I saw a somewhat smug comment last night about Georgia hiring Smart instead of Herman as somehow vindication of the process that brought him to Athens, the point being that the end justifies the means.
In rebuttal, allow me to cite the case of In re: Orgeron.
It’s pretty on point. LSU set its sights on hiring Herman. When Texas snuck in and grabbed Herman in a flash, Joe Alleva’s fallback was to offer the permanent position to Orgeron without hesitancy because he was there and was appealing to the locals. No further hiring process evaluating the program’s options was needed.
What they’ve wound up with is a guy who’s never been strong on the Xs and Os front and is now undercutting his offensive coordinator’s system, which, as Staples points out, is the reason they brought Canada in. That’s how you wind up with a program in disarray.
Blind luck is blind. Smart appears to be working out; Orgeron appears to be reenacting his flop at Ole Miss. When an AD is too lazy or too pressed by big boosters to do his homework properly, them’s the breaks.
Kirby Smart is bailing out Greg McGarity. That will never mean that McGarity did his job correctly in bringing Smart to Athens… as much as I know that’s the spin that’s inevitably coming. As grateful as I am for Kirby (boy, am I grateful), I’m just as mindful that coaches like Smart usually don’t grow on trees as low-hanging fruit. You think anyone at B-M has learned that lesson?
Get The Picture 
They had targeted Kirby for a while in Athens, they got their man. I say job well done.
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No I don’t think B-M has learned.
Chizik for whatever reason allowed Malzahn to do more less what he wanted and has a ring for it. We saw what happened when he ran the offense he wanted. Orgeron better learn quick.
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I got rich putting everything on black. Since it worked that proves gambling is the most effective wealth management strategy.
Also, did LSU pay a $40k finders fee for the foregone conclusion to hire Orgeron?
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LSU had its sights on Fisher. Herman’s agent made up the LSU story to try to get a higher bid for his client’s services. If I recall correctly, Alleva never offered Herman anything.
There is rarely low hanging fruit in coaching searches. That said, Kirby was about as low and ripe as we could have picked. Almost every prospective hire has receives the same interview training. They all are equipped with binders with strategic plans with roots to someone who at some point won a title that provides an impression of success. The reality is that there are no sure things. Sometimes, you make a decision based on all the important factors and are prepared to live with the results. Kirby was the single most qualified assistant coach in America, and more importantly, he understood what is needed to win in the SEC. Given the fact that he had options, we were faced with a choice. We could employ a lengthy process and risk losing him to South Carolina or act decisively. Thankfully, we acted decisively.
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But the point is.. isn’t UGA the kind of job that attracts top tier coaching talent in Football? Aren’t we willing to pay enough we should be able to go get an established Head Coach? We paid a search firm a fee so McGarity could cover his ass in not actually doing a search. Kirby was a gamble.. yes he was the most qualified assistant that’s never been a head coach available… but that’s always a risk. Muschamp is a great example and you can point to any number of Saban disciples who have been less than stellar despite great credentials. No one really knew Kirby was going to work out until he did.. and yes I think we’re at the point that we can say he has worked out as we had hoped. But it wasn’t as if McGarity was some great prognosticator. He got lucky.
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I don’t think we can declare he has worked out, but we can declare he is moving in the right direction. Chizik had a national title in year 2. Muschamp went 11-2 in year 2 at Florida.
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I really like where Kirby is right now and a lot of my concerns are easing, but we still got lucky. Go back 5 years and everyone was wetting themselves trying to get Muschamp, the HC in waiting at a program fresh off one NC and playing for another. If we’d been in the hunt right then, we could have easily hired Muschamp (Georgia boy, knows the SEC, worked under Saban and Brown, etc). The pedigree was essentially the same.
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Russ, I’m not so sure “we still got lucky” is exactly right. It’s not as if KS was and unknown person picked out of a hat. He’s been around and around the right kind of programs. No head coaching experience was a question but a question with at least an educated guess for an answer.
