Steve Reporting this morning

[engie]

Yep. Pay him and lock him up this time with all the interest and all the openings and the whole narrative about Mullen and MSU changes. Has potential to give us even more stability in a time we've already been the second most stable program in the conference. The stability and consistency is starting to really play or us in recruiting. A chance to take another two steps forward.

 

[MSUDawgFan86]

At this time I honestly don’t trust in his ability to recruit and coach consistently to bury Ole Miss. Would love to be wrong but he just had back to Back 2 of his worst coaching games in his tenure. He’s had some bad losses to Ole miss. 2012 was a bad loss too bc we had a senior laden team and they didn’t have anything but Donte Moncrief. 2014 was a bad loss. 2015 and last night were bad losses. Some of you can continue to get on your knees and fluff him if you want but I can’t. He’s not a $6 million coach at this point. He’s got a losing record in the conference. His record against top 25 is horrendous. When he gets his raise to stay and he will you better believe the damn expectations are going up. Top 10 pay should equal top 10 results. No more sunshine ******** from the State media about how we should be thankful for 7 wins and a bowl while paying his overrated butt $6 million. Him and Sexton are playing us for fools bc they know the fanbase will clamor to keep him bc the past is so pathetic.

 

[engie]

Everyone understands that you've lost it. No need to give the same explanation a handful of broken records always roll through here for the 364 days after an Egg Bowl loss. We've already heard it all before.

 

[Msubulldogfan1]

Some guy on twitter posted the meeting with UT was cancelled.

Silly season indeed

 

[engie]

They definitely did not meet today.

 

[was21]

Not early anyway since Mullen was ringing a bell for the Salvation Army at Walmart in Starkvegas

 

[MaroonNation]

If Mullen is stupid enough to jump to Tennessee he deserves the hornet’s nest. And the fact that his mind always seems to be preoccupied with interests from other schools while he should be preparing for the Egg Bowl tells me he would be happier elsewhere. If that 17’er thinks we will pay him 7 million he can straight get 17’ed. He will be really concerned about doing right for his family when they **** can him in 4 years.

 

[civildawg88]

Some guy on twitter posted the meeting with UT was cancelled.

Silly season indeed

Tennessee people are saying that the “meeting” was just something put out by Sexton to get Mullen a raise. Who knows what is true at this point

 

[MSUDawgFan86]

Everyone understands that you've lost it. No need to give the same explanation a handful of broken records always roll through here for the 364 days after an Egg Bowl loss. We've already heard it all before.

Heh I share my opinion and you share yours. I don’t berate your dumbass opinions so don’t berate mine. If you don’t like it don’t read it. Im sure you would pull Mullen’s pants down and pleasure him at the 50 yard line at Davis Wade to keep him from leaving but not all State fans share your opinion so kiss my ***.

 

[HumpDawgy]

There are some truly ridiculous opinions in this thread.
Losing to Ole Miss sucks. I hate it. But statements like "for top 10 money I expect top 10 results!" as if coaches salary is the only factor are just absurd.

I think it is absurd and ridiculous to invest in something that gives you less in return out of fear for the unknown. I want to keep Mullen, but not at that price. If he wins those championships he mentioned before, then we should pay him top pay. Not from what I saw last night. Dickie, you can invest in my business and I will make sure to get you back 50 to 60% of your investment. Sound good?

 

[amcdan2000]

Maybe it's the fact that they don't have to play a schedule so hard every year to get to SEC championship. But wouldn't trust any of those backstabbing bastards at UT for anything. Family friends of Johnny Majors and that TN bunch are two-faced.

 

[Bulldog Bruce]

We lost this year to pretty extreme unfortunate circumstances. The previous years we lost to a team that was cheating to an extreme level. They don't really count and will probably be vacated anyway.

 

[jethreauxdawg]

Forget what it costs to be a top 10 coach

I think it is absurd and ridiculous to invest in something that gives you less in return out of fear for the unknown. I want to keep Mullen, but not at that price. If he wins those championships he mentioned before, then we should pay him top pay. Not from what I saw last night. Dickie, you can invest in my business and I will make sure to get you back 50 to 60% of your investment. Sound good?

Think about what it costs to not be a bottom feeder. There is an absurd arms race in college football. We can either continue improving incrementally with a known commodity, or we can gamble on saving money and run the risk of Croom 2.0 (or if you forget the last 8 years and a couple random outliers, you can call it "standard mississippi state football"). The only reason people think we will be fine without Mullen, is because they think we can't possibly be as bad as we were before. Why not just pony up a relatively small additional amount and keep the person that is responsible for this euphoric amnesia?

