Hi Cuse fans! I've been reading your board since it was announced you were joining the ACC.
Lately, I've read the raging debate / frustration over facilities, coaches, recruiting, etc. and thought I'd chime in with our experience with the same issue.
Back in the Tommy West years (1994 ish-1998) and the early Tommy Bowden years (1999-2002) we got a few 4-star guys, but never enough to build a solid program.
At that time, Tennessee was winning the NC by pillaging SC and NC for recruits right in our (and SC's) backyard (Shaun Ellis, Albert Hayneworth, etc) FSU would swoop in and steal a 4-star guy we thought we had at the last minute.
We had two main problems: 1) facilities that were once state-of-the-art and were severely lagging other ACC programs (not to mention the SEC) and 2) coaching staff.
But the root cause of both of these problems was our administration.
They held to the "it's good enough for 7-8 wins" philosophy b/c they, like a lot of academics, thought good sports programs and a respected university are mutually exclusive.
Bowden, like Marrone is doing at Cuse, pushed for facilities from day one and was promised they would be built as part of his hiring. Then they proceeded to drag their feet and were going to take some half-ass approach and cheap out like they always did. Luckily, at the same time, we hired Terry Don Phillips from OK St as our AD. He had his faults, but he was a major proponent of facilities and he changed the plan to the West Zone we have now.
He also rennovated our ancient basketball arena to put a some lipstick on the pig. It helped a litte and we had some good years under Purnell. It's still subpar and we don't have dedicated practice facilities. If they don't spend money soon, we'll lose Brad Brownell.
I saw in your debate on here that some were downplaying rennovating your locker rooms as unnecessary. DO IT! NOW! That's the first thing we did just to have something decent to show the kids as a placeholder until we could start building. It helped.
The first year the West Zone was being built, we had nothing to show recruits at all other than the spruced-up locker rooms, so Bowden had them tear up some dirt and park a bunch of construction equipment to look like it was in progress. Just that small perception impacted recruiting that year. We landed James Davis over some of the bigger programs.
Once the West Zone was complete, recruiting took off. James Davis helped land CJ Spiller who never would have come without the facilities to show commitment. It snowballed from there.
Our other problem was coaching salaries. Bowden never had enough to hire the best across the board. When Dabo took over, he wanted Ellis Johnson as his DC and EJ wanted to be at Clemson, but the admin wouldn't pony up and he ended up at our hated rival, SC.
What changed? We put major pressure on the Board of Trustees to re-emphasize football and commit to winning. We still didn't have a training table or an indoor practice facility until this year. We didn't have top-notch assistant coaches.
Fast forward to a few years ago and they approved paying Chad Morris $1.2MM and Venebles $800K, both of which are above what they refused to pay Ellis Johnson years earlier. We now have a training table in the West Zone and just opened an indoor facility.
It's no coincidence that it's the same time period we won the ACC for the first time in 20 years and went from 7-8 wins to 9-11 wins. It matters.
At Cuse right now, you are in the same boat. You have what looks to be a solid coach who can build your program back to what it used to be. Pay the man, pay for asst coaches, upgrade/ build facilities. If you pour money into it now, it will pay for itself and then some in the coming years.
I want Cuse to be good so we can make the ACC Atlantic like the SEC West.
Thoroughly enjoyed the WVU beatdown in the snow. Watched every snap. Great game!
Glad to have y'all in the conference and hope all the admin stuff works out for you.