The only big screw up here was paying the search firm money to justify what B-M was already planning to do.
Also, no hire, even those with a pedigree, is infallible.
Had we followed another system in finding a coach, we can only imagine where we’d be..and SC would be sitting there with Kirby eating our lunch recruiting and winning..?.. could be.
Maybe there was genius to the method, despite the wasted $$.
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Yeah, I do agree that regardless of the process, it’s still somewhat of a crapshoot. I’m in the camp that thinks HC at UGA is a top job in the country, where we could have multiple people including proven head coaches available to us.
And even a proven HC doesn’t always work out.
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Completely agree with this. I was a Kirby agnostic when he was hired. I wasn’t sure he could do it, and wasn’t sure he couldn’t; though I was hopeful and wanted him to succeed, I cant say I wasn’t waiting to see how he did before deciding if he was a good hire or a bad hire (like anyone cares what I think). Last year was some good and some bad. This year seems to be trending in a really good direction, but it is still not even halfway through. I feel a lot better about his ability to do the job, though.
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Agreed, He wasn’t my 1st choice but I am eager and optimistic to see the future. In fairness if he were my 1st choice, I would have the optimistic but guarded view of the future.
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Ray Goff went 9-3 in year 3 and 10-2 in year 4 of his tenure.
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Chizik/Malzahn had only one thing going for them. Newton. After that…Ziiip!!!
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Just because it seems to be working out doesn’t mean the guys who made the choice knew what they were doing, or did it the right way, or the best way. Given McGarity’s overall record of athletic success, it seems a lot more likely that he finally just got lucky and overcame his tendancy to hire mediocrity. Sometimes being lucky is better than being good.
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Agreed with others that this is lucky break by UGA and comments on Muschamp. I am not and will likely never be sold he was McGarity’s 1st choice but the choice he could get the Alumni on board to fund.
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there are so many aspects of this that are misguided that I don’t know where to begin
who represents “top tier coaching”? Is there a listing on Amazon for a championship coach that can be ordered and delivered via Prime in two days?
Jimmy Johnson, who prior to Saban and Belichick, was the greatest football coach in my lifetime (he won titles in college at NFL and built dynastic talent in the process), failed in his second NFL stint with the Dolphins. He couldn’t get Miami past the second round, and by his last season, they had regressed. Do you think he thought that was going to happen? Would you have predicted that Pete Carroll would have success at USC? Who was lining up to hire Jim Harbaugh from Div 3 San Diego? On the other hand, did anyone think Michigan’s hire Brady Hoke from San Diego St was misguided at the time?
Second, there is absolutely ZERO data to support the notion that “proven head coach” is a more sure path to finding a great coach than a good assistant. EVERY COACH NOT NAMED SABAN is gamble!
Third, why does Muschamp matter? Muschamp worked with Saban for 5 years, and had NOT worked for him for 5 years when he took the UF job. Kirby worked with him for more than twice that time, was integral to the success at Bama, and was working with Saban at the time. Never mind that they are two different people. Does the fact that Ray Handley failed as NY Giants head football coach in 1991 mean that Bill Belichick should have never been given a chance as a head coach because Handley was a Parcells assistant coaches who failed badly?
What established Head Coach not named Saban or Meyer were acceptable to you or had a much upside as Kirby Smart? Would Jimbo Fisher have been a better choice? Freeze? Mullen? James Franklin? Do you really think UGA is the right place for James Franklin?
What established head coach should we have hired. Would Mark D’antonio been a good hire for your tastes? How are Brett Bielema and Sumlin working out for Arkansas and A&M? Think Tennessee would have done better with either Mason or Stoops than Butch Jones?
