“Fleck said the reason Iowa and Wisconsin consistently won eight, nine, and 10 games a year was because those programs took the time to establish cultures, while Minnesota constantly changed its culture every few years, all the while falling more and more behind with every coaching change. Iowa has employed two head coaches since 1979 (Hayden Fry, Kirk Ferentz) while Wisconsin was led by Barry Alvarez from 1990 through 2005, and then by Alvarez’s hand-picked successors thereafter.”
----Insert Houston where it says Minnesota and you understand our issues and why Dana’s hire is so important. Look up the road at TCU/Gary Patterson for local example of the same. We must have consistency and a culture of consistency to be successful. We’ve had coaches who wanted to stay for a long time (Levine and Applewhite) but they couldn’t coach, now we have a winner who wants to stay.
Since you mentioned Patterson, 7th place in a weak B12 and possibly missing a bowl would get you fired at UH if Dana had been here as long as Patterson at TCU. But I understand the culture aspect, we need a HTOWN take over, so we keep the Ed Oliver’s home. CDH knows how to build a program, as much as we would like to be good this year, all things point to a big turn around next year.
Personally, I thought we have done quite well over the years without the Ed Olivers. If we can get the kind of guys Yeoman used to get, and take time to develop them, we could do just fine. Look at Levine’s last recruiting class, those guys did really well and several are playing in the NFL right now.
Sometimes when a team gets a “super stud” player it can cause more problems than rewards.
Here is an excerpt from the article I thought important:
Wisconsin didn’t get to be Wisconsin by firing Barry Alvarez at the first sign of trouble, or the second, or the third — Alvarez went 11-22 in his first three seasons, before going 10-1-1 in Year 4. But that’s just one side of the equation, though. The other is that Alvarez didn’t leave at the first sign of success, either.
When Yeoman was our HC we had a lot of ups and a lot of downs. But, we did well overall. Anyone expecting a long string of ups and no downs at any school is unrealistic, especially at non-flagship type schools such as UH. I look forward to sustained quality teams and can handle an occassional down year here and there. But, that takes stability, tin horn Toms, looking to bail and cash in on a successful season, are not the answer.