🏈 The Coaching Carousel : UT promotes Kelsey Pope to WR coach

[OldPlayer]

Honestly, what is not to love about Louisiana, but so much more to love about California? Let's see, they will make similar amounts of money, but be forced to pay more in taxes and housing is way more expensive out West. Traffic to and from work is night and day difference. At USC you're competing with Hollywood for goodness sakes. Can you imagine the headaches you would have to deal with like I'm sure Carrol dealt with when it came to Leinhart and Bush? Making money is legal now, so it's a tad different, but could you imagine dealing with brokers if you started actually winning in Hollywood? In Louisiana you have MUCH better food. I like spicy, so cajun wins out big time over luxury restaurants. Life is much cheaper in Baton Rouge than Los Angeles. There would be zero difference in recruiting. LSU has talent everywhere around it and bordering Texas. They can also go nation wide at this point. USC can go nationwide, but how many kids have they taken out of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, and Georgia? Sure, USC doesn't have to with what California produces, but Rivals did a breakdown and it shows California is slipping with their talent and even further with how the talent pans out compared to their rankings. LSU breathes football. USC can't fill a stadium unless they win National Championships. LSU is a shit show, as is USC. Neither is ideal right now for what you have to put up with from an administration standpoint and lingering allegations, but give me LSU by a wide margin.

IMO, the lifestyle in Baton Rouge is much better than LA (unless you like the lifestyle in a big city). However, in terms of the actual job:

LSU pros:

• Play in a better overall conference which will give you visibility
• The market you play in actually cares about football
• The TV exposure is greater since you play in the ET/CT. More people will know the results before they go to bed.
• You have multiple rivalry games which means more exposure. LSU vs. Florida, Alabama, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Arkansas are already on the calendars of SEC fans.

USC pros:

• You're in one of the largest media markets in the country. Even capturing a small percentage of the market is big.
• If you like celebrity status, you can get it in LA. You just have to win.
• It's a private school so state funding isn't as important
• No school in the Pac12 has been dominant over the last many years. You have an opportunity.
• The best team in the conference year-to-year is in the North Division (Oregon) and you may not have to play them until the championship game.
• Your end-of-year rivalry game is against UCLA and they aren't very good (and it may not fall on the final weekend of the season).

 

[BamaFan334]

IMO, the lifestyle in Baton Rouge is much better than LA (unless you like the lifestyle in a big city). However, in terms of the actual job:

LSU pros:

• Play in a better overall conference which will give you visibility
• The market you play in actually cares about football
• The TV exposure is greater since you play in the ET/CT. More people will know the results before they go to bed.
• You have multiple rivalry games which means more exposure. LSU vs. Florida, Alabama, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Arkansas are already on the calendars of SEC fans.

USC pros:

• You're in one of the largest media markets in the country. Even capturing a small percentage of the market is big.
• If you like celebrity status, you can get it in LA. You just have to win.
• It's a private school so state funding isn't as important
• No school in the Pac12 has been dominant over the last many years. You have an opportunity.
• The best team in the conference year-to-year is in the North Division (Oregon) and you may not have to play them until the championship game.
• Your end-of-year rivalry game is against UCLA and they aren't very good (and it may not fall on the final weekend of the season).

Yep, all solid points. The only two things I would add as a positive to LSU and a negative to USC would be the fact that LSU has no competing schools within the state and academics wouldn't hinder recruitment. At USC you've got UCLA a few miles down the road and then are vying for guys against Cal and Stanford within the state. Academics speak to themselves, although USC was taking money to get underqualified celebrity kids in, so there appears to be an equal amount of scum associated with both programs, ha ha.

 

[TerryP]

Current openings:

LSU
USC
TCU
Texas Tech
Washington State
UConn
Akron
Georgia Southern (filled by Clay Helton)

Baylor assistant coach Joey McGuire will be announced as the next coach at Texas Tech later today.

That's two coaching positions that have been interviewed for, and a coach hired, during the current season. Another little quirk about the '21 season.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

He’s another guy that I could certainly see make a stop at the Saban Rehab Center for Wayward Football Coaches if he chose to go that route…

 

[rick4bama]

Just his second year?

 

[TerryP]

This one may be something to pay attention to (re: Saban rehab camp.) They've discussed offensive positions in the past.

Jimmy Lake is out.

 

[rocknthefreeworld]

Your end-of-year rivalry game is against UCLA and they aren't very good (and it may not fall on the final weekend of the season).

Don't forget the Notre Dame-USC game. Big time exposure if you can win.

 

[alabama mike]

The lease is much shorter now on making coaching moves than it was 5-10 years ago. The alumni and fanbases are so impatient and want to win today, not build. LSU, Texas Tech, USC and now Washington are all going to continue to struggle if the AD's continue to fire people with giving them time to build. Of the jobs open, I would take LSU because of the recruiting area and the money.