My point was that NO ONE knows if a hire is going to work out. You make an educated guess and hope that time and place are right. Meyer came to UF at the perfect time. Richt was letting his foot off the gas, Zook left him a metric truckload of talent, Fulmer was in steep decline, and recruiting was about to go to another level of “crazy” in terms of player contact in the era of smart phones and mobile data. He seized that opportunity. Absent a bit of luck in 2014, I am not sure one would qualify his tenure at Ohio State as that much of a big success. He inherited a vastly superior roster and could lean on his UF track record as . The fact that he got that title has kept him in striking distance of Bama’s insane recruiting rankings and miles away from his Big 10 competitors. Nonetheless, he probably will NOT win anything of consequence in 2017. Yet, he is Urban Meyer.
You make an educated guess and see what it produces. sometimes it takes seeing a LOT of different candidates because none is obvious or the one you really want does not want the job. Other times, there is one obvious candidate who has had success as a head coach (Meyer for UF in 2004 OR Gary Barnett at Northwestern in 1995.)
Kirby was a NO BRAINER hire. His track record and qualifications made him as good a risk/reward as anyone we could have hired. I could list them, but the MOST important were that he absolutely understood the size of the fishbowl that he was entering, the expectations that came with the job, and the challenge that the conference we compete in presented. He knew EXACTLY what he is was doing when he arrived and has never wavered in his confidence that it would work. When the media asked him on the first day of summer practice if he was worried about failure, he shrugged it off because of his confidence in his process and plan for the program and the progress he knew the team had made to that point.
Regardless of the results he generates, he was the right hire and the process was sound.
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Bravo
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If you haven’t been CEO you don’t know the fish bowl you’re entering, the same for HC.
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Comment ‘o the day. Nice work.
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Good post … Kirby was a no-brainer in hindsight. On November 29, 2015, Kirby was an enormous risk for a man not exactly known as a risk taker. While Kirby seems to be proving that he’s the right guy, in November/December 2015, the AD should have forced David Shaw to call the Palo Alto PD to get the Brinks trucks out of his front yard.
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No, and if Kirby continues to work out, I’d say we’re in for more McGarity.. unless Boosters are going to take the credit for forcing his hand to hire Kirby specifically.
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If Kirby continues to work out, Smart will work with the alumni to get what he wants, and McGarity will go along with it. McGarity isn’t dumb enough to stand in the way of a Football coach who at the moment looks to have the program to be in a direction it hasn’t been in 30 years.
The biggest question I have with Smart vs. B-M/McGarity is if Smart is pushing for any big out of conference games and McGarity wanting to cash in on cupcakes?
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Kirby likes the big neutral site games, he has said as much. They bring in as much or more money than cupcakes, which actually cost UGA. The thing is, it sometimes means losing a home game, which the town doesn’t lilke.
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I was just thinking about the hiring process that landed Kirby for UGA this morning. Let’s say, HYPOTHETICALLY, that UGA wins 2 or more conference titles with a Natty sprinkled in over the next decade. Who does that make the MVP of UGA Football… Ray Goff. Why?!?!?! Because, had he not signed the kid, Kirby would have never been on UGA’s radar (insert grammatical period, end of story)
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Always an arbitrary choice to how far you want to go back to identify a cause. If there had been no Big Bang, none of us would be here and football wouldn’t matter. Therefore, the Big Bang gets the credit for Kirby’s hire.
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LMAO..I was going to go back to Goff’s grandparents, but you took it to the limit…which reminds me of a song that we can’t sing here.
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Not my point. The Goff thing was mostly facetious. The point is that the process, or lack thereof, surely wouldn’t deserve any credit in the hire should it turn out to be a resounding success.
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JN, it was a good point you made. Replys were just being light hearted.
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Senator, it’s a good start and I’m enthusiastic about the Georgia program, but until we win a championship the only thought I have about the Butts-Mehre crowd is don’t interfere and screw things up.
Also remember Orgeron was not even LSU’s second choice. They wanted to bring back Jimbo Fisher, then they resurrected Miles before going after Fisher again.
Dumping Miles after a narrow early season road loss is what ultimately put them in their predicament. Now they’ve handcuffed themselves financially.
