13 years ago today we were in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl playing FSU
- Thread starter rockingamecock
- Start date
And quit recruiting Long before that.
I don't necessarily agree because, under Spurrier, we had three or four outstanding SEC years. What is inarguable is that Morrison had run his course when God took him out.
I think the biggest difference is .. Morrison was a better recruiter than Spurrier . Spurrier got lucky because most of his 4&5* recruits were from S.C. and N.C who grew up as gamecock fans. After these players left he had no other good classes. He quit because he knew the well was dry.
Morrison was a system coach who ran gimmicky approaches on both sides of the ball because running over people was not going to be our forte. These schemes - Dunn's blitzing and the Run-N-Shoot on offense, were hard for many teams to scheme for, but talented teams who had time to prepare mainly beat us. That was particularly evident in bowl games. In his six years, we went to three bowl games and lost them all.
We played about as good a schedule as an independent who isn't Notre Dame could get, but we never recruited tall, strong linemen in appreciable numbers. I'm not saying Del Wilkes wasn't great, but we didn't have enough like him to play really good, well-prepared teams straight up.
Although we were 8-4 his final two years, we were terrible his final year in all of our losses, embarrassingly bad, and were poised to sign a very mediocre recruiting class the Wednesday after he died.
Between the good teams catching up with what he was doing and the scandals attendant to both Joe and the program, Joe was running on fumes after the 1989 season and King Dixon wasn't going to be the booster that Marcum had been.
Spurrier's departure was really bad, but his best teams were better than Joe's best teams.
You might want to look at Morrison's last two recruiting classes. They produced very few recruits that played very much. I agree with King the program was in a downward spiral under Morrison even before the steroids issue took it down the tubes. Unfortunate as it was we became the public face for the abuse of steroids in college football. Yes. I know lots of others were using them too but the S. I. story made us the fall guy in the public's eye.
I may be wrong but if I am I'm sure the fire brigade will correct me. I think Jim Carlen recruited Wilkes and others others who were the heart of the best ol we've ever had. If true, Morrison was the beneficiary.
Wilkes had quit the team after Bell was cut loose and Morrison recruited him back.
Such great memories!! Hope yall have should have plenty of money saved for your next bowl game debacle. It's gonna be a while!
Was Carlen the hs at WVU at the time or was it Bowden with Carlen on the staff?