Since Bill Yeoman retired in December, 1986 we are now on our 9th. Head Coach.
Essentially we hire a new Head Coach every 4 years.
Of the 8 Coaches before Applewhite 4 of them moved on to what they saw as a better job(Pardee, Briles, Sumlin, and Herman) and 4 were fired(Jenkins, Helton, Dimel, and Levine).
50% of our Head Coaching hires were fired. Apparently bad hiring decisions at that time.
Of the 50% who left for another job their tenures were: 4(Pardee), 5(Briles), 4(Sumlin), and 2(Herman). About 4 years per Coach.
The recruiting problems all of this creates have been massive. Just look at our current roster to see this.Once injuries strike we are doomed.
How about a Head Coach who is successful and stays at least 10 years? Is that Applewhite?
If not Applewhite then Chris Pezman needs to find the man who can stay and succeed.
A very successful coach will not stay here 10 years…P5 will poach. Mediocre coach stays here 10 years you can play the games at Delmar and have room left
The cycle will repeat until we’re P5. Best practice is to hire the Best candidate available not the one you think will stay. The right hire comes in and wins and when he leaves it’s an attractive job you get the next guy. Hires like Levine and Applepie set us back. If we lose two straight to Tulane Apple needs to be dismissed.
With no chance to play for MNC means successful coaches most likely to leave. Hence the gross anti-trust and rigging of the system. They want to slowly kill off half of D1.
Except for when the previous guy conveniently leaves after riding his star QB and/or a whole bunch of seniors to glory (looking at you Sumlin and Herman). This isn’t an advocacy post for CMA, although I’m not ready to give up on him even if he loses to Tulane and Memphis, but I think a lot of outside hires would look at who all is leaving from the previous year’s team and factor that into their decision on whether to take the job. As has been documented extensively on this board, Herman left after Ward graduated. The cupboard wasn’t exactly bare for the next year, but Ward was a star and we didn’t know if there was another star to replace him. Also, Herman failed to recruit DBs and is the reason we are in pretty dire straits on that side of the ball right now. An outside hire contemplating multiple offers would take this kind of thing into consideration. At least he should anyway.
I might turn that around and ask how could we afford not to? That’s why we have to find a way much like Levine.
Applewhite’s base salary ($650K) is a good bit higher than Levine’s ($250K) though. That said, we managed to eat $1M (due over 4 years) for Levine. It would take around double that over 3 years to get rid of Applewhite. In any event, the buyout would be over time which helps and could be offset by not losing season tickets. I don’t know how much though and that’s a hard thing to estimate.
I think it’s a year early. We are going to have to win big next year for it to make sense to keep him. JMO.