LSU still dominates Louisiana and east Texas recruiting. They can recover by having Orgeron follow the Dabo model, focus on recruiting/team unity issues and let the coordinators do their jobs. They’ve left themselves with no other choice.
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Fisher was a pipe dream that Jimmy Sexton was more than happy to exploit.
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LSU got played, no doubt about that.
The more interesting situation is in Knoxville, and the role the “special advisor to the president” will take in getting their alumni back on board.
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First, the “special advisor to the president” took the donuts
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But left the donut on the scoreboard. Go figure.
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Somebody on Reddit pointed out that anyone who thought Jimbo Fisher would leave Florida (not just FSU, but the state of Florida) needed to have their head checked.
He’s got a seriously sick kid, and a divorced wife. Who is going to give up the ability to see their kids for that?
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I could see a few coaches doing it not saying I agree with it. But, that line of work tends to attract people that are very ego and money driven. Do we need to name names of mercenary coaches?
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“mercenary coaches”…Well played Otto!
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They are a motorcycle crash waiting to happen…
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His initials are UM and he left the state of Florida.
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I’m really curious if we see LSU take a tumble like Tennessee did after firing Phil Fulmer.
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It maybe even harsher, Fulmer without Cutcliffe was a downward trend.
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It’s doubtful because Louisiana is such a strong recruiting ground, along with the fact that all these Louisiana kids want to go to LSU. Tennessee will always have to poach from across state lines to get talent and that’s a lot of work going up against Bama, Georgia, etc. Tennessee has fallen off because of talent more than anything else. If you can coach, jobs like Texas, LSU, FSU, USC, Ohio State, etc where the talent just never stops are no brainers.
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Agreed all of thr jobs mentioned are easier but Tennessee isn’t Nebraska where it has to travel across multiple states before getting to a recruiting hotbed. It is more Oklahoma in that it has to recruit its neighbor. North Carolina also produces substantial talent which UT, and UGA exploit.
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North Carolina football is like UGA basketball. Tons of talent in state, tremendous resources available, great university, great campus, great college town, and no ability to keep the talent at the flagship, or to sustain more than the occasional flash of adequacy. Both are a complete mystery to me.
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UNC is even more a mystery to me, as UNC football was once bigger than their basketball program ages ago.
You have made a point I was hinting at UT has access to nearby talent, and the likely the stiffest competition in NC is UGA and VaTech. They have the advantage of playing UGA and UF annually and have successfully recruited those states.
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It will not be a mystery when you see all of the programs crashing and burning in the FBI investigation into AAU big shoe deals and UGA comes out smelling roses. Fox is not in the gutter.
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I remember in the 80s when LSU sucked. Get a bad coach in there and a program can really tank fast.
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One could easily argue that the best hiring process for a coach is to identify who you want, go after them, and don’t take “no” for an answer. They knew Kirby would take the job, he had the resume, he’s a great recruiter, knows the state and he was a UGA man, so this is his dream job and it is unlikely he will leave for a better job. The same could not be said for Herman. Herman is a questionmark in terms of a culture fit to this area. His dream job is the Texas job, as he is from TX. (See Glenn Mason; Gary Barnett).
Ideally, you could interview everyone and make an informed decision, but is that really the way CFB coaches and their agents work? We did the “search committee” deliberation thing after Dooley, and it pissed Erk off so that he didn’t want the job. Plus, you have Sextons playing the leverage game. You put yourself in a bad position by getting rejected multiple times. It’s not like this approach is risk free.
Under the circumstances, I think the process was handled just fine, and I’m not saying that because Kirby seems to be working out.
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Let me again ask the $64000 question: how many hiring decisions by Greg McGarity have worked out?
If it was such a slam dunk, why did McGarity feel the need for a $40000 search firm fig leaf?
I don’t see how you can take his track record and argue that grabbing someone without doing any due diligence because he’s a Georgia guy is the best process, especially when your money guys got spooked by Sexton sending up a flare about South Carolina. Your mileage obviously varies.
