Wild that he turned down opportunities to coach in Baton Rouge and Austin …. apparently for one in Starkville.
Whatever floats his boat.
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It’ll be the slightest of silver linings if there was nothing that could be done about it from our administration’s standpoint, but it is a rough look in hindsight knowing there’s been rumors of BOC and Carla not seeing eye to eye on funding.
I just hope this wasn’t a situation where we could have given Oak enough to stick around and decided to divert those funds elsewhere. If not, then it is what it is.
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If Carla is in charge while losing Bennett, Mendenhall, and Oak, I think we need to start having that conversation. Successful coaches have clearly not enjoyed their time post-Littlepage. A lot of that is all of the changes, but she doesn’t seem to have done a good job staying on top of those in an effort to keep them happy.
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I will tell you that Bennett leaving had zero to do with anything Carla Williams did or didn’t do.
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Personally I agree but the flip side is that the landscape drastically changed during her tenure which was totally out of her control. I think her main failures out of that group would be not getting the football facility funded after the orange bowl appearance and not cultivating enough donor support to keep BOC happy forever. Meanwhile we have people giving a ton to pretty much every other sport
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Maybe Oak likes the chronic loud ringing of cowbells?
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I know he was frustrated and probably leaving eventually, but I think there were things she could have done to make his life substantially easier and maybe stalled it a bit. I know a lot of that is his unwillingness to adapt, but we’re painfully behind on NIL, and that certainly didn’t help keep him happy. There were ways to take it out of his face and off his plate, and we were not proactive about that.
and for what? We just had probably the worst athletic year across all sports in 2 decades. Thank god for Golf and Women’s swimming.
other AD’s have adapted! This doesn’t need to be a job you keep until you do something horribly wrong! We can want better!
Nicest facilities in the Sun Belt here we come!
Nope. Tony ran that program exactly the way he wanted to run it until the day he retired.
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I’m just skeptical. Promises are cool but when you have a bunch of other deep pocketed schools in your conference doing the same thing, it’ll be tough. I’m not convinced at all they’re so well resourced that they’ll consistently keep kids away from LSU, A&M, Texas, Ole Miss, UGA, UF, etc.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that in the last 3 years, when resources have become increasingly relevant, 10 SEC teams have made the CWS, and 13 teams have won a regional but MSU has not? They haven’t won a regional since their natty in 2021. Sure maybe their coach sucked but if they’re so well resourced why are they getting leapfrogged by their peers?
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I think the mindset for Oak has always been to just have enough resources and funding to still be competitive. If he doesn’t view our program as being able to do that anymore, then MSU is likely one of the last landing spots for him at least for some time.
Maybe they don’t end up being exactly where those other programs are in terms of funding, but history shows that they have the support to get close.
People can reasonably agree to disagree with the Tony part.
But the perception will be there. And the expectation, not altogether unfair in my estimation, is that you move heaven and earth to stay way in front of any issue that may impact the happiness of a coach like Bennett when you have that asset in house. Sometimes jobs like a power conference AD come with unfair or unrealistic expectations.
Oak isn’t afraid of or put off by NIL. After Texas A&M last summer and in the run up to the House Settlement, there was plenty of lead time to make sure things were secure with another HOF, national title winning coach in house. To get into the position we are potentially in now was a choice.
I don’t expect the reaction to be kind in the AD’s direction on this one if it happens.
I personally will begin to wonder how long it will be before she loses DeSorbo too.
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Desorbo told Stanford “no” when an intermediary reached out as soon as Meehan took the USA Swimming job. So that’s a good sign.
That, along with Texas (and Bowman’s not going anywhere any time soon) and Cal, are the best jobs out there.
Although Auburn and Georgia are sleeping giants with a great history.
Carla/UVA have adapted in basketball. Maybe took longer because Tony did things however he wanted but now we’re spending $10+ mil for a new roster and I’m sure we could’ve done that before this season too. She failed in funding football quick enough and she’s apparently failed in keeping a hall of fame baseball coach while at the same time giving more rev share to an undeserving women’s basketball coach. I’d fire her for those two shortcomings but I wouldn’t be surprised if UVA’s admin is pushing women’s basketball from an optics perspective so that it’s not all about men’s sports
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Not seeing eye to eye on funding is Oak wanting as much as peers and Williams saying we can’t afford that.
Put it this way, MSU has about 20k undergrads and UVA has about 19k, so about the same student population. MSU sponsors 14 sports. UVA sponsors 24. There are no sports that MSU sponsors that UVA doesn’t. UVA has Men’s CC, Soccer and Wrestling, Women’s Rowing and Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse and Swimming. I’m excluding Squash since it’s self funded.
Those 8 additional teams we have are 289 scholarships if fully funded to roster limits. That’s 21.3 million at 73.7k per ship. For comparison, that would cost MSU only 12.5 million for the same number of scholarships based on its lower tuition and cost of living.
So we start off with a smaller pie of money, then have to divide it into more slices.
The only solutions are to make some slices bigger and others smaller (which leads to differences in opinion about funding), make the pie bigger or eliminate some of the slices (or some combo).
But if we eliminated any sports, people would have a conniption. Especially some of the sports that we have that MSU doesn’t. Soccer? Lacrosse? Swimming?
Between maybe 30 mil in additional ships and 20 mil in rev share, that’s 50 mil in additional expenses starting in a few months and I guarantee we didn’t magically find 50 mil in additional revenue.
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Baseball will fall off a cliff. Best case is we end up like GT. Worst case is like VT, Pitt, etc.
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You don’t typically see a long tenured coach like this, especially one that has had consistent success, just up and leave for another opportunity. They are usually in it for the long haul. Something stinks.
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Regardless of whether or not it’s true, I think the optics of Carla allegedly pushing funds towards our women’s basketball program and then subsequently losing a hall of fame coach in baseball are not going to work in her favor.
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It would be an unmitigated disaster. I’m hoping its still just negotiating and a booster is about to step up.
We used to be able to point to the other non-football sports to maintain respectability, but we are hurtling towards complete irrelevance. Odom needs to work and work fast! Or else the entire athletic department is just a pile of Olympic sports and nice buildings.
At least the combined ACC-Big East basketball tournament will be in MSG! That will be fun.
And it shouldn’t