No, that's not acceptable.
First of all, people would wonder what in the hell are these people doing? Either hire the guy or don't. And yeah, it would be used against us in recruiting.
Secondly, in college baseball, two seasons are kind of unfair, you really need three.
Then you have the fact that he is inexperienced. He has never filled out a lineup card (to my knowledge), made a pitching change, nor do we know how he will handle the pitching staff, and would he keep McNickle around? McNickle is as much to blame for this mess as anyone, and he should be shown the door regardless. Saying he is more aggressive than Polk isn't exactly going out on a limb.
Another thing- he hasn't exactly set the world on fire as an assistant. He hasn't necessarily been bad, but he hasn't shown me that he is exactly innovative either. Yes, Polk may have hamstrung him in this case, but you would think that if Polk thought he was so good that he would let him do his thing.
Also, his failure as a recruiter is VERY concerning to me. He needs to be much more aggressive in this area for us to go where we want to.
Next, his personality is not what we need right now. Our players need someone to kick them ***. Raffo is not going to do that. Our team is soft, and they're very apathetic towards winning. Our whole team attitude needs to change.
Lastly, the fans would not support him. (Except for KB21 of course). I was at the game today, and I got the impression that most of the fans there were only putting up with what was going on because it was Polk. If it wasn't Polk, I'm not sure that they would be so forgiving. Unfortunately for Raffo, keeping him on board says to our fans that we're happy with what we've got, and that's just not acceptable for most people. He would probably have to take us to Omaha both years of his proposed contract and host Regionals at the very least just to win over some of the fans.
I think the best thing that he could do for himself is to withdraw his name from consideration and hope that he can convince the next coach to keep him as an assistant or with the program in some capacity, because as it stands, hiring another HC and trying to keep him on board is a big time conflict of interests that a new coach that is going to be trying to recbuild our team doesn't need. And even withdrawing his name only gives about a 5% chance of staying.
Personally, if I were Raffo, I would just try to find a HC job somewhere like North Alabama and try to build my resume.
You could also argue that people like Cohen and Steve Smith are more deserving than Raffo because both took jobs and got the necessary experience to prepare themselves to be a HC at a place like MSU.