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What kind of due diligence would have made you feel better. Did you need someone to verify Kirby’s work history? Maybe a committee of Fran Tarkenton, Kevin Butler, plus 1 student and 1 professor to interview Kirby about his special teams or strength and conditioning philosophy?
Every hire is a crap shoot. This one seems to have worked out, but that’s what Florida thought after Mooschamp’s first year.
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You aren’t asking the question correctly. Based on Greg McGarity’s track record, what kind of due diligence would have made you feel better?
I’ve answered that question in posts before, so check the archives.
As I’ve indicated in this post, I already know many of you are more than happy to take an end justifies the means victory lap. I’m not stopping you.
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It worked out due to dumb luck. If we had been hiring while Muschamp was the golden boy out at Texas as head coach in waiting behind Mack Brown, I guarantee you we would’ve hired him. Thank god that didn’t happen.
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Exactly. Said the same up above before I saw you beat me to it.
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Nothing other than UGA not hiring Kirby would have made the Senator feel better, it seems. No offense to the Senator meant.
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Thanks for completely misconstruing — I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not being a deliberate ass here — my argument.
No offense meant to you, either.
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Well you constantly berate “the hiring process”……other than just complaining to be complaining, what is the underlying reason? Either you like the hire, or you don’t. I don’t get worrying about the process at this point. IF Kirby doesn’t work out, GMac is a goner. I know that would make you happy.
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Maybe you should read my posts.
Look, I’m fine with Smart. And if you don’t care about anything else associated with Georgia athletics, then you’re in a happy place. I guess that’s the difference between you and me.
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None of the other mistakes will matter if Kirby works out. He will live or die by this hire. Maybe he didn’t have a lot to do with the choice or with the timing, but, he will take the credit/blame regardless. You can’t give him the blame without the credit if it works out. He fired Richt and hired Kirby. Maybe he was lucky, but he had a plan and it worked out. The rest is just chatroom fodder.
BTW, ADGM has had a fantastic month. Not only has the football team done well, but his decision to retain Fox looks good in light of the NCAA scandal. The “Georgia Way” has avoided disaster for the university, and he can tout that. Fox and McGarriy may end up looking like Bubba Gump shrimp company after the hurricane.
I hate “The Ga Way” too, but there is a yang to the ying, and “The Georgia Way’s” stock is ticking up. Like it or not.
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Again, I get the ends justifies the means argument.
McGarity having a fantastic month because nobody on the basketball staff has been indicted may be the most Georgia Way thing of all.
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careful, Senator, It hasn’t been 30 days since the first shoes dropped (see what I did there) in the basketball scandal. Getting someone indicted based on our bball production the last 15 years might be the most UGA thing ever.
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Im not saying the ends justify the means. I understand you hate McGarrity, but address the merits at least.
I am saying that a simple selection process headed by one guy targeting one guy can be a good, effective strategy. Jeremy Foley became a Hall of Fame AD using that strategy. (Spurrier, Meyer, McElwain).
A protracted process is fraught with problems. It cost us Erk Russell. To ignore that that most protracted coach searches end in disaster (Goff, Mike Riley, Orgeron) is to ignore reality. The only one that worked out was Saban at Alabama, and that was not a orderly interview process, Alabama backed up the Brinks truck out of desperation.
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Jeez, I don’t hate McGarity. You can only criticize his job performance based on emotion?
You have no idea what went into the hiring process that landed Smart. You cite Foley without mentioning that he hired as many flops as hits. You stipulate that a hiring process must be protracted, but that’s not a point I’m willing to concede, at least not one conducted by a competent athletic administration. You analogize offering a head coaching job to a man who had won a national title with a man who had never been a head coach before. Sorry, but you aren’t convincing me.
Georgia had the top opening in the country. You really want to insist there wasn’t a decent selection of coaching candidates out there to evaluate?
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Let’s go with that, who that was hired two years ago has his team in the top 5 at this point?
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LOL. Hindsight always makes the best hiring decisions.
