General Thread

He did not want to leave OSU, but he knew it was the right thing to do for everyone.

I deny this on a couple levels.

There are some who thought him resigning from OSU would be the right thing to do. He had clearly lost any edge he had almost a decade before. His insistence about being a comfy job blanket for his friends when they did not deserve to be coaching at OSU was his choice. If he didn’t have the will to do his job for OSU, not his friends, then he clearly was not reading any writing on the wall. The writing clearly stated, “Do your job.”

Had he simply jettisoned ballast, he would have risen in many minds. He chose another route. And then he got hammered for all the same stuff anyway. That he chose that path tells me that he did not want to stay at OSU. I can buy the NFL. But to put that into perspective, I would hesitate to rehire DE after all this time and how he constantly says good things about OSU no matter where he’s employed.

The bottom line was that he didn’t want to lie in the bed he’d made. Rather, he wanted to leave. That is clear because leaving was not the right thing to do. Staying and righting the dadgum ship (or at least trying) would have been the right thing to do. It’s not like he would have been out money with the contract restructure. He would only be out of time if he chose poorly.

Recruiting and being a genuine, no-ego guy are two different things. I can go for no machismo. But no ego is a detriment to being a leader. You need to have the surety that you can make the right decisions always, the humility to admit when you fail, and the resolve to correct and progress from there.

Maybe we should apply cussing to this?

Coaches in football, unlike basketball, treat it like a brotherhood. If a guy is a good coach and has a good reputation, they get offered other jobs.

Coaching in college football is an old boys’ club. It’s who you know, not what you know. And the only way to break into that club from the outside is to be a good recruiter. So many good leaders are lost to the real world because the old boys’ club controls the entry into the coaching market. This puts a premium on good coaching within a stagnant market, which raises costs. Hoops has too broad a base and does not lose as much money as football does because it costs so much less to facilitate as a sport. In fact, hoops is more than likely profitable for most schools. There are a bunch who have no football team and run their ADs in the black due to hoops. This demands a culture of merit in coaching. Sure, there’s still some old boys’ club bullshit out there. If there wasn’t, schools wouldn’t hire head coaches who were of this certain coaching tree and/or is a great recruiter… only to find out they stepped in it.

To end, yes. You want some veteran leadership for a young coach. But you also have to have standards. If you don’t have basic best practice management in place, you don’t have any leadership, let alone veteran. As stated above, I would also stew about this if it were DE. But I would be tempted to rationalize everything with a neat deal as you’ve done here. Because time doesn’t allow me to forgive old debts. It helps me forget them.

I could probably rattle off a good ten veteran coaches who would be better fits than the guaranteed schisms of MR or DE. And I guarantee two or three would have willingly signed on if asked. As it is, we have one who asked us, defining his own role in the process.