Barry Switzer won three national championships at Oklahoma and the Super Bowl with the Cowboys.
At no time have I ever thought or posted that any of our coaches should be compared to Vince Lombardi.
I do think that some coaches are better than others and that their success rate and the relationships they and their staff develop with the recruits and players is more important in terms of both recruiting and developing talent than the square footage of the weight room.
I think P-D's problems began with missed opportunities, one-sided defeats and upset losses that caused recruits to wonder if they wanted to play for them.
It will be interesting to see if Indiana, with their lousy history, suddenly starts drawing in 5 star recruits with their new weight room. Even if they do, they will still need a good coaching staff to achieve real success.
You just don't get it.
On every count you don't get it and haven't gotten it.
First, Barry Switzer.
Barry won at Oklahoma because he had the most talented team every year for a number of years.
He was hired by Jerry Jones to prove to Jimmy Johnson that Cowboys could win with any coach including one who had never coached in the NFL and who hadn't coached at all in a number of years.
Barry won a bit in Dallas because he had extraordinary talent. That was part of what I was suggesting - teams with great talent can win even with mediocre coaching. In that sense your post has unwittingly confirmed part of what I was trying to convey to you.
What you failed to understand while reading my post was this - most observers agree that the Dallas Cowboys should have won two or three additional Super Bowls -that had Jimmy Johnson remained with the team, they would have done so.
And that's part of what I was saying. A mediocre coach can hurt a talented team.
As far as P and D are concerned, here is what I recall. For many years you insisted that SU Football had facilities that were equal to or better than those of our competition. I recall how adamant you were that our facilities were state of the art. You dismissed the notion that we could not compete with other schools in that regard. And you were just flat out wrong about that.
Instead, you insisted that our 6-6 seasons were due to coaching.
And now you suggest that it was the bad losses to Va Tech and Miami and Rutgers that caused the program to move in the wrong direction.
The reality of course is just the opposite.
The bad loss to Va Tech was caused by the fact that the Hokies had Mike Vick at QB while we had Troy Nunes - a Division II QB who should never have been playing for SU. Had Vick come to SU as the staff fully expected him to do, we would have won a lot more games.
Vick better than Nunes. Got that??
And, we lost badly to Miami because that team had probably 15 All Pros and we didn't.
And we lost to Rutgers because the talent differential between the two teams was not as wide as you presumed - the talent differential between the two teams created for SU a fairly narrow margin for error. When we dropped passess (Lowe) and missed FGs (Barber, I think) that margin for error was breached. I'mpretty sure that Barber missed a last minute PAT in 2002 (?) at Temple to lose that game. He was a pretty mediocre kicker whose lack of talent hurt us a great deal.
O'Neill/Biskup/Greene, Mare better than Barber. Got that?
The talent deficiency resulted not from the losses to Va Tech or others, but caused those losses.
An that talent deficiency began much earlier - during McNabb years - than most of us realized at the time.
I have the same media guides that you have but I understand that the guides are used to recruit.or that reason they tell an optimistic story about our facilities. They do not tell and have not told the actual reality. In 2003 the Media Guide for that season did not state "it's true that we have AstroTurf in the Dome that most kids do not like, but hey, so what?!"
I was told ten years ago that the AstroTurf in the Dome was really hurting our recruiting - the kids did not want to play on the stuff. That basic reality had more impact than Vick beating us badly on the field.
Many on this board have had frank conversations with coaches or Athletic Department personnel over the years, who have stated quite bluntly how far behind we have been -and how far behind we remain. I was there in the early spring of 2011 - you were not there - when Marrone told us that if no action were taken at that time -IPF - there would be another coach standing in front of the audience in a few years repeating what he was telling us.
You may recall that the Dome BB court was at one time a Tartan surface. That was quickly changed when the kids started complaining about it and recruits refused to play on it.
The AstroTurf however remained in the Dome well after our competition had gone to Field Turf.
As far as Vince Lombardi is concerned, you still don't understand.
I never suggested that we should compare our coaches to Vince Lombardi. What I said was this. Many, including you and me were raised on the "Lombardi Legend" - that a great coach could transforma bad team with bad players into a great team -that a great coach could turn a bad or mediocre player into a great player.
Well, that's not true. It's not magic.
Teams play better when they improve their talent. And good coaches can help talented players play better than can mediocre coaches. Coaches help a lot. But, the most important factor is talent. And in college the talent follows the money. Oregon -a program with no football legacy - has made that quite clear.
As far as Indiana is concerned, football recruiting has been better than ever before since the infrastructure improvements were made two years ago. The IU team has more athletes now than ever before - and it's not even close.
All of my friends who follow IU Football - all of my best friends go to every home game - agree that the new football facility has changed everything -it has transformed IU Football.
This is my last post on this subject with you Steve.
I am confident that I know the issue far better than you do. Actually, that's not right.
I have no doubt that I know the issue better than you do.
There is no need to discuss it with you any further.