Obviously, McGarity knew.
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So you can’t name a Coach hired two years ago that is doing better? That seems to be the crux of your argument..we didn’t look hard enough…well others looked hard..who did they find?
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If Kirby Smart were at South Carolina, do you think the ‘Cocks would be fifth in the country today?
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Foley hired 2 different coaches to win 3 national championships and 10 SEC Championships in 20 years. Would you not take those odds? I didn’t even mention Billy Donovan and all the “All Sports” trophies.
The point is that a single individual AD targeting a single candidate and going for him with tunnel vision can be effective. To dismiss that is silly. These ADs live or die by FB coach hires. ADGM had years to think thru this. He studied for this exam for years. Maybe, just maybe he nailed it. If he did, he will have a lifetime contract as AD here.
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Foley didn’t hire Spurrier. Machen was the main force behind Meyer’s hire. Carry on.
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Don’t know who told Jeremy to hire Billy but Machen told Jeremy to hire Irwin because Machen – then President of Utah – had hired Irwin at Utah.
“U. President Dr. Bernie Machen is enthusiastic about his new head football coach. ‘I’m delighted that Urban Meyer will be leading the Utah football program. He brings a great combination of experience, energy, and discipline to the job. We look to him to make a strong program even stronger,’ said Machen”.
https://archive.unews.utah.edu/news_releases/utah-hires-urban-meyer-as-its-new-football-coach/
Best part of the Machen black op to extract Irwin from Utah:
“Foley and McGarity checked into the Marriott hotel in Salt Lake City under assumed names.”
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/595112173/How-Florida-ended-up-landing-Urban-Meyer.html
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You think that Smart’s hire is an example of McGarity being proactive? What, based on McGarity’s job performance so far, makes you think he does anything proactively (other than self-impose punishment for NCAA violations)? McGarity’s job performance, to me, seems to be him running from one fire to the next trying to either put them out, or at least stop them from going to 4-alarm status.
Even the timing of the Richt firing/Smart hiring was more about the possibility of South Carolina beating him to the punch than a proactive plan that he was ready to set in motion.
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“The only one that worked out was Saban at Alabama, and that was not a orderly interview process,”
The Bama protracted process on R Rod and Nick was disorderly but it at least it kept Mal Moore from going into exile.
“The actual truth is West Virginia mega boosters, including Arizona Diamondbacks managing partner Ken Kendrick, asked Rodriguez Dec. 7 what it’d take to get him to stay. By the next day, West Virginia and its boosters were offering him a big raise and facility improvements.
Rapoport believes he may have unwittingly played a part in Rodriguez’s decision to the detriment of his report.
“I know that reporting it that night gave West Virginia boosters an opportunity to raise money and get Rich Rodriguez a new contract,” he said. “If I stayed quiet and he just went to tell his team the next day, my guess is he’d probably still be Alabama’s coach….
Nearly a month after Rodriguez said no, Moore finally convinced Saban to leave the Miami Dolphins for Alabama. Moore famously told Saban if didn’t say yes; he couldn’t go back to Alabama.
“I think I’ll just have them take me down to Cuba,” Saban recalled Moore saying years later….
“I just want you to know you’ve hired a horseshit football coach,” Saban told Moore. “But nobody will out-recruit me.”
http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2016/12/looking_back_at_what_really_ha.html
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Whether you interview a lot of candidates or one, its still a crapshoot.
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No argument on that point because everything is a crapshoot
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Please tell me, Why does everybody on here hate Ray Goff, he was/is a damn good dawg and was put in a situation that was not his fault, he gave it his best shot and I would argue that was becoming a good football coach. Please guys give the man a break.
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“McGarity having a fantastic month because nobody on the basketball staff has been indicted may be the most Georgia Way thing of all.”
