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coonhound said...

yeah, I've read some of the other threads about the team and Dooley, especially about Dooley's future. I differ with a lot of you guys. Sorry for the long rambling post.

I admit, I was disappointed when Hamilton hired Dooley. and that's after being shocked when he hired Kiffin. After all, we are a $80million football program, we deserve a top flight coach don't we? Through all of his hires, Hamilton went after the blue light specials...coaches who looked like they were on the rise that he could hire cheaply.

From the perspective of recent history, we've now gone through 2 slim years of Fulmer recruits, a complete disaster with Kiffin's recruits, and 2 years of Dooley recruits (not including the few weeks he was around immediately after being hired). During the Fulmer, Kiffin, Dooley turnover we lost a lot of players. We've had a lot of players kicked off the team as well. Is there a talent gap??? The answer is there is an obvious talent gap. We certainly have some SEC quality starters and even a few SEC quality back ups, but not much more. We have to continue to build depth. I do believe that Dooley's recruiting has been a plus and that given enough time our talent level will equal Georgia and Florida. It's going to take a long time to reach the quality and depth of AL and even LSU with Dooley or any other coach.

We have just gone from a D built on a 4-3 to a D built on a 3-4. Folks, that transition takes time. It's obvious to everyone that we have a big doughnut hole in the middle. Certainly though, given enough time to reprogram these kids, the D will pick it up. I believe our D staff is pretty solid now and will get the job done but you just can't twitch your nose and expect an immediate change. We all knew this coming in to the season.

In my mind this program is going through changes still in season #3 with Dooley. I believe a lot of good things have happened and the program is slowly making progress in the right direction. We have 2 years of Dooley recruits who I believe are going to help us a lot. We finally have a Dooley picked coaching staff which I believe is an improvement over the "who can we get in 1 week in order to recruit" staff of 3 years ago. We are recruiting and signing quality players. Our recruiting momentum seems to be very good right now.

Those calling for Dooley to be fired are replacing the long term growth and good of the program for the need of wins today. The emotional mob mentality types can't see past today yet apparently thousand have chosen to jump on that bandwagon. Yep it's been several years since we've won big but folks making changes every time we struggle on the field will keep the program from rising to a high level, it won't do the opposite. Get rid of Dooley and we get rid of several players currently on the roster and most of the players who have committed to us already and will wipe the slate clean of those strongly considering us. Publicly running down the program either on these boards on on talk radio does more damage than good. Frankly, as bad as Hamilton was not one time did a phone call or a message board post from Bubba from Bell Buckle get a coach fired. Hart is a much stronger man that Hamilton, you think the whining is going to affect him? Our whining may make recruits feel uneasy but it never cost a coach his job.

If you are a supporter of the program, the time the team needs you the most is when they are struggling. To kick them to the curb when they are struggling tells us more about ourselves than it does the team.

I believe a little more patience is required if we want this program to succeed. Yes, that means at least another year of Dooley. To do otherwise, I believe, will put us back in the same nested loop we've been in for several years and other teams like Notre Dame, OSU, USC, etc., were in for decades. Do you want decades or just another year or two?

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RockyTopRev said...

You can't equate Dooley with any of those coaches and make an adequate case for much of anything.

Saban came to Bama having been a head coach 3 other college programs and an NFL program and inherited a pretty good roster that had numerous future NFL players already in place. Keep in mind, Saban was pretty close to a .500 coach at Michigan State. His record there went: 6-5-1, 6-6, 7-5, 6-6, and 9-2.

Meyer had been a head coach at two previous locations and brought a pretty new offense into the mainstream...oh yeah, he had arguably the best college QB of all time during his tenure at Florida.

Spurrier's first five years at USCe went 7-5, 8-5, 6-6, 7-6, 7-6. Not exactly lighting it up as you may be remembering.

I'm not sold on Dooley, but your not using a very fair comparison. Dooley inherited a dumpster fire, void of future NFL draft picks minus one or two a year, and one or two a year is what UT used to have int he first round. Dooley's record at LaTech wasn't great, but he built a decent program that seems to be having success now considering it is a mid-major. There are future NFL players on this current UT roster, and future 1st rounders at that. Again, I'm not sold on Dooley as a X's and O's guy, but he has seemed to be a great talent evaluator and has gotten this program headed in the right direction. Whoever does come in after Dooley will inherit a much better program that Dooley inherited, and we will owe him thanks for that!

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RockyTopRev said...

You can't equate Dooley with any of those coaches and make an adequate case for much of anything.

Saban came to Bama having been a head coach 3 other college programs and an NFL program and inherited a pretty good roster that had numerous future NFL players already in place. Keep in mind, Saban was pretty close to a .500 coach at Michigan State. His record there went: 6-5-1, 6-6, 7-5, 6-6, and 9-2.

Meyer had been a head coach at two previous locations and brought a pretty new offense into the mainstream...oh yeah, he had arguably the best college QB of all time during his tenure at Florida.

Spurrier's first five years at USCe went 7-5, 8-5, 6-6, 7-6, 7-6. Not exactly lighting it up as you may be remembering.

I'm not sold on Dooley, but your not using a very fair comparison. Dooley inherited a dumpster fire, void of future NFL draft picks minus one or two a year, and one or two a year is what UT used to have int he first round. Dooley's record at LaTech wasn't great, but he built a decent program that seems to be having success now considering it is a mid-major. There are future NFL players on this current UT roster, and future 1st rounders at that. Again, I'm not sold on Dooley as a X's and O's guy, but he has seemed to be a great talent evaluator and has gotten this program headed in the right direction. Whoever does come in after Dooley will inherit a much better program that Dooley inherited, and we will owe him thanks for that!

1 Corinthians 16:13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.