This sucks regarding recruiting...
- Thread starter dawgstudent
- Start date
I get that, sort of, but if we don’t get better at football the money for everything sports will dry up. It really is a new era. We better under stand that…NOW.
Mullen caught a lot of criticism for his recruiting philosophy and the program's messaging ("This is our state," "TSUN," etc.), but those efforts reflected a coherent strategy: establish Mississippi State as the dominant program in the state.
He seemed to believe that sustained success in the SEC started with controlling in-state recruiting and consistently outperforming the bears.
By contrast, Lebby doesn't seem to have any coherent short or long-term strategy.
So you are saying even $10 million cannot get State an established Head Coach? If so, then forget about football.
I’m not talking about some 1st year coach. I’m talking about a guy who has won at G6 or at least FCS at a high level.
this program needs Dan Mullen in the worst kind of way to rejuvenate energy. It is dead. No road dawgs tour. No summer interaction with Bulldog club members.
2027 Rivals Industry Top Football Mississippi Recruits
A list of the top 2027 Football recruits based off of a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all 3 major recruiting media services, including Rivals.www.on3.com
I'm sure there's a thread about this already but I didn't search for it. In the top 4 - Tupelo, Ackerman and Louisville and we didn't get one of them. That's embarrassing.
A guy at the G5 level isn’t anymore of a sure thing at 10 mill than someone for 5 mill. It’s all a crapshoot. And if someone at 10 mill is that sure of a thing a program that’s better than us will likely hire him. Doesnt mean we can’t win. Just have to hire the right guy. And that’s not always a bunch of money from the start
I never understood the argument that Mullen was a poor recruiter.
From what I remember, much of that perception stemmed from losing out on Lashley from West Point...a player who ultimately transferred to State and wasn't really any good.
I’m pretty sure that has been the State philosophy for damn near 60 years. IF WE CAN HIRE THE RIGHT GUY FOR HALF WHAT OTHERS ATE PAYING! How is that working out for us?
MULLEN ain’t walking back through that door!
By your philosophy of paying less for the “right guy”, while everybody else is paying $8-$10 million to get a successful guy who has proved at a lower level his vision can work. I know I don’t have to name names for you.
Name some guys who have won at lower levels than the SEC who would come coach in Starkville Ms for $5 million? I’ll hang up and listen!
No one is paying 8-10 million for a guy that’s not rock solid proven. And the schools that can hire that are few as far between. Go look up Cignetti and Kiffins first salary. Hell sarkisian made $5 mill at TX. No one worth 10 mill is coming to state for 10 mill. I feel like some of yall think we go on Indeed and say “Hiring a HC for $3-4.5 mill per year”. Thats not how it works. If someone we love would come for $10 mill per year we would pay it. But thats never gonna be the case. We didn’t miss on Billy Napier bc of money. And he also wasn’t worth $10 mill
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This whole thread proves the point. We don’t even know what we’re looking for in a head coach. Sad, so sad.
While the Bears seem to be clicking on all cylinders, we have a giant cluster 17 going on. Lebby isn’t rallying the fanbase. We’re getting lapped in recruiting. Fanbase is disgruntled, and we haven’t even blown our first game of the season yet. This sucks.
Well honestly it started with Arnett then we followed it up by hiring another experienced guy. We had a lot of momentum with Leach and we really should have gotten an experience coach after
Huff doesn't excite me at all. And you think Mullen had one foot out the door while he was here? Huff hits the portal quicker than TJ Finley.
On the other hand, maybe that's what we need. A dude with real head coaching experience, who rebuilds quickly and isn't an "offensive guru."
Can't really blame Keenum for promoting Arnett. HOWEVER, Arnett's decision to blow up the offense in an off-season was one the worst strategic moves we could've made and it put us on the path we're on now. Had he maintained some continuity with the scheme, I think 2023 turns out differently. Ultimately he wasn't suited to be a head coach in the SEC, but it could've set the next coach in a better position.
I’ve never seen the divide between the two programs be this big before. It almost seems insurmountable.
YES YOU CAN. He knew Leach wasn’t in good health & there rumors all around about he was going to retire for health reasons. And he knew Cohen was at the very least looking around & interviewing for another job. YOU HAVE TO HAVE A PLAN. And Keenum didn’t have one when he really needed one.
I think we all know what we’re not looking for, though. And that is the current HC.
I’m just dumbfounded by the logic of bringing him back for Year 3. The rhetoric of “we’ll never be able to make a good hire if we don’t give him at least 3 years”, knowing full well that he isn’t going to get 3 full years anyway even if he’s still the HC for the first game of Year 3. It doesn’t make sense.
That is the dumbest reason ever to keep a coach. It boils down to let’s keep a coach we know sucks instead of hiring a coach who may or may not suck & might actually be good.