Lack of indictments plus Kirby’s month puts Greg in the lead for the Eldorado
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The only thing you can really conclude about hiring coaches is that to a certain extent luck always plays a big part in it. Orgeron was a dumpster fire before LSU hired him, but he was popular with a lot of corn dog eaters because he has a Trumpian way of issuing sound bites that get folks fired up, and at the time Alleva probably had a limited number of options. Bad luck.
“Smart appears to be working out; Orgeron appears to be reenacting his flop at Ole Miss.” Good luck, Dawgs. Meanwhile, the guy that everyone (including many posters herein) believed to be the next great coach, Tom Herman is 2-2 at UT. Would we have been happy with that? Would he have been able to recruit like Kirby in this state? I’m guessing no, but my point is that it is always going to be a guess in the final analysis.
Does this mean ADGM made a good hire if CKS continues to do well? No, but he made a successful hire. Before Jeremy Foley hired Corch, he hired Zook. Not too sure how much due diligence he exercised in either case. We hired Jim Harrick to coach B-ball and part of that was due diligence and the other part was Mike Adams knew him and liked him. Court results? Pretty good! The rest of the equation? Not so much. We hired Scott Stricklin to coach our baseball team, a guy that by rational analysis was the “Tom Herman” of baseball coaches at the time. It hasn’t worked out so far.
There’s always luck involved.
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Just because McGarity fell face forward into Kirby Smart doesn’t make him a good AD. We don’t know how the gymnastic hire will play out; our tennis program and facilities are not up to standard; and when was the last time UGA went to Omaha? And let’s not even start on basketball.
Alabama was :thisclose: to whiffing on Saban, and if not for a Rodriguez defection at the last minute, Miles might still be at LSU.
Anyway, let’s not confuse luck with competence. McGarity has yet to show much of the latter.
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Mcgarity did not hire Smart. He was told to get the contract done and almost screwed that up as well. In fact, power brokers had to step in and tell McGarity to give Kirby what he wanted.
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Agree. We can all rest easy knowing Greg Mediocrity will be back with another p.r. disaster. Only a matter of time.
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“Greg Mediocrity”….how have I never heard or thought of this before? Well played, sir.
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And when he does – probably when he hires another MAC baseball coach rather than either the Florida coach or the Vanderbilt coach – he will then be called Greg McMediocrity
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Going further with the hiring process, it’s the hires that the Big Dawg makes that makes the hireling, the AD and even B-M look good (or bad). Kirby’s are proving out thus far after a rocky year that seems to go into the system changeover box for last year’s resultant. They are all on his back when things go wrong/right. This year Kirby’s selections look pretty prescient on his part, right down to the Conditioning and Special Teams Coaches.
Kirby’s hires are making him look like Godzilla in hiring smarts, but I reckon a few may not have his full stamp upon them. All those people in the hiring support bracket seem to have selected wisely or presented good stuff for Kirby to use. While I dilute my enthusiasm for each week’s matchup by calling attention to each of them getting better as the season progresses, I’m transfixed while waiting to see our concomitant progress resultant due to those hires as we go through opponents like shit through a goose.
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I frankly get annoyed with the comparisons of other “Saban disciples” to Kirby. McElwain is the closest, being at Alabama from 08′-11. Kirby was there 07-15. Frankly, I think even that’s a big difference with what went down at Alabama from ’12-15—-4 more full years of actually even greater dominance. Nevermind Muschamp and all the other fake ones…….if you didn’t coach with him at Alabama, you don’t count IMO. That’s the model that Kirby saw and learned way more than anyone else.
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I don’t believe that McGarity made the call on firing Richt or hiring Kirby. I don’t know who did but at this moment it is allowing McGarity to come up for air, although briefly I suspect. The $40K search firm was simply for doing the dirty work with Sexton in gauging what Kirby wanted even before Richt was canned. McGarity will ride Kirby’s coattail until he can retire probably without making another major hire.
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isn’t a search firm a standard FOIA avoidance tactic ?
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STUPID MCGARITY!!!