 

[knot2brite]

The impact he's had on attendance, giving, and exposure is well worth a raise. We've been consistently pretty good, and it looks like we're in a position to take another step forward.

 

[III.sixpack]

There are some truly ridiculous opinions in this thread.
Losing to Ole Miss sucks. I hate it. But statements like "for top 10 money I expect top 10 results!" as if coaches salary is the only factor are just absurd. You're not paying Mullen a top-10 salary because he's necessarily one of the top 10 coaches in the country. You pay him that because he's built this program from a cellar dweller to a top-half SEC program in a given year. Because he's gone to 8 straight bowl games when the previous school record was THREE IN A ROW. Sure it's easier to go to bowl games now and it took a miracle to go last year. But the fact is that last year was a true outlier- the worst season since his first- and we won 6 games.
Mullen has raised our floor. He's raised our ceiling and averaged 8 wins per year for 8 years. What's the longest time frame in school history in which you can say we averaged 8 wins per year? Someone else can look it up but I'd venture to say it's not more than 3-4 years. He's got this thing rolling like never before.
But you know what the best part is? The arrow is still trending up! Next year looks like it could be his best team yet. He'll sign a top-20 class in 2018, and the 2019 class in MS is the best in a long time and we're in great position to take the lion's share of it.
Ultimately, you'll pay him a top 10 salary because if you don't, someone else will. Guaranteed. And then where are we? Rolling the dice on someone else. Scrambling to keep our recruiting class together. No thanks. I'll take the sure thing.

Amen, well said

 

[bulldawg1063]

I think there is a way to structure a new contract similar to the one he has now, and keep everyone happy. Up his base to the $5.5M/year range, and then put in performance incentives that could take him up another $1.5M or $2.5M/year if he maxed them out with several milestones he could hit along the way to earn parts of the incentive pay.

Unfortunately the state of Mississippi does not allow longer than a 4 year contract, so we will never be able to compete on schools offering Dan a 7 year contract.

 

[Mayor of Little London]

Not early anyway since Mullen was ringing a bell for the Salvation Army at Walmart in Starkvegas

I’m pretty sure it was Kroger. I do agree with your point.

 

[KurtRambis4]

I don't agree

with the statement that Thursday was on Dan's coaching. We had to play our true freshman qb the majority of the game (completely changed everything) and still put up a ridiculous amount of yards.

We lost because of one reason and one reason only, Fitz going out.

Also, this narrative that he "can't recruit" needs to be put to bed.

He's the best recruiter we've ever had.

Now if you want to argue that he's not on par with AL or AU or LSU (or OM, one of the dirtiest programs in the history of college football), go ahead, but it's silly.

 

[dickiedawg]

I think it is absurd and ridiculous to invest in something that gives you less in return out of fear for the unknown. I want to keep Mullen, but not at that price. If he wins those championships he mentioned before, then we should pay him top pay. Not from what I saw last night. Dickie, you can invest in my business and I will make sure to get you back 50 to 60% of your investment. Sound good?

It's not about "fear of the unknown". It's about the statistical near-certainty that the unknown is worse than what we have now.

If you could hire a sure-fire top 10 coach just by paying a top-10 salary, I'd agree with you. But who are the top 10 coaches?

1. Saban
2. Meyer
3. Franklin
4. Dabo
5. Jimbo
6. Petersen
7. Patterson

These are 7 that I think are pretty close to locks for the top 10 (no particular order). It's a foggy picture after that- some names for discussion:
Ferentz
Chip Kelly
Harbaugh
Brian Kelly
Kirby Smart

I'm sure there are more in this tier that I'm leaving out, but that's not the point. That's 12 names. You think any of them are coming to Starkville for $6MM/year? Point being you can't just go out and hire a top-10 coach just by paying top-10 money.

Even if you could, hiring any name on that list outside of Nick Saban doesn't guarantee you "top-10 results". It's hard to win consistently at Mississippi State. We have 100+ years of history to prove that. But that's what we've done for the last 8 years.

Now I won't pretend to know the ins and outs of our athletic budget. But if we can afford to match any offer plus guarantee competitive salaries for Grantham and the others, I dont think it makes sense to let him walk.