We know someone that plays at Memphis and I'm told it is a real gangster locker room. Guns, drugs, etc. I believe a player was just arrested yesterday on a weapons charge in fact?
They would probably beat us though.
Don't forget about the referee's actually giving MSU a break for a change in the Arkansas game and letting Lebby win the Futility Bowl.
To give Arnett some credit, there was a SIGNIFICANT push from a group of people in his ear to make him change. He was too young and green to stand up to it. They convinced him that his defense is what won those games and the offense held us back because we alleged didn't RuNdAbAwL.
Those people still exist today, and pretty easy to spot. I bet if you cross-checked rundabawlers and interlockers you'd get some matches
Truth.
There is a segment of our fanbase that looks at what Alabama has done and thinks we can do it because we had some success with Jackie when the SEC (particularly the SEC West) was dog ****.
Truth is, the best chance for Mississippi State to be competitive in the current era of the SEC and college football is to have an elite defense and a dual threat QB running a spread offense. I believe that the powers that be have determined that as well, and the current setup with Kamario and Arnett as DC shows that. The problem is that we don't have the players to compete in the SEC. KT may leave on a stretcher this year because the offensive line is going to be that bad. Mullen got labeled as a lazy recruiter because he missed on some big guys, but truth is we had a lot of NFL talent come through Starkville while Mullen was here, so the recruiting was not as bad as some of you remember it.
This will likely be the last year of the Lebby experiment. Keenum loves Zach Arnett so he will likely be the interim, but its time for a new, fresh look at Mississippi State football. I like Huff as well, but there are a few options that we could get.
On the surface it sounds good. I personally think many different offenses could work and we shouldn't rule out any of them. And one thing our fanbase needs to get straight is what a 'dual threat' QB really is. Sleepy Robinson wasn't a dual threat QB. He was a running QB. Blake Shapen was more dual threat than that guy. Very few QBs truly have the skill to be considered dual threat, and those guys are elite and don't come around too often. We've had one in our history - Dak Prescott.
So first thing we need to do is decide if we want to be run based or pass based on offense. And commit to that.
Agree, and this is a fact of life we better get used to. We can get defensive talent but we aren't ever going to be overloaded on offense.
So the second thing is, we know we have to be different in scheme, and also strategically recruit to that scheme. But defense is always the priority (Mullen knew this).
We had that with Mike Leach. And the fanbase hated it. I mean think about it - we had a good defense, we had a time consuming offense that was different. I didn't think so when we hired him, but we damn near had a perfect setup to be as consistently good as possible. Really the difference between 7/8 win years and 9/10 win years was the QB talent, and that ain't a secret, we all knew Noodle was limited but still did a good job. What would Sawyer Robertson have done?
I mean we've tried this run-based stuff for years. We still lose unless we happen to have a good defense. And if we want to stand around waiting for a true dual threat QB, we'll be waiting a long time. Better strategy, to me, is go all-in on a passing attack, and hope that one day one of your passers can also run. But I'm not married to that......run-based can also work if we do it right. Most important thing is to stick to it, and stick to hired older, experienced coaches.
I don’t know if it’s apathy or despair but I feel like our only hope is that Lebby magically turns it around. I can’t imagine pulling any good hire of a coach without just getting extremely lucky. And that luck won’t be that a proven guys says yes, it would be that the hopeful up and comer turns out to actually be good. For every 1 Cignetti, there are thousands of Napiers. I don’t like the chances of whoever we could hire actually being better than Lebby.
Again, thats why we aren't doing the hiring and firing or the scheming. The school has professionals doing all that while posters opine about what will and won't work. If anybody here knew much about it they would be doing it instead of posting about it with a bunch of accountants that are going to Red Rock to watch Widespread Panic
Well our professionals aren’t doing a very good job. At this point I figure it might be time to give a few Sixpack posters a try.
He'd be here for 27 guaranteed only, the man is always looking for his next job. I really don't understand the MCS (Mullen Cuck Syndrome) some of our fanbase has.
If we knew what we were looking for, we could narrow it down to a few candidates that fit. Begin with the end in mind or whatever.
And heck, if we had a good reason we hired Lenny and why we should stick with him, people would support it. Because all I see right now is Selmon getting the easy guy and us wanting to be like Ole Miss.
What professionals? Sports industry is straight overrun by incompetence, based on who you are, where you played, etc. And shaming posters who may or may not be better, but didn't have the same lot in life, is 100% 2006-ish Genespage.
"the coaches know better than you"
Do they? Did Croom? I mean they obviously are more familiar with how the game works but it's not hard to see some obvious flaws in the way some of this works. It's not lost on me that some of the best administrators and coaches are ones that weren't the best players.