Conway really appreciate your thoughts. AGREE with all you say. Just wondering what is your opinion of the above statement. Is 4 years time to stop excuses?
Four years into his regime, everything should be his responsibility as to how the program improves and competes, but that's not the end-all of everything. There's an awful lot that goes into building a successful college FB program these days. It still happens that some head coach comes along, takes a program that's low on the totem pole in wins and success and tradition and talent depth, that's in a major CFB conference, and that coach brings a playbook and a way of preparation and teaching that has that program rise up suddenly and become consistently successful in a major way. They tended to happen more often back in the '80s, '70s, and earlier.
But those scenarios are very few and far between these days, and are more of the roll-of-the-dice variety. The most proven way is to build programs up with solid and unrelenting recruiting, with sound and thorough coaching and development of players, and then - once ANY degrees of success is realized - work even harder to sell that success, and to build upon it as a foundation. And keep doing it, and see where it takes you.
It's been well hashed over and over how the Spurrier Regime came to an end: Spurrier and his staff built the Gamecock program up from ground level up. They recruited the in-state talent hard, and then evaluated other talent out of state that was not getting taken by their flagship programs hard, and built the roster. The program started having moderate success, and then the staff recruited harder until the elite in-state talent - and during this period we had quite a number of them - also came to play for us. The years of 2009 through 2013 the program probably had the best wealth of talent in it's history, but I'm not totally informed on that.
But those years, all Spurrier and staff had to sell them was, based on potential of what could be. Come to South Carolina and be the first to do this, to do that. The kids had to have that belief that things would happen if they came, without very much evidence to prove it would.
Then 2010 through 2013 happened: averaging 10 wins a year, finishing with 3 consecutive top 10 national rankings, being one single win shy from 2011 through 2013 of playing in the SECCG four years in a row, and participating in 1 to 3 BCS bowls. Being the winning-est Power 5 CFB program during those 4 years to NOT participate in a BCS bowl, with the most wins verses top-25 ranked opponents in those years: not ranked at the time we played them, but ranked in the final rankings, AFTER we beat them.
That kind of success was real - prospects didn't have to imagine it happening, or have blind faith that it would. No other Power 5 coaching staff would fail to take to the streets and sell that success for all they were worth, to go to 5-star and high 4-star elite talent and show than that, "come play for us, and you'd be the final piece to getting us that 1 win, and winning the division, then the conference, then the BCS bowl, then....who knows?" And it would be based on actual truth and evidence of truth.
But our staff didn't do that. Spurrier was ready to use that success to ride off into the sunset. And the program would never capitalize on that success.
When you have a nationally recognized major college program that has national titles, conference titles, major bowls, and just decades of great success behind it, that's called history. A program like UGA has that kind of history, and as I've said the boys in GA who grow up playing organized football grow up to be Georgia Bulldogs. It's a powerful resource that's always there for ANY UGA HC. Same with Alabama, LSU, Ohio State, Mischigan, Southern Cal, Texas, etc. Being the head coach of those programs isn't hard when you have those resources - it's hard to meet the great expectations the fanbase places on you, but you'll always have great tradition, and great talent to work from right off the bat. If you screw it up, then the reasons are usually because YOU personally screwed it up.
But we don't have that at USC. It doesn't mean we can't have it, we just haven't got there yet. We have done some great things in recent years to raise expectations, but as I posted above, we didn't work hard to sustain it. Spurrier allowed it to fall back down to the ground.
So, without that built in tradition and history of success, when Spurrier left and the wins stopped coming, everyone naturally thinks it's because of Steve Spurrier, in, "once Spurrier leaves, the winning leaves with him". NOT because he allowed the program to fall. So that's not a "tradition", that's an "anomaly". Muschamp now has to rebuild the whole thing all over again, but what happens this year and next year in recruiting is affected by what happened on the field last season, and in 2017, and 2016, etc. And what happened those years were greatly affected by what happened in 2015, 2014, and 2013 in recruiting by the previous staff.
Nick Saban's first year at Alabama in 2007 went 6-6 in the regular season. Like Spurrier, Saban had won one single national title elsewhere, and won a whole lot less conference titles and games. He brought in the 12th-ranked recruiting class his first year, not too shabby. His predecessor before him, Mike Shula, brought in the 13th ranked class for 2006, and the 16th ranked class for 2005. Saban wins their bowl game and finished 7-6, and his staff went to work. In 2008 they bring in the 3rd-ranked class, and then ruled over recruiting nationally ever since then. THAT's what tradition can do for a coach - the program essentially recruits itself, but if you also want to go beyond carrying your fair share and work hard at it, your classes will be great. Saban also proved to be a great coach himself, and a coach that understands and appreciates the merits of hard recruiting work, and selling what successes your program has, and how great prospects can make the success even greater. Muschamp doesn't have that kind of resource to capitalize on, although he could've had some of it had the previous staff didn't choose to ride the program into the sunset.
So, again in reference to what Finebaum was saying that I disagree with. With CFB programs like South Carolina's, it's not a quick fix, and it DOES require some foundation to build off of, to have great success. Smart had a great foundation - great resources of tradition of success, a talented roster, and a state full of elite prep talent that's waiting to come play for you. Muschamp has had much less of all the above, and has to generate those resources a good bit by himself and by his own staff. Someone (Finebaum) can't just dismiss all that, and claim to be an "expert" on CFB matters.....
