Red Silk Smoking Jacket

Great sign if true. Most of the names we've seen thrown around could be considered lateral moves (or worse) if you're Mickey. Up-and-comer, prospect, roll of the dice names like Campbell, Leipold, Klieman, Aranda, etc. If Mickey's on board, that would indicate it's someone with some skins on the wall who he respects and wants to continue coaching and learning under. I just don't see Mickey blessing someone who's not a pretty significant upgrade over himself and why would he? My money is still on Urban or Deion (flame away) if what you're saying is true. Rhule? Maybe but not even sure about him, honestly.

Curious what makes you think this? I've seen nothing to indicate this whatsoever. Because we haven't heard anything official? We're not going to hear anything official until November 26th at the earliest, regardless of who it is. Some leaks (unofficial) may start a little before that, but it's waaaaay too early to claim everyone's turning us down at this point, IMO. Plus, if you believe everything Trev is saying (and I do), we are the best job available this year and probably will be at the end of the year. So, there will be very few coaches, if any, turning us down. That might just be me being a homer, but I don't think so. I think we'll get who we want.

Good lord, so many things wrong with that clip. First of all, if your "goal" is something as subjective and unmeasurable as "be the best version of ourselves," that's not a goal, that's a means to a goal. That's goal setting 101 stuff. Also, "be the best version of ourselves" sounds like some "everyone gets a trophy" s#!t. Next, "become the greatest together team in the history of Iowa St football" (whatever that even means) is A) not a very high bar as Iowa St has sucked forever, and B) again completely subjective. Define what that means in terms of wins and losses and set it as a goal. No s#!t all of your "goals" are still in tact. You set "goals" that are completely up for interpretation. You can lose out and and claim your team is the "greatest together team in the history of Iowa St football" because you played hard and were together. Finally, this one's just my opinion, but someone that mediocre at a program that average who refers to himself in the 3rd person to that extent, has some serious insecurity issues. You want to try to put yourself on that kind of pedestal, you better have a lot more to back it up than being Matt f#&%ing Campbell at Iowa f#&%ing State. Loser mentality is right. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Could not be more out on this tool after watching that.

HARD pass on Aranda and Campbell. Neither of them has ever felt right to me. At. All. Aranda had one decent season at Baylor with Rhule's recruits when the best programs in the conference were down. Sark was in his first year at UT, and Riley had a foot out the door at OU. Aranda's body of work is meh when you look at it closely. Campbell seems content being a medium fish in the small pond of Ames, Iowa. That's not who I want. He's "rebuilt" that program from bad to below average. Again, body of work...meh. Leipold I can probably get behind. Rhule I can probably get behind. Not my fist choices but they both seem to have a lot more of the "it factor" that Aranda and Campbell don't.

This can't be +1ed enough. The most educated and genius football minds miss, more often than not, on hires. At every level. Our heads would explode if/when we hire some random dude from _____ (fill in the blank state) who's not even at the best program in the state with a 34-24 overall record. Apparently there's more to it than just wins and losses. Seems like Trev is approaching it right.

Money for assistants is a pretty common ask from prospective head coaches. The more we’re willing to commit to, the more enticing the job. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s a seller’s market for elite coaches and anything we can do like that, the better. Much like not restricting what assistants have to be retained, it sweetens the deal when the new guy knows he’ll have plenty of resources to hire the best staff he can.

Hard pass on Kevin Sumlin.

Isn't that the truth! It is kind of baffling to me that among all of us, we don't collectively seem to have a favorite choice. Seems pretty evenly spread across the board. Having followed a few coaching searches in the past (for Nebraska and some other teams), I don't recall this being the norm, at least not to this extent. Granted, I don't think I've ever followed one as long as this, so maybe it's just a product of time? Props to us, I guess, for not falling victim to too much group think (as these things normally go).

Good

Who is?

Knowing us, we'll beat Illinois and Michigan and lose the rest. Seems about on par for added drama.

