“Ya, but...."

I was thinking of all the successful and unsuccessful hires our program has made in its various sports. There have been some that have been really good and some that have been really bad. The good hires seemed like they needed no justification-Herman was coming off a Broyles award season where he was recognized as the best coordinator in football and oh by the way just won a NC with a third string QB while he was OC. One thing did stand out to me about the bad hires, when talking about them after they were initially hired people almost always used some sort of qualification to describe their past. This usually started with a “ya, but…”. For example, James Dickey was met with huge skepticism because he hadn’t been a head coach in about 10 years and his last seasons at tech were bad. When his few supporters would talk about him it was usually something along the lines of “Ya, but his teams were hit with probation and thats why you saw a fall off”. Similarly with Levine who was an unorthodox hire because he didn’t have your standard OC/DC/HC background it was “Ya but the players love him”. Or “ya but Sumlin recommended him/he’s a great recruiter/nice guy, etc”. With Applewhite it was “Ya but highschool coaches recommeded him”.

Now, I know Applewhite will be here for at least another year but I do expect some staff changes. I think when evaluating his new hires the above rule will apply and it did during his first round of hires. With Brian Johnson who was fired from his first job as OC at Utah it was “ya but he was too young and has probably learned now” DiOnofrio “Ya he sucked at Miami and was out of work for a year but his defenses at Temple were good and he would have been Orlando’s choice as DC”. When guys like Orlando, Holgersen, Kingsbury Jason Philips, etc. were hired no one needed to justify those hires or begin the conversation with “Ya, but…"

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Good post. I think we need to go with the hottest up and comers from here on out. It’s clear UH is a coaching carousel whether they leave or we fire them so we might as well get the best and win even if it is only for a couple years at a time.

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After coach Yeoman had been here just a modest amount of time he was hung in effigy and he turned out alright. Applewhite needs to have the chance to put this thing together and develop his own players. Not everyone strikes gold the first time out like Herman did…

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Either OC or DC or both have to go. This team has to be better coached. We have a promising young QB in King as well as Oliver back next year. We need to be targeting a 10 win season next year and our current OC and DC will no doubt get in the way of that.

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Any big public school. In a recruiting hotbed is going to be a carousel for talented coaches. The rides are just shorter because success is easier to achieve.

UH, Memphis, UCF, USF are the big providers in the AAC

Obviously the game has changed since then. By your argument Levine should still be coaching here

Yeoman had a winning season his 1st year followed by two 2 win seasons. It wasn’t until the middle of his 4th year (a 4 win season) until he and Bo Burris were hung in effigy

Not saying we’ll be that bad, but would you be willing to keep Applewhite with 2 win seasons his next 2 years followed by 4 wins? If not, your analogy falls apart

I think selective memory is at work here. Briles was a RB coach at a school that didn’t use their RBs. Dimel had 3 consecutive winning seasons at a historically awful program. Pardee had never coached college ball and ran an offense that was basically the polar opposite of what we ran at the time.

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I’m mostly talking of coaches that had major failures on their resumes as opposed to just being light on experience. Pardee was never a failure before coming to UofH. Same for briles. Dimel looked good on the surface but if you dig deeper there were some warning signs-he followed Joe tiller who had that program playing at a high level and then proceeded to win less games each and every one of his three seasons there.

Levine refused to change his staff around while losing to schools like UTSA and Texas State…end of story

Yeah I can’t believe Levine had the audacity to retain the OC that lost to Texas State curse his loyalty!!!