Also recruiting does need to improve and not to like top 25 but moreso not 110-115 out of 130 fbs high school classes…
Like we are talking about the so-so ness of Ishan Sharma. At least Ishan has power 5 offers, something to which none of our football recruits have somehow lol. Sharma would literally be the crown of the football class. And that’s from a coaching staff more focused on player development then getting the best recruits ever.
I never heard this story either, but it has to be either XXXX or XXXX right? Hmm…and XXXX was Groh, so XXXX?
Edit: removed names as to not impugn the innocent.
I wasn’t there in person so don’t have much of a story lol Matt Johns and some other football players got in a fight at Boyland on late Wednesday or Thursday night Georgia Tech week. Proceeded to start that Saturday. And iirc we actually won that game
Interesting, but I’d need a lot more background before I condemn London for that. There’s plenty of other reasons for hammering him. An alleged bar fight that never made the light of day is low on the radar for me. Sometimes people need their ass beat.
Not really the fight (happens in bars) as much as the starting QB being out on the corner drinking mid way through a week in a game week. And they were still alive for a bowl at that point. You’d never see that from TB or BOC’s teams (with the exception of redshirts). You’d see those guys all of the time out of season but they were buttoned up while their season was happening. And unfortunately under London it was pretty normal
Drinking culture is also where I lay most of the blame for the swoon in the late Starsia era. Almost guarantee Tiffany doesn’t let them drink in season like they used to
Pro move is dont fight at Boyland. Last time I was there for Bc hoop game was all wrestlers bartending and their boys hangin out. Them dudes will have you pretzeled real quick
Yup, gotta check the corners and know your surrounding.
Guys gotta be smart about what they are doing and where they are. I remember the 48 hour rule back in my day which worked well enough.
I remember one year where the team leaders credited their national championship to a pledge they made to each other to quit drinking in season.
Yup don’t think it was a coincidence that was Starsia’s last title team. And the following season, presumably when the culture was still influenced by that pledge, was his last good team. Ken Clausen was (and probably still is) the man. Never understood why they didn’t carry that pledge forward
Random thought but wonder where TE goes after this. I really do feel for him and yes I know he’s making good money while tanking our program but just hard to ignore the human side of this especially with what the team went through last year. I hope he finds success at his next stop and wonder if that’s HC at a G5 or back to being a coordinator where he already has proven success.
Great question. It’s unfortunate he was delt a terrible hand and he’s doing the best he can, it’s just not good enough. Sadly too often this happens to coaches and they never get a chance to climb back up the mountain for a P5 job. The current campaign is the sort of thing that can end careers. Hopefully he goes off and finds a soft landing spot in a coaches rehab similar to Saban’s staff and we see him again in 4-5 years at a G5 and maybe eventually a P5
He’ll end up somewhere making better money than most of us would dream of, but you’re absolutely right - this probably is the death knell in terms of ever getting a P5 head coaching job. Still think he’ll be able to at least land as a coordinator at a good program though.
Depending on how you look at it, worse case scenario he becomes Mike London and bounces around that D1AA level best case he lands a coordinator gig at at a P5 and eventually an HC at a G5 program.
He will get an assistant job somewhere in the SEC. We’ll lose track of him … then he will get another chance in 5 years at MTSU or something like it.
Same. I used to go to a lot of football games in the early London years, but that was eventually beaten out of me.
2011 was fantastic (though, with the benefit of hindsight, extremely lucky) and 2012 was a disappointment, but in 2013 the QB controversy seemed done and the hope was Watford could at least be steady enough to get back to a bowl game. They beat BYU to open the season with a genuinely good win, got mauled by Oregon but they were like #2 or something so it was fine, and then took care of business vs VMI.
But then they lost a few close ones in a row, and badly needed to right the ship. Younger daughter and I had tickets to see them play… NC State, I think, but maybe it was another NC team. We got off to a fast start, but then over Q2 and Q3, the team had like 6 consecutive 3-and-out possessions. And iirc, every single one was 2 short runs then an incomplete on 3rd and long. The defense was still playing pretty well, but it genuinely felt like the team was throwing the game but no one had told the defense.
The team lost out, but hope sprang eternal and initially I was encouraged when we outplayed then top-10 UCLA for 3 quarters but lost because we gave up 3 defensive TDs in Q2. But then I suddenly realized that represented the absolute ceiling for the team. Even when everything went perfectly, they still found ways to screw it up.
I still try to make at least one/year. I’d hoped to make the W&M game but it didn’t work out so I won’t be making one this year.
The London years were bleak for sure. I kept my season tickets during that timeframe but like @ElliottHoo my attendance began to slow. I ended my season ticket streak during the early Bronco years. For as much as I blame Bronco for things, I don’t blame him for that it was the culmination of End of Groh most of London and Bronco was just the icing on the cake.
Now writing, I realize I have not been inside Scott Stadium for a game since 2016 when I went to see the Hoos Play Duke as part of Bachelor Party No.2. Which makes it even better that I’m making my return in Nov against none other than Duke.
The string of bad QB play from 2006-2015 really tanked our program. We went Olson-McCabe-Sewell-Lalich-Verica-Rocco-Sims-Watford-Lambert-Johns, I don’t think there was a single QB in that list who was even above average for P5 standards. Didn’t help that playcalling for the most part was also abysmal, so much conservative vanilla garbage.
Give this man a trophy he nailed it right there. The QB play post Shaub has been awful. Hagans was fun and solid and Perkins fit a similar mold. But outside of those 2 bright spots the last 18 years have been bleak. And like you said combine that with poor play calling and you have an RFD
London was a terrible coach and program manager, but at least he managed to recruit some talent. For me, London was a bad hire who set the program back, but in the depths of that time, you could look back on a program that had had some success over the previous two staffs and point to some talent in the program and think “we just need to get the right coach to to execute in game and manage the roster better and we can get back to winning seasons and bowl games, and that’s ok with me.”
Well, we’ve had 2 shots at fixing it, and this is where we are.
No, this is the low point. This is really really bad.
I’ve really been back and forth about this. I do think we need to invest in NIL to give TE one last recruiting class and season.
With that being said, it won’t work. I’m almost sure about that. But we can at least tell the next candidates that the NIL and facilities are upgrading…. Whereas if you fired him after this year you’d have to answer tough questions about it happening after year 2, one year after the shooting, and about NIL/facilities.
My ideal choice for the next coach is probably Troy Calhoun from Air Force. He has enough experience running a scheme at a place without talent, but also has coaching ties to the NFL and Wake. So it hasn’t all been triple option(they’re an elite offensive team btw).
He could also bring in Steed Lobatzke(or whatever his name is, I think he was choice 1A after 2J left). Then maybe he can keep Rud and Cox?? Fill out the staff with the GOOD AF guys then use the NFL and Wake connections to snag some other guys.