team in the PAC is Stanford. They have more money than God and an attractive sales pitch. Why they put up with a mediocre HC is beyond me, but that will eventually change, and then we'll have SC, Stanford and Oregon (probably in that order), and I expect to see that within the next 5 years.
The SEC chose to poach OU and UT. That conference eats its own young. You either become this year's Alabama or Georgia, or you get eaten. Riley made a good choice. I don't see either OU or UT being able to crack the SEC top 2 within the next 5 years.
Michigan has made some headway. Time will tell where they will go. I think MSU with Tucker could become the dominant program in that state over 5 years. The wild card there, of course, is Ohio State. They have simply been more competent than UM over the past decade. Will that continue? Who knows?
As for the mid-level teams....the Utahs, WSUs, ASUs, UCLAs, etc....it is all going to come down to the competence of the HC/CEO. Sure more money makes that easier, but you still have to make good hiring decisions, even if you have a lot of money. That is not a no brainer...look at all the hiring failures out there, even for teams with lots of money. A school like WSU has a nice niche if it can make good decisions, even if guys move along to bigger $$ programs after a while. Having a reputation as a school where your skills and success will be notable is a good thing, because there are always younger, high energy folks looking to take the place of someone who successfully moved along to the next level. But that all comes back to making the right hiring decisions. That falls on the AD. And way too often WSU (as well as many other schools) have completely d*cked up the AD hiring process. That is a crucial, crucial, crucial hire, and it is one that a school has to get right.
Chun will move along at some point within the next 5 years, but when that happens it will leave us with a desirable job opening. We have to get that pick right. If we do, I foresee a bowl game for WSU every year. How good a bowl depends on a lot of things; not just how well we do, but also how well the rest of the league is doing. They are, after all, our primary competition. The wild card here is Stanford, because they could be the SC of the north if they ever decided to get serious.
Within 5 years it will not be 2 SEC teams battling for the championship. They have the two best this year. But that won't be true in 3-5 years. And the addition of OU and TX to the SEC simply means that two teams that might have made it if they were in the B12 will now be ground up in the SEC. I'd put good odds on Riley putting SC there relatively soon. I doubt that Oregon will ever crack that level, but until Stanford decides to be a football school, they are our best shot at a second natty level team. The B10 appears to have 3 contenders in OSU, UM and MSU; we'll have to see how that develops. And the SEC will always have one or two teams at that level...but I don't see them including OU or TX for a long, long time. And WSU will go bowling just about every year, with the occasional top 10 visit when everything lines up right.
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David Shaw is a tremendous coach. In no way is he or will his time at Stanford be mediocre.
I won't disagree regarding his overall tenure and think he has a mix of virtues and faults, but his wins in the past 7 seasons after Harbaugh's recruits rolled off are this:
12 (in his 5th year)
10
9
9
4
4
3
This was all in the context of a pretty weak conference. They were terrible this year, and trends don't get much clearer than this.
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anon_1nb5kgc7kwlls
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I hope this is sarcasm, cause he is the drizzle shits.
He is the best coach Stanford has ever had and put them in 3 Rose Bowls, winning 2 of them.
While his personality is boring as hell, he has done very well there.
Biggs, his character is not in question. But how many more seasons does he get without even a bowl game? Honest question. One more? Two more? I can't believe it will be more than that....?
He has been the head coach for 11 seasons. 9 winning and 2 losing. He was the OC for every season Harbaugh was there.
His last three seasons were:
4-8
4-2 covid year
3-9
He had 8 bowls in a row, 3 of them Rose Bowls and 3 top 7 finishes.
And you think Stanford is going to fire him??? An alum???
Is it fair to fire a coach for a 4-2 season??? Is it fair to twist the stats and say he didnt go to a bowl in a season that had bowls cancelled???
Look at his recruiting class this year. He isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
And if they do fire him, he will have NFL teams offering him head jobs.
David Shaw is significantly better than you think.
If you have lost 5 consecutive games to WSU at Shaw's salary, you are in retirement mode.
Nobody disagrees that he won a bunch with what Harbaugh left him, but it's a pretty steady decline. He has had good recruits and classes as well, the returns have diminished, I hope he stays at 'furd forever.
Yeah it’s ok to say a guy was a good coach once but is currently just holding a position. He’s doing nothing with that program right now. If Furds afraid to try something new and he is comfortable, ok.
FWIW I think we were headed this direction with Leach but he bounces when he’s checked out and I appreciate that about him.
Wrong.
It is total horse shit to say he won with guys Harbaugh left him. He was there the entire time Harbaugh was and recruited those kids too!
What steady decline are you talking about??? Is it fair to assume Stanford will always be in the Rose Bowl??? Is it fair to say it’s a steady decline when he has 9 of 11 winning seasons??? Is it fair to call his 4-2 covid season a decline???
You should actually look at the records and who coached with whom before you type. You are manipulating the numbers to serve your crap narrative.
I mean you can see the on field results, fair or unfair he came into a situation where the bar was high, and it's dropped off, they were last in the north this year, they haven't been serious contenders for the P12 since at least 2017.
If he was so instrumental to Harbaugh success, why hasn't it continued?
It did continue. He put them in 3 Rose Bowls. How many Rose Bowls did Harbaugh coach Stanford to? He took the program higher than Harbaugh ever did. Harbaugh had 2 losing seasons out of 4.
Stanford isn’t recruiting everyone. It isn’t a fuc$ing cattle call to go there. You either meet the academic standards or you don’t. It isn’t unreasonable to think that there could be some down years when you are only recruiting kids that can get into school there. Shaw has 9 of 11 winning seasons with those kids.
If it wasn't for the WSU kicker who choked on the game winning FG in 2015, Shaw's losing streak vs WSU would be 6 games.
If Leach's version of the Air Raid is so easy to defend, why hasn't this genius done so?
During the 2021 season Shaw won fewer conference games than BOTH Rolovich and Dickert.
Lol, Harbaugh took over furd when they were at the lowest point ever arguably, pretty quickly turned them over to a 12 win Fiesta Bowl winning team and then Shaw got to run it, and to his credit for a couple years did well, but the wins have gone down steadily, and the last 2 seasons (I personally don't count 2020 for anybody in the P12) have been bad by any standard and you think Shaw was the pinnacle? I'd be willing to bet any furd alumni who pays attention would say bullshit to that.
They have declined steadily, and that is just fact. I don't believe he is anything over a mediocre coach, he's never won anything significant without the benefit of Harbaughs fingers on it. I hope furd keeps him forever.
Delusional. Stanford alums would laugh at you.
Do yourself a favor. Google the academic requirements to get into Stanford.
What has Harbaugh done at Stanford that didn’t have Shaw’s fingers in it? Nothing.
They will. And they will be happy they did. Rose Bowls, Top 10 rankings, NFL players… They will laugh at you.
If true, that's a major stain on their academic standards. Chelsea Clinton, the great intellect of our time, also is a Furd grad.
