Honest question here NS. What would have been the correct move in your opinion? I personally think that Alberts was a bit handcuffed by the size of the buyout @$20M. I believe there were only a few option.
1.) Retain SF and staff as it was. This puts the team in a 'lame duck' status with fans disgruntled, recruits knowing the staff is probably on the way out. Portal is still potentially an issue with players seeing writing on the wall.
2.) Do nothing until the end of the season then keep SF and change the Asst coaches. Essentially that is the same as this made decision with the continued uncertainty for recruiting through the early signing period. Same portal transfer issue occurs.
3.) Fire SF immediately(staff obviously gone also). Coaching turnover -again- with a lost recruiting year -again-(might be lost anyway looking at commits). We have seen that movie a few times. Transfer portal issues rinse, repeat.
4.) Fire SF & staff at the end of the season. See #3 with a slower timeframe for the next coach to catch up and recruits get a waiver to decommit anyway. Transfer portal still a problem.
Maybe there is a better choice that I am not thinking of. I don't love this solution by any stretch and don't know that SF will be the answer but at this point, every choice is a bad one in my opinion. The restructuring sure does make it easier to change Frost next year if it comes to that.
As far as the assistants, I hate to see anyone lose a job, but O-Line and QB have been obvious lack of development/improvement. Lubick, I honestly don't know if he was a problem. Held, I actually would say the O-Line issues probably made the RB group look worse than it is.
I've stated what I think should have been done, many times.
The staff are not the problem, in fact they have just been made scapegoats for the way Scott runs his program.
The first couple of years, Frost didn't recruit any offensive linemen.. but recruited lots of injured running backs.. he brought some d linemen over to the offensive side, recruited a wide out here and there, that then left, along with running off good throwing qb's, while he recruited running qb's, and then he starts recruiting big linemen all of a sudden, at the expense of athletic ability.. and then gets a bunch of nice receivers.. it's been all over the map.
Even a high school coach will tell you that they usually only play upperclassmen, and it's the same way in college. There is no excuse for having Freshman lineman playing in year 4.
This is not Austin's fault, it's Frost and the way he handles the roster and constant tinkering with everything, including being too subjective about the personnel getting the playing time.
Frost is the one who is running the offense, tinkering with it, not the OC or any of the offensive staff.. they just run the kids through drills.
So in my opinion, the staff were not at fault, the player and roster management by Frost was and still is the problem.
I would have promoted Chins to the interim head coach spot during the first bye week, and just fired Frost. At least Chins can execute his responsibilities. It would have been worth seeing how he did with 4 games left (and no worry of burning redshirts) to finish out the season. He could have played anyone he wanted to give us a look of what things might look like next year.
To me, that would have been the easiest move and least disruptive.
Now the entire offense, has to learn new coaches, who may not really understand what Scott wants anyway, and they lost their position coaches. How do you think they feel about that?
Do you think players will be searching for the portal after this? I do.
The admin still then had the ability to hire someone outside, if they thought Chins didn't handle things well, but I thought it was the best scenario.
Like you said, this recruiting class is already a lame duck, so getting someone in new, would have allowed a positive light on things. Now the class will be small, and we are going to lose players. How's that look for next year?
How many assistants are looking to come work for Frost who will most likely get fired next year? I guess if you're desperate for a job, they will send in their resumes, but I don't think we will be getting better staff than what we had.
For the Administration, they got the buyout reduced, that is about it. They looked at it from a financial standpoint, but they might be further damaging the program.. with the B1G grant money, they probably don't give F about football anymore anyways.
