Jump to content

Mississippi State hiring Mike Leach


August4th

Recommended Posts

On 1/11/2020 at 2:03 AM, ronjon1990 said:

Well, his offenses were typically pretty dang good and his Wazzu teams were major spoilers. Never quite good enough to get to the top, but could be that 1 loss someone better could've done without. Him being gone makes the Pac12 North a bit easier. He's that kind of coach who could make life miserable on the recruiting trail because, while Pullman certainly isn't going to attract a ton of players, they could always nab 1 or 2 someone else wanted. 

As for getting exposed- his talent pool just got that much smaller. At Wazzu, his primary competition was Washington, Oregon, and sometimes USC. The rest of the Pac12 tends to ebb and flow in terms of recruiting. In the SEC, Mississippi State is near the bottom of the recruiting pile and doesn't have a whole lot to offer. Where he might have nabbed a 4* or two away from Oregon or Washington who wanted to stay close to home, he's not going have that luxury in Starkville. Even taking away LSU and Alabama as the undoubted cream of the crop, Starkville can't compare with Auburn, College Station, or Oxford. It might edge Fayetteville in some folks' eyes. And that's just in their division. Mississippi State also isn't competing with Ole Miss, A&M, or Auburn in terms of resources, and it's arguable they fall below Arkansas as well. Again, that's just in their division. Point being, Mississippi State isn't a place many flock to. They aren't the same brand as most of their division. Not to mention it's located in an armpit. 

He wanted out of Pullman, supposedly, in large part to recruiting and resources, making Mississippi State a puzzling decision outside of a big payday. All he's really done is go from a tough place to recruit with limited resources but where winning 6+ games gave him God-like status to an equally hard sell where 6 games could get him fired in a year or two, and unlike the Pac12 North where he could have found his way into the Pac12 Championship or steadily sniffing it, he's playing in a division where the talent gap between the top 3 and the rest is wider than the Pac12's entire conference and his ceiling is almost certainly going to be blocked by LSU, Bama, and Auburn no matter what. So he went from the 2nd/3rd best team in his division to a spot where 4th best is probably the absolute best he can hope for.  

Aside from money being his main motivation, the move makes zero sense really. His teams are probably going to spend the next two years getting manhandled right out of the gate (good luck recruiting to a program getting hammered week in and week out) and the margins compared to what he had at Wazzu are much tighter. His reputation will probably suffer and he won't be shortlisted for other big openings that pop up over the next year because he'll have gone from successful and almost revered for turning Wazzu into a contender to just another coach at Mississippi State getting the tar beat out of him.

That, my friend, is how a coach gets exposed as being money motivated and not really that good of a coach in the eyes of many. Hope that explains some of it.

You put it better than I could, great post.  I've been trying to answer the same question and just can't justify this if not for the money.  I kept going to Leach using his name and brand, but in the area he's going to be primarily recruiting from, most of them are better than his brand, at least in my opinion.  He will still be fighting for the scraps coming from the big names, and I think Ole Miss and Arkansas, with their history and the new coaches history in this territory, are going to end up better than Leach.  

I think he would've been great at one of the ACC schools right now given how down that conference is.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, naptownskinsfan said:

I think he would've been great at one of the ACC schools right now given how down that conference is.  

Frankly, I think he would've been a great addition to a MW program. There a few schools in the conference that he could've had better luck recruiting (by MW standards) and possibly built up a team to rival Boise State, if those were his goals. A conference championship or two, he'd be a shoo-in for another bigger name program. He's only 58, so he conceivably has another decade or so to go. 

I also agree with the ACC opinion. The AAC. The Big12. There's places he could've gone to really amp up the resume for sure. 

Washington St and Mississippi St just seems so lateral of a move, only difference being higher expectations against a much tougher schedule. Absent him just merc'ing for the cash, it really is just an illogical move. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, naptownskinsfan said:

You put it better than I could, great post.  I've been trying to answer the same question and just can't justify this if not for the money.  I kept going to Leach using his name and brand, but in the area he's going to be primarily recruiting from, most of them are better than his brand, at least in my opinion.  He will still be fighting for the scraps coming from the big names, and I think Ole Miss and Arkansas, with their history and the new coaches history in this territory, are going to end up better than Leach.  

I think he would've been great at one of the ACC schools right now given how down that conference is.  

Leach to BC would have been amazing 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/10/2020 at 9:08 PM, Ozzy said:

Even Arkansas with Petrino, he was successful with that passing game and the team won a lot but still could never get over LSU and Alabama and now the SEC West is even deeper with Auburn and A&M who are totally legit as well.

Petrino went 2-2 against LSU, but yeah it was a Cam Newton-led Auburn team that kept him from probably winning the SEC in 2010. The thing that sucks is he also went 3-0 against A&M but after he wrecked his bike we haven't beaten them since.

Still hesitant to lump A&M in with Auburn, LSU and Alabama until they at least win the division once but they definitely recruit like them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...