The CheckerBoard

I agree with this 100%. I am actually kind of sad he was not able to work out. Great guy, honest, and did things the right way and did not and would not ever embarrass the University like others have recently. I really really like the guy and wanted it to work out, and yeah i was still in his corner until the decision to play for OT, and then the loss. Although, the fake FG was brilliant. Too bad, very very intelligent man, maybe this was just an insurmountable task getting our program overhauled. However any may feel about him as a coach, you cannot argue that he left this program in much better shape than he found it.

I don't like the thought of Cut and Tommy either, but holy smokes we don't need James Franklin. I have no appetite left for an up and coming guy. If we spend bigger on the front end with a proven winner we won't be spending money as the guy walks out the door. If we elect to save money this time around, I guess there's a good chance we'll have to be content with how it's come to be lately: watch our team continue to be mediocre and root for Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Florida, and So Car.

There's risk in every hire, but the odds are more likely that an up and coming coach is less likely to succeed. Up and coming Bryan Kellys and Urban Meyers are few and far between out there. By the time those guys reached Notre Dame and Florida, they were already proven winners. James Franklin I'm sure is a good coach in a lot of ways, and hell the same can be said about Dooley, but Franklin hasn't proven anything of much substance yet. We've proven that just because a guy can recruit doesn't mean he can win the big games. I can't see this fan base enduring another experimental attempt to save from having to pay the big money.

Excellent first post and welcome to the board! +1

You can't just take Gruden off the block and then say "now who?".

No one is saying take him off the block, but a smart person like Hart knows that the chances are low, regardless of the money. Gruden isn't going anywhere because of money, but because the situation is "right," like he's been quoted as saying. Gruden will have the Eagles, Browns, Chargers, Jaguars, and possibly the Cowboys to choose from, along with any other college vacancies that think he even somewhat desires to get back into college, of which he only has 4 total years of experience in. So again I ask, who is the "big money" hire?

I'm going with drizzle. If the chatter is true about Stoops being unhappy, you got to go after him. That's a big if.

Stoops would be a good one.

Regarding the critcism of Chavis' defense inablity to stop LSU on that game ending drive a few years ago, If we had replay back then I believe the LSU QB (Russell?) would have been charged with a fumble on that drive that we recovered and that whole season might have turned out differently. On such trivial things, seasons and careers have been impacted, some greatly.

I think it's VERY important to draw a line here between the Kiffin switch and the Dooley switch.

Kiffin was (is) some sort of chimera, half offensive savant and half juvenile delinquent. Between the loud mouth, slippery recruiting practices and completely unreliable roster management, he actually managed to leave the program in worse shape than he found it.

Dooley, on the hand, came into a dumpster fire, inheriting not only the weakest of the Fulmer-era's roster, but also Kiffin's rapidly deteriorating one-and-a-half recruiting classes, Kiffin/Pearl/Hamilton's NCAA scrutiny (does anyone realize how close we were to getting thumped?), an embarrassingly upside-down financial situation and a likewise embarrassing mismanagement of facilities...or at least reasonable plans to grow and improve them.

Dooley stabilized the football department's operations, reloaded the roster with competitive talent and, most importantly, returned a sense of real culture and ethic to the program, through his own good humor as well as his installation of culture-building programs like VFL.

Unfortunately, he didn't win enough, and when he lost, he lost badly.

Dooley's record, I believe, reflects not upon an error in his process or preparation, but rather simply an inability to decipher the unbelieveably rapid implementation of unbelievably complex tactics at play in elite college football, most explicitly during gametime at critical moments. Dooley (as representative of his staff, philosophy and strategy) is the proverbial knife in a gunfight: a fine weapon in certain situations, certainly better than nothing, but not the thing to win modern wars.