My main goal is to get the best coach you believe you can get, who you think can win the most games for you. That means you have to understand who is interested in your job, and who you can afford.
I don't know whether Fritz will succeed but I plan to support him.
If you compare his tenure at Tulane to pretty much any coach they had before him it is quite positive. He is leading them to their 4th bowl game in 5 years, he has them in the AAC Championship game this year - ranked in the Top 25, and Tulane moved up from C-USA to the American in 2015, so he came in at a time they were transitioning to a higher level conference. Tulane had 1 winning season, 1 bowl game and a 29.7% winning percentage in the 13 years before he became their coach.
His 2 years at GSU were excellent. He managed to keep the same winning percentage as Jeff Monken at GSU while transitioning from FCS to FBS. He coached the first team in NCAA history to go undefeated in its conference in its first year in FBS and made a bowl game in year 2 (GSU was ineligible to go to a bowl game in Yr 1 in the FBS or he would have made bowl games both years). Being coach at GSU also means he has contacts within GA.
At Sam Houston State he made the NCAA FCS Championship game in 2 of his 4 years there.
The main takeaways that I have from the coaching search are the same two I had coming in - first, GT is not exactly the most attractive job in FBS, and second, GT doesn't have the finances to compete at the upper echelon, which shouldn't be a surprise to any GT fan who has paid any attention to GT's AA finances the last 15 years.
If Fritz can build a program as good as NCST I would be thrilled with that.
My belief is that the ceiling for GT football is winning an avg of 8-9 games per year (over a 5 yr period) with bowl games most seasons and the occasional ACC Championship game appearance (once every 4-5 years). Given where FBS football has moved and where GT is within that I think that is where GT sits.
Honestly, I was surprised his name hadn't come up in the rumors before, I had assumed it was due largely to his age.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Long if he is the hire - Long was his OC for his worst season of his coaching career - have to wonder if he will want to look somewhere else for an OC, or bring his current OC with him.
