Potential Head Coach Hires

[Madison Grant]

If you were totally unaware of offensive system (or if you thought he ran whatever offense you prefer) and saw his resume, would you think slam-dunk then? If not, what would be the reason and who would realistically be a "slam-dunk" that we could get (ie not Saban or Meyer)?

Well, if I looked at his resume and saw service academy, I'd know. And no, he's not a slam dunk over other candidates being discussed who've been successful as head coaches and coordinators at P5 programs, some of them high profile. If we keep passing the ball 5 times a game, every year better be 2014. I just don't see where he's done anything Paul hadn't when he was hired. Less, in fact. Paul had some championships at Southern and had won longer at a service academy. Just pony up the dough and get Paul back if that's the route.

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

On the topic of Monken...

19:48 mark of this video:


I'm in the camp that thinks we can be successful with either a CPJ disciple or a new direction, but I watched Monken do this at GSU, and it was fun to see some tweaks.

Thanks, SideWalk. There is not another game that I can remember where sa(t)an was saying "no mas" after the game. He did not want any more of this. Yes, they won going away, but his prima donnas did not want to deal with the GSU O, and he had to go to the bench to get some guys that actually were motivated to try against it.

 

[Techster]

Thanks, SideWalk. There is not another game that I can remember where sa(t)an was saying "no mas" after the game. He did not want any more of this.

To be fair, he basically put his hand up in the air and said "Not fair" after playing Johnny Manziel and the spread/Air Raid system. He said something to the effect "Well, if that's where they want to let football go, but it's not really football..."

...then he takes those same spread concepts and uses them with his 4/5 star guys. It's never fair unless you have it, right?!

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

Thanks, SideWalk. There is not another game that I can remember where sa(t)an was saying "no mas" after the game. He did not want any more of this.

To be fair, he basically put his hand up in the air and said "Not fair" after playing Johnny Manziel and the spread/Air Raid system. He said something to the effect "Well, if that's where they want to let football go, but it's not really football..."

...then he takes those same spread concepts and uses them with his 4/5 star guys. It's never fair unless you have it, right?!

You are right, Techster, but that was based on the "hurry up" offense more than the actual offense itself - the pace. But, you are right.

 

[smokey_wasp]

I like Monken and think he should get a P5 job, but the reputation of the offense has become too much of a negative for us, fair or unfair. I think we are going to answer the question of scheme vs. school, in regards to recruiting. Monken and Bohannon will still be around in a few years if we feel we need to go that route. CPJ won right out of the gate with recruits that were brought in for a completely different offense, so it's not like moving away from the pure triple option is something that will tank us long term, even if the scheme fans turn out to be right. For the record, I think we can be successful with the right coach, whatever offense he runs (unless it's NFL style!)

 

[kg01]

If you were totally unaware of offensive system (or if you thought he ran whatever offense you prefer) and saw his resume, would you think slam-dunk then? If not, what would be the reason and who would realistically be a "slam-dunk" that we could get (ie not Saban or Meyer)?

Has a good resume. As I said, I'm not against him at all. Before this year I figured he'd be the one following CPJ all along.

But, as I said, he's got warts too. A 'slam dunk' hire, for me, is someone who can recruit well, has coaching success and is capable of dealing with the academic side (i.e. keeping/graduating guys).

We don't know how Monken would recruit and we know that hire would divide the fanbase almost as much as a Whisenhunt hire would.

I feel like you're arguing with me even though we kinda agree.

 

[Techster]

You are right, Techster, but that was based on the "hurry up" offense more than the actual offense itself - the pace. But, you are right.

You're right. Still...Saban ended up using that as well.

F Saban.

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

You're right. Still...Saban ended up using that as well.

F Saban.

Now that he has Tua (and Tua's brother next), he doesn't seem as concerned with "hurry up" offenses, but based on what we saw against the Citadel, he still hates playing against the 3O.

