The only good thing about Lake to HC

GrundleStiltzkin said:

dnc said:

GreenRiverGatorz said:

Disagree. Installing Lake is a no-brainer. It hopefully keeps the aspects of Petersen that made this program successful, and injects an energy that was holding it back.
And I don't care if Lake has yet to prove himself as a defensive play caller. He doesn't need to do that anymore. We know he can build a defense, he can recruit like an animal, and he's a top-notch motivator in a profession where that quality is almost half the battle these days. I don't think anyone else on the staff has the potential to be an elite head coach besides Lake, and going outside of the program for a new-hire would be throwing out the baby with the bath water.

"We know he can build a defense"

We do?

"he can recruit like an animal"

I love the guy but he's never been close on any 5 star DB's, not even Kelee Ringo who he had plenty of inside edge for.

"and he's a top-notch motivator"

I'll give you this.

I like Lake. He's a great asset to the program. People who insinuated we would be better off without him were absolutely FS.

HC is a whole different thing. Sure you can squint and see him as a great HC but the most important thing an HC does is hire assistants and so far Jimmy has hired .... Will Harris. Who has done as much of an impact on the program as you or I have.

There are a ton of ways this goes very, very badly.

Lotta doogs bringing up the Young Corching Talent at Ohio State & Oklahoma. History says they were huge aberrations, plus only been doing one and two seasons, respectively.

GreenRiverGatorz said:

BleachedAnusDawg said:

Yeah, for being a "football school" it is pretty lame that the AD was content to settle for the coach-in-waiting approach with a guy who has never been HC anywhere. Urban Meyer would never come here, but it would've at least shown the fans that the AD is trying hard if they were able to get a meeting or some lines of communication with Team Urban.

Ohio State and Oklahoma are very recent test cases of how successful this "lame" approach is. If you think this program is better than it's 7-5 record and has the infrastructure currently in place to be a top ten team, and I think it does, then hiring internally is the move. Especially when you have a future head coach already in the assistant ranks, which is not the case for most programs. Add in the bonus of freeing up a lot more salary for assistant coaches ($3M for Lake is nothing), and it would be ridiculous for the AD to embark on an outside candidate search.