Take Two: He's voluntarily putting himself through the meat grinder to try succeeding at a place where no coach has ever found sustained success.
This is the main, maybe only, reason to stick it out with him as long as we can. Yes, "he wants to be here" is a silly platitude, but it's also very much true. I am a faithful subscriber to Occam's Razor and it can somewhat be applied to our current situation. All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the right answer.
- We have a history of mediocrity, speckled with a couple of really high moments and really low moments (more low than high).
- We have a guy who genuinely wants to be the head coach of this program and genuinely cares about the players and developing them in life.
- He has shown flashes of getting the program in a better shape than the historical norm.
- He has a gigantic buyout. The how's and why's are irrelevant at this point to the decision that needs to be made.
- Outside of Nicholas Lou Saban Jr. walking through the door, there really is no guarantee that Beamer's replacement would have any better on the field results.
The simplest answer, for now, is to retain Beamer, make any staff adjustments that need to be made and make another run at it. It makes no sense to fire him right now outside of a total collapse and him "losing the team".
If we end the season 2-10 with a blowout in Pickens County, it's all flipped on its head and I don't think Donati has any choice but to make a change, whether that's firing Beamer and promoting Briles or whatever. I don't think that's how it will go. This team is very talented and there are winnable games. The only "no shot" game we have left is UGA (watch us win that one haha), but I could see us pulling out four more wins, including upstate and another inappropriate condiment dump type of bowl game result. That would keep us at, and some would say above, our historical norm.