Just like we would never have the athletes/talent on our scout to team to fully simulate Bammer's offense, they can really never simulate the 3O well either. With that said, when the talent gap is tremendous, and the coach gets his star players to be aggressive against the 3O blocking techniques, it can make the 3O look bad.

 

[vamosjackets]

Well, if I looked at his resume and saw service academy, I'd know. And no, he's not a slam dunk over other candidates being discussed who've been successful as head coaches and coordinators at P5 programs, some of them high profile. If we keep passing the ball 5 times a game, every year better be 2014. I just don't see where he's done anything Paul hadn't when he was hired. Less, in fact. Paul had some championships at Southern and had won longer at a service academy. Just pony up the dough and get Paul back if that's the route.

I think you're proving a point, but not the one you're after.
"If we keep passing the ball 5 times a game... " false
"... every year better be 2014" WTH? Does that have even a hint of fairness? So, if we pass a lot we can lose a lot of games, and it's fine. But, if we don't pass a lot we better win 12? I truly don't get it.

Collins has not been as successful as Monken and with greater relative advantages.
Elliot isn't even comparable. He's a coordinator at a school with unlimited resources. He might not even be successful at Temple or Army, much less GT.
Whisenhunt isn't comparable for obvious reasons.

If you want to go with one of the above, that's fine, but the argument that their resume compares favorably with Jeff Monken's is going to lose when anyone doesn't have anti-option blinders on.
If Todd chooses one of the above, I'll support it and have hope. I don't think I know everything, and Todd is the man in the position for a reason. My only non-negotiable is character.

 

[BCJacket]

So the two would somehow retain their separate admissions standards? It's always been my understanding that this is the immovable object we can't get around when talking about a merger.

There's quite a few schools where you apply to both the university and the specific program you want to major in. So, I'd think that would be fairly simple. The overall admissions would be lower, but getting into a program at the Institute would remain very selective.

Or do it the way uGa and GSU do with their business and education schools, have a common curriculum for underclassmen on a degree track and then you have to apply to the specialty of your choice before your Junior year. That's how UGA/GSU have some top 15 business programs (Real Estate, Risk Management), those programs are only taking the best of the best of the GSU/UGA business school students. They have other (lesser) majors that are open enrollment.

 

[Jacketbacker17]

I think i believe Suguira more than i do Quinlan

Agree. Working for a legitimate news outlet gets you better sources.

Incorrect.

 

[33jacket]

Someone hung themselves in a bathroom last week and the president calling out resources for mental health resources on campus and your response is calling the presidents a wuss?

Ok then

Didnt know sad. President is still a wuss. Maybe not for this reason.

 

[GT_05]

I like Monken and think he should get a P5 job, but the reputation of the offense has become too much of a negative for us, fair or unfair.

I believe this to be true, unfortunately. Personally, I love CPJ’s offense and, when it’s working, is more fun to watch than any offense in football. Between it being unaesthetically pleasing to some folks and being consistently neutered by Clemson and UGA recently, I think it’s time to move on. The offense has split the fan base.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Gold1]

We've still got people on here talking about the 3O? LMAO

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I'm trying to pinpoint the purpose behind your reply. Are you just trying to win a rhetorical debate or are you making excuses for why we can't, can't, can't? Or both?

During a transition is not a time to troll out all the well-worn and known reasons for 'can't'. It's time to look at what our potential is. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but it seems like you're saying we can't ever, ever do better than 50th or so recruiting, so we have to stick with a gimmick, try to make chicken salad with chicken ish, and that is forever. Don't dare believe that can ever change. I don't agree with you.

I think you may be fundamentally misunderstanding what Stanford's doing, and our ability to copy it. Stop looking for the reasons we can't and ask if we can. Stanford is not a factory. They're not even Notre Dame. So properly define them in terms of football first instead of getting bogged down in the minutiae of academics. We're fundamentally talking football here, with academic considerations here, not vice versa.