 

[PurlJam]

Guess this means Emerson and Palmer got the ol' heave too?

 

[NickelDoubleDog]

Lake got fired because he didn't have allies at UW. Their recruiting was awful. His on field results were one game over .500. Certainly not the putrid level of a guy like Scott Frost, but Lake wasn't a former UW star player so he gets fired.

Saban has tried to hire Jimmy Lake twice before, FWIW.

 

[rick4bama]

Lake got fired because he didn't have allies at UW. Their recruiting was awful. His on field results were one game over .500. Certainly not the putrid level of a guy like Scott Frost, but Lake wasn't a former UW star player so he gets fired.

Saban has tried to hire Jimmy Lake twice before, FWIW.

Maybe he will come now!

 

[TerryP]

Saban has tried to hire Jimmy Lake twice before, FWIW.

Spoken with, and tried to hire, are two different things. I'm not aware of him getting past the phone conversations with Saban. I thought Suttles put it pretty succinctly, "Nick Saban has metaphorically knocked on Jimmy Lake’s door before to gauge his interest."

I do remember one of the UW writers* claiming Lake turned Saban down twice and his bit was picked up by a few other writers on the coast: Wilner as one example.

*His name was Jude as I recall.

 

[TerryP]

A decent article by Thamel on this season's coaching searches.

 

[NickelDoubleDog]

Spoken with, and tried to hire, are two different things. I'm not aware of him getting past the phone conversations with Saban. I thought Suttles put it pretty succinctly, "Nick Saban has metaphorically knocked on Jimmy Lake’s door before to gauge his interest."

I do remember one of the UW writers* claiming Lake turned Saban down twice and his bit was picked up by a few other writers on the coast: Wilner as one example.

*His name was Jude as I recall.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but after 2018 Lake was the top target for Saban after he let Tosh go as DC. I don't recall why that didn't work out.

Then after 2019, Saban looked again to Lake, but unexpectedly he got promoted to HC after Chris Petersen suddenly retired.

 

[TerryP]

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but after 2018 Lake was the top target for Saban after he let Tosh go as DC. I don't recall why that didn't work out.

Then after 2019, Saban looked again to Lake, but unexpectedly he got promoted to HC after Chris Petersen suddenly retired.

I'm not sure how to get "top target" from phone calls. Saban makes a lot of phone calls when it comes to replacing staff members: not all of them "interviews." In 2019 it would have been a call about coaching safeties which Kelly took.

Lake was hired at UW before Tosh left for the league, was he not?

 

[Davestwin]

Jim Mora took the UConn job … football coaching is one of the only jobs you can fail at multiple times and still make multiple millions at best or a half a million at worst. As a person, I really like Mora a lot but he’s not been a consistent winner at any stop. Yet, he’s still worth $1.5 million per year?

 

[NickelDoubleDog]

I'm not sure how to get "top target" from phone calls. Saban makes a lot of phone calls when it comes to replacing staff members: not all of them "interviews." In 2019 it would have been a call about coaching safeties which Kelly took.

Lake was hired at UW before Tosh left for the league, was he not?

Lake was made head coach at UW in December 2019. After 2018 IIRC Saban looked around for a DC nationally and couldn't get who he wanted so he ended up promoting Golding.

After 2019 I think Saban was looking again for a DC but Golding couldn't get hired anywhere else and he didn't want to fire him.

 

[Brandon Van de Graaff]

If I remember correctly, Saban reached out and wanted Lake to come to Tuscaloosa to interview for the DC spot. Supposedly, Chris Peterson then told Lake he didn't plan to coach much longer and that if he stayed, he'd be his pick to take over. Lake told Saban thanks, but never flew in for the interview. A year later, Peterson retired, and Lake took over as HC. That's how I remember it anyway.

 

[50+yeartidefan]

Bring on the Lake...be welcomed...( til our D sucked...then everyone would be ready for someone new)

 

[TerryP]

Lake was made head coach at UW in December 2019. After 2018 IIRC Saban looked around for a DC nationally and couldn't get who he wanted so he ended up promoting Golding.

After 2019 I think Saban was looking again for a DC but Golding couldn't get hired anywhere else and he didn't want to fire him.

In the 2018 season Golding was already the DC at Bama: co-DC with Tosh (largely because he was promoting—giving an additional title to—Tosh to keep him on board due to his recruiting.) As I recall it was pretty much a universal thought that Tosh wasn't ready for the DC role.

Bring on the Lake...be welcomed...( til our D sucked...then everyone would be ready for someone new)

A month ago you'd have a slew of Washington fans agree with you: they hated him in that role.