Well, if you believe people on the internet, the USC search went like this... USC: We want Matt Campbell. Search firm: He's gonna pass. USC: But that's who we wanted. Search firm: We can get you Lincoln Riley, does that work?

I follow you Chamrocck... I don't think anyone's saying Rhule is like Saban and Urban because he failed in the NFL. What they (we) mean is that, just because Rhule tanked in the NFL, don't hold that against him too much because two of the best college coaches ever have also failed in the NFL. The NFL is a completely different game than college and success/failure in one does not necessarily translate to the other. Again, I don't think anyone's saying the next coach doesn't need to keep MJ. I can't speak for other people, but what I've said is that Trev shouldn't make that a stipulation for who he hires. I think a lot of us hope the new guy keeps MJ, maybe even highly recommends it. New guy may prefer a full gut rebuild from the ground up and have someone better. Who knows. And just because a coach wants to bring in his own guys, that's not necessarily the same thing as bringing in your unqualified buddies. The highest level coaches want almost total control and the best ones have earned that right.

Well, just because Trev had already done a ton of homework, that doesn't make a search firm unnecessary. They do a lot more than just identify candidates. That may not even be their primary role. Based on his comments at the press conference, it seemed like he'd given it a whole lot more than 24 hours thought since firing Frost. He was pretty specific on what we should expect and what he was looking for. So, yeah...probably somewhere between "he already had his guy" and "he planned to get to work on it Monday"

With hot takes like yours, you may want to check your username... You're consistent, I'll give you that.

All a far cry from my first post being "we have to hire Deion" but you do you, man.

+ 1 on all that

Keep lowering the bar from the original point and I have no doubt MJ can reach it. Again, per the OP, we were clearly talking about different bars.

Nope, he's not even my first choice. I may have said "we have to hire Urban" I don't remember. But this is the "who should our next head coach be" thread where we all speculate and weigh in and argue discuss and waste countless hours playing AD regarding who our head coaching prospects are. If one of your criteria for our next head coach is that they have to keep MJ and Busch, carry on then. I'm just telling you it doesn't work that way and if that's your criteria, you can expect a lesser hire.

Point is, he jumped around before landing at Alabama. You seem to think anyone who's jumped around a little bit shouldn't be considered. Then you said you want the next Saban. Doesn't appear the two go hand-in-hand. Or are you just saying you don't want Urban despite his success, you'd rather take an extreme long shot on finding the next Saban? Maybe I'm just not following you. And get in line for the program that wants to find the next Saban, buddy

Wait, what are we talking about here? Coaches who've "had some success" as first time head coached? So, like 6 wins and make it to a bowl game or get the team into the top 25? Yeah, that list is very long as every coach has to start somewhere. And yeah, MJ would highly likely fit that at Nebraska. I thought we were talking about elite level as the OP mentioned coaching legends Tom Osborne and Jimmy Johnson (although Jimmy Johnson didn't fit his criteria either).

Ryan Day and Lincoln Riley, like Osborne...extremely different situations. Those guys all stepped into programs in great shape. I'll sort of give you Kirby Smart although Georgia had a winning record for like 20 years straight when he got there. He wasn't exactly stepping into a situation like Nebraska, pretty much the opposite. Again, I'm not saying it can't happen. It's just that for every Kirby Smart there is, far more don't work out that way. The odds go way down substantially.

What makes you say that? So, in other words, it doesn't mean anything and isn't important. Kidding (sort of) but basically one can argue that any candidate is or isn't a "cultural fit" depending on how they choose to define it. And even when they do try to define it, most likely, they don't know enough about the candidate to make that determination. I mean, I can argue that we've never had a true cultural fit. Devany, Osborne, and Solich would be under much more cultural scrutiny in today's social media cell phone era. Pelini was about as "blue collar" as it gets but he was a huge prick. Callahan, nope. Mike Riley was probably the closest...and we saw what that got us. Frost seemed like it on the surface, now we know better. So, yeah, in other words, I think it's pretty meaningless and not very important.