What Stanford is doing with recruiting is not Bama, or USC, from their perspective. Go look at their classes. They are signing 1-2 5 stars, a half dozen 4 stars, and the rest of their class looks like ours most years. The difference on the football field is they have that '1-8' that we don't . And, in my opinion, that's the difference between what they are and them maxing their potential versus what we are and accepting less. It has less to do with academic prestige and variety of majors than you think. It's more about football prestige than you think. If Georgia Tech is winning 10-11 games and putting guys in the draft, you can find your Bryce Love or Christian McCaffrey and sell him on our degrees. Paul Johnson and Chan Gailey weren't interested in doing that. They were convinced they could X and O people with less. I think Geoff Collins or Tony Elliot would go in that living room and win some of those battles.

Now beyond that, you have to coach them up or you are going down the B L path potentially. I think a guy like KW, with his NFL reputation in terms of personality, has a much bigger chance of blowing up the ship B L style. But that is just an opinion.

So let's look at what we have on Stanford and what we can sell. We are in the CFB hotbed of the Southeast. People are leaving California by the millions and coming to ATL by the millions. The Bay area has become particularly toxic, regardless of your politics. So we aren't without our momentum if we'll use it.

I’ve always contended we can do better in recruiting, but not at the current staff and budget deficits.

CPJ showed what his O could do with just a few key pieces. Unfortunately, he was never able to re-assemble those key pieces at the same time due to a variety of off the field reasons beyond his control. Doesn’t mean he didn’t recruit them, it means they never saw the field or rarely saw the field. Heck, everybody is excited about the stable quarterbacks we have in the pipeline right now.

For what it’s worth, I optimistically look forward to getting a big Rah-Rah player’s coach/big time recruiter in here and see what he can do. I hope I’m wrong and he knocks it out of the park right off the bat. I hope he gets better support from our administration, students and fans. Without that I don’t care how good a salesman he is.

 

[smokey_wasp]

Incorrect.

I'd be happy for KQ to be correct, as long as it's a good hire. I definitely don't want another week and a half of this.

 

[inGTwetrust]

There are a lot of valid arguments for it. With that said ... If they stop with the 3o talk, would you start beating the navy jersey dead horse as that appears to be what we will be wearing in bowl game?

 

[vamosjackets]

I like Monken and think he should get a P5 job, but the reputation of the offense has become too much of a negative for us, fair or unfair. I think we are going to answer the question of scheme vs. school, in regards to recruiting. Monken and Bohannon will still be around in a few years if we feel we need to go that route. CPJ won right out of the gate with recruits that were brought in for a completely different offense, so it's not like moving away from the pure triple option is something that will tank us long term, even if the scheme fans turn out to be right. For the record, I think we can be successful with the right coach, whatever offense he runs (unless it's NFL style!)

I understand how you feel. But, I think there's a better way to think about this ... Here is something @Vespidae wrote in another thread ("Moving On" I think is the thread title) that I think is the most brilliant thing I've read related to GT's football program in a long time.

I have mixed feelings on this.

In my corporate career, I successfully ran businesses from the $30M size (small) to more than $500M (medium). At the height of my career, I had 11 manufacturing operations and more than 2,000 employees working for me, globally.

In every business, the key issue was the lack of a consistent business philosophy around which to organize the team. It is impossible to recruit (in this case, employees), develop (via training, job experience, etc.), deploy, measure, monitor and improve ... when the philosophy is not clearly understood by ALL employees and worse ... when it changes every 2-3 years. In my case, we made a conscious decision that we would absolutely MASTER one chosen philosophy of running the business. We did. By the time I left, we had become the largest, most profitable business of our type in the world. And it wasn't even close. This reputation helped us attract ever brighter, more motivated employees who wanted our firm's name on their resume. It was a virtuous cycle.

I remain convinced that there MUST be a GT Way of football. My own experience says that you cannot be successful by completely changing a team's philosophy with every coaching change. The role of the AD, for example, should be to guide the development of the philosophy, and then provide the resources for it to be MASTERED and executed, consistently for decades, or more. You know you are successful when other schools recruit from you just as other businesses poach employees to "learn their system".

