Hey, remember those dark days of 2009 and 2010 when a considerable part of the fan base wanted Mark Richt’s head on a platter? Yeah, me, too. One of the names we saw bandied about quite often as a replacement was Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen. Check out Bill Connelly’s ringing endorsement of Mullen:
It happens to every successful coach at some point. Hell, it probably happened to Nick Saban when Alabama was only going 10-3 in 2010. You raise the bar for a given program higher than it has been for a while, but people get a little bit impatient when you fail to continue raising it. You could be a couple of 7-6 seasons away from full-fledged Glen Mason Territory.
Back in my blogger infancy, i coined a term called Glen Mason Territory to describe when a coach achieves at a higher-than-normal level at a given school (probably a second-tier BCS program that hadn’t won in a while before he showed up) but cannot ever break through to the next level; he keeps making bowl games and winning, say, 6-8 games a year, but fans begin to get impatient. The crazies begin to start yelling things like “settling for mediocrity!” on talk radio and message boards, season ticket sales begin to fade, and even the rational fans in the base (the SB Nation readers, naturally) begin to start wondering if a change is needed.
Now, Dan Mullen is not there yet, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Well, that’s a relief. But it sure doesn’t sound like it would have been much of an upgrade, either.
Just another be careful what you wish for reminder, folks.