BRINGING IN A BAINBRIDGE NATIVE – FOUR TIME UGA FOOTBALL LETTERMAN – DEAN TATE SOCIETY INDUCTEE AND LONG-TIME ASSISTANT UNDER THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COACH IN 40 YEARS
WHAT A MOE-RON!
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Even a blind AD finds an acorn now and then.
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I’m just having fun Sen.
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Oh, I know. But others might not. 😉
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Every time you post I just want a late-night cheeseburger and beer.
Or an early beer at the big round table with Sky.
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Blind AD remark is nice, but it’s not as if Smart had no resume. Choosing him wasn’t blind luck..it wasn’t a shot in the dark. It was risky but no more so than any other viable pick would have been.
Except for the (admittedly huge) lack of HC experience, every other parameter looked great. And with Saban’s stated belief that Smart would be great HC someday, it just looked like the right hire..to someone…and that someone is sitting fat right now. I don’t know who that is. Some on here seems to.
But I doubt McG figured this all out on his own. He may have come up with the 40K cover scheme.
I’d love to see Kevin Butler become the next AD if he ever finishes grad school. 🙂
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You could be right about that, but since B-M never went through an evaluation process, we’ll never know.
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Mcgoof lost me the second he decided to use police to keep the team isolated from CMR. Every decision he made up to and during the firing tells me all I need to know about mcgarity.
Everything that’s happened since Kirby was given the job offer must be coming from someone else and mcgoof is just the go between.
I’m glad Kirby is getting some positive results. I’m confident that the positive results stem from Kirby being able to run his program without mcgoofy keeping his thumb on Kirby. The power structure must be different than it used to be. I believe that someone or some group of people wanted Kirby for years and Kirby probably told them to wait for the right time, wait for the right circumstances. In fact, with the way friction developed between mcgoof and CMR, there may have been strategy in place for 3 years that was designed to drive Richt to resign. Playing a long game to avoid the buyout.
Kirby probably spent a lot of his own time at Alabama preparing for his head job opportunity at Uga. Seems likely to me that many conversations have taken place over the years between Kirby and the power players in the Georgia athletic association.
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IMO the real blind luck here is in the firing process rather than the hiring process. The chances that you improved over what you had was very low irrespective of the selection process. So we’re beating a lot of odds here.
But over the last 54 years it seems we’ve had better luck just hiring assistants out of Alabama schools (2-0) than we’ve had when we’ve sat down and thought about it (1-2), so maybe this is the Georgia Way.
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Agree Derek that the firing was the true gamble. To use a poker analogy the firing was like going all in pre-flop. It sometimes make sense, but it’s always a gamble and in the case of Richt, it was an unecessary one. That being said, UGA is one of the big stacks at the college football table due to resources and recruiting situation. Therefore, it is reasonable that the ones that made the decision were comfortable that UGA could absorb a hit in a failed new coach in the hopes of finding an eventual Saban killer. So while the Richt firing was a huge tactical blunder from my perspective, it may well have been a strategic win over the long term whether that is Kirby or the next guy if Kirby eventually Chiziks or Zooks.
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Uhhhhh. What lesson?
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“You think anyone at B-M has learned that lesson?”
No
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Rumor only, but am hearing that Butch has just been fired.
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Is the Great Pumpkin going to be the interim?
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no, that would be absurd.
It’s the heavy duty trash can.
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He had just been speaking with SOD about how many heavy duty trash cans would be needed to hold the beaucoup buyout money
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Finally, someone came through. Nice post
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While I am excited about our progress and performance, you are right Senator. It is also way early to assess the job that either Kirby or Herman for that matter are doing. I certainly like what I am seeing but I’m not ready for a coronation. Let’s see how this year works out and how we do at replacing this senior leadership before the coronation.
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I, a UGA alumni have the answer to UT’s problems, Tee Martin. He is currently the OC of USC and he would galvanize the fan base as the Qb of their last NC team. Screw Peyton get Tee.
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Google “O” THE ROSY FINCH BOYZ, L.L.C.
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