Will the option be back? Maybe. Maybe not. But ultimately, GT must find a philosophy that works for the Yellow Jackets ... and then, MASTER it. I feel like this has been our problem since ... 1956.

It makes me wonder ... what would GT look like if TStan assembled an all-star team of coaches who truly understood the TO in a way no one else did. Then, build an infrastructure around recruiting and developing not only talent, but younger coaches too .. so we don't have to do this again.

As Jim Collins said, "Find something you can be the best in the world at. And excel at it."

Regardless of offensive system, Monken has proven to be a great coach that can win with very limited resources compared to his opponents. He's succeeded very highly at both GSU and because of that got the job at Army and has brought them from the cellar to the top. I think he has overtaken Niumatalolo and that Navy program, even as good as it has been, to be the best. I think our floor with him is what we currently have (which under CPJ has been really good) and that our ceiling with him is even higher (which is amazing to think about).

Bringing in Monken keeps us committed to what has been very successful here. Jeff has his own take on it, which is a good thing, but it keeps the core principles that make it successful. It keeps our identity as the premier option-school in the country, instead of trying to be a lesser version of someone else. And, it keeps the great culture of the CPJ-coaching tree and character of coaches here. There are pieces in place to be very successful in the short term (Justin Graham and Yates at QB, young stable of BB's, pretty good looking young WR in Malachi Carter, possibly the youngest Braun brother who could be a 5* OL). Plus, I think Nate Woody has a chance to get the defense to a higher level over the next couple of years. And, I think it's possible Monken could make a little bit of an extra dent in recruiting. It really looks like a hopeful situation for a high level of success moving forward.

That said, I'll support whoever Todd picks. One thing I'm worried about is Collins' character, but I'll give him a chance to prove me wrong. I could support Whisenhunt or Elliot or somebody out of the blue. But, if Jeff Monken wants this job, he's a superior candidate with a superior resume who is still young. We'd be extremely blessed to get him. I hope the "option-haters" don't win the day, and I hope Todd makes the best decision based on logic and reason and not on any other logic-less perceptions.

 

[Techster]

I think you're proving a point, but not the one you're after.
"If we keep passing the ball 5 times a game... " false
"... every year better be 2014" WTH? Does that have even a hint of fairness? So, if we pass a lot we can lose a lot of games, and it's fine. But, if we don't pass a lot we better win 12? I truly don't get it.

Collins has not been as successful as Monken and with greater relative advantages.
Elliot isn't even comparable. He's a coordinator at a school with unlimited resources. He might not even be successful at Temple or Army, much less GT.
Whisenhunt isn't comparable for obvious reasons.

If you want to go with one of the above, that's fine, but the argument that their resume compares favorably with Jeff Monken's is going to lose when anyone doesn't have anti-option blinders on.
If Todd chooses one of the above, I'll support it and have hope. I don't think I know everything, and Todd is the man in the position for a reason. My only non-negotiable is character.

I said it earlier, given the choice between Monken or Whisenhunt, I take Monken 11 out of 10 times.

From a pure football standpoint, I actually prefer Monken over Collins as well. Unfortunately, with the way media has dominated college football, I'm not sure Monken's brand of football is good for P5 programs. It certainly not good for recruiting elite skill players.

But GT isn't limited to those coaches. I hope TStan realizes that.

 

[bobongo]

There's quite a few schools where you apply to both the university and the specific program you want to major in. So, I'd think that would be fairly simple. The overall admissions would be lower, but getting into a program at the Institute would remain very selective.

Or do it the way uGa and GSU do with their business and education schools, have a common curriculum for underclassmen on a degree track and then you have to apply to the specialty of your choice before your Junior year. That's how UGA/GSU have some top 15 business programs (Real Estate, Risk Management), those programs are only taking the best of the best of the GSU/UGA business school students. They have other (lesser) majors that are open enrollment.

I like it. Georgia Institute of Technology and State University. Gittiesue. Pups could join the Southern Conference.