Nuggets of Wisdom: Charlie Strong Done After Season
Nuggets of Wisdom – Week of 9/1240 ACRES OF CHAOSUsually when I’ve posted these “nuggets” I try to cover several different topics. But after the Horns performance Saturday against Okie State and the breaking news that Charlie Strong is out at the end of theseason, we will just stick to one.
Our loyal listeners and readers know that contrary to my usual anti-horns stance, I thought that Charlie Strong was the right hire. Mack had basically mailed it in at the end of his run and Charlie certainly had a long list of challenges facing him. He came in and made a huge impact on the players immediately and turning the culture from “country club” to a top tier professional college team. Yes, they are professional athletes, not student athletes. You could understand the struggle in year one, but he went 6-6. Problem was you saw somethings in that first year that you are seeing still. Losing close games, getting whipped by teams and looking lost. The next year, you get beat by Notre Dame, lose close calls on special teams mishaps with Cal and Okie State, get shutout by Iowa State, yet somehow they beat a much better CFP quality OU team badly.
Now this year, after reluctantly fixing his offensive staff, UT shows up and beats at the time a highly ranked Notre Dame team. Then UTEP (nuff said). And then the wheels come off. Going to Cal on the road without Goff, you give up 400 yards in the air and 50 points. Then again, Okie State! 3 Blocked extra points, which you can go a whole season and not see one, let alone three in a game. And the defense, with Charlie more involved looked like they didn’t have any idea where to be or how to defend the pass. Check out the highlights on ESPN and you will see the Cowboys catch balls surrounded by 3 or 4 defenders and beat them all.
WHEN TO FIRE A COACH?This is a hard question. LSU certainly missed the mark by not making the decision to cut ties with Miles last year. And rumors abound that they were concerned that he’d win “too much” and save his job again. With Charlie, he faced an uphill challenge with the Big Money Men from the get go as former AD Patterson tried to play the game his way and leave them out of the process. That left a long lasting bad relationship.The problem with college coaching now is that the BMM’s and Ads know that this is big business. Its not amateur sports. Those stadiums, scoreboards and suites don’t build themselves. So when you lose the support of the base (the donor base, not talk show radio base) you really have to look at moving on.The problem is when. LSU decided to cut Miles and let Ed Orgeron see what he can do with this as an extended tryout. But the problem with this is Orgeron has seen this before and he’s not a big enough name for LSU to be satisfied with. Secondly, how in the world can LSU recruit right now? Besides die-hard LSU kids, you have no idea what coach or system will be in place next year so you don’t know if you want to sign that one-sided commitment that you can’t get out of.UT has now firmly placed themselves in the same boat. The coaches now know they will not be here next year so they have to coach AND position themselves for another job. And 90 some odd 18-22 year olds now know that their coaches won’t be hear so discipline may go out the window and one more loss, probably to OU is going to just derail this thing.
UT should rip the bandaid off now and don’t play this game. You are looking at losing not only this season (done) but next season as well.
Our loyal listeners and readers know that contrary to my usual anti-horns stance, I thought that Charlie Strong was the right hire. Mack had basically mailed it in at the end of his run and Charlie certainly had a long list of challenges facing him. He came in and made a huge impact on the players immediately and turning the culture from “country club” to a top tier professional college team. Yes, they are professional athletes, not student athletes. You could understand the struggle in year one, but he went 6-6. Problem was you saw somethings in that first year that you are seeing still. Losing close games, getting whipped by teams and looking lost. The next year, you get beat by Notre Dame, lose close calls on special teams mishaps with Cal and Okie State, get shutout by Iowa State, yet somehow they beat a much better CFP quality OU team badly.
Now this year, after reluctantly fixing his offensive staff, UT shows up and beats at the time a highly ranked Notre Dame team. Then UTEP (nuff said). And then the wheels come off. Going to Cal on the road without Goff, you give up 400 yards in the air and 50 points. Then again, Okie State! 3 Blocked extra points, which you can go a whole season and not see one, let alone three in a game. And the defense, with Charlie more involved looked like they didn’t have any idea where to be or how to defend the pass. Check out the highlights on ESPN and you will see the Cowboys catch balls surrounded by 3 or 4 defenders and beat them all.
WHEN TO FIRE A COACH?This is a hard question. LSU certainly missed the mark by not making the decision to cut ties with Miles last year. And rumors abound that they were concerned that he’d win “too much” and save his job again. With Charlie, he faced an uphill challenge with the Big Money Men from the get go as former AD Patterson tried to play the game his way and leave them out of the process. That left a long lasting bad relationship.The problem with college coaching now is that the BMM’s and Ads know that this is big business. Its not amateur sports. Those stadiums, scoreboards and suites don’t build themselves. So when you lose the support of the base (the donor base, not talk show radio base) you really have to look at moving on.The problem is when. LSU decided to cut Miles and let Ed Orgeron see what he can do with this as an extended tryout. But the problem with this is Orgeron has seen this before and he’s not a big enough name for LSU to be satisfied with. Secondly, how in the world can LSU recruit right now? Besides die-hard LSU kids, you have no idea what coach or system will be in place next year so you don’t know if you want to sign that one-sided commitment that you can’t get out of.UT has now firmly placed themselves in the same boat. The coaches now know they will not be here next year so they have to coach AND position themselves for another job. And 90 some odd 18-22 year olds now know that their coaches won’t be hear so discipline may go out the window and one more loss, probably to OU is going to just derail this thing.
UT should rip the bandaid off now and don’t play this game. You are looking at losing not only this season (done) but next season as well.
The podcast Wisdom of the Wannabes is embedded on this page from an open RSS feed. All files, descriptions, artwork and other metadata from the RSS-feed is the property of the podcast owner and not affiliated with or validated by Podplay.