I'm calling it. Croom > Arnett....
- Thread starter thekimmer
- Start date
There's no doubt Croom had a better defensive staff than Arnett has offensive staff.
I don't think there's really enough of a track record to say at this point. The only reason I say Arnett isn't as bad is that he has proven he can be a good coordinator. I don't think Croom could have been an offensive coordinator in the SEC.
That said, Crooms did make it four years as an OC in Detroit. His first year in Detroit they had the 2nd best offense (based on yards per game). Fell to the 14th best in his second year. Then Barry Sanders left and Crooms's offense went to 21st in his third year, then 27th for his last year. That's actually way better than I would have expected.
Even after losing Barry Sanders, there were 9 teams with a worse offense than a Croom coached offense? Then even his fourth year, there were four offenses worse than his? I would think I must have greatly underestimated him, but nobody was ever tempted to give him another coordinator position, so I'm thinking the results on the field looked worse than the stats.
I wonder how much Alabama interviewing him for HC provided credibility for his interview and hire at MSU?
See, I have NEVER understood this argument. What does "appeasing the NCAA" even mean? Did hiring a bad coach appease the NCAA?
We could have hired Mother Teresa or Jerry Sandusky and the punishment dealt to us would have been exactly the same. Instead, we thought that somehow hiring a black coach was going to grant us favor with a corrupt organization who had ALREADY given us our penalty? We were morons. Hiring a bad coach did nothing but dig ourselves a deeper hole to climb out of. I've got friends and family members who still repeat this line and it drives me crazy.
Most people realized Alabama interviewed him as a courtesy . We hired him to appease the NCAA and SEC and get LT some major recognition.
Yep, and we certainly got all that. Honestly, I'm not all that mad about the Croom Error. It led to a lot of change at MSU and ultimately the best run in our athletic history. I just don't want to go back to it from here, and I feel a little of that creeping in. I'm too old to waste time seeing our sports wither away for 2-3 years before the light clicks on.
I doubt he would have ever been a candidate if he hadn't been given a courtesy interview by Alabama.
You're joking right?
I just cant agree with any of this. Firing Croom, getting rid of Templeton, hiring Byrne, and hiring Mullen led to the best run in athletic history. Not Croom. We should have done this back in 2004, but instead we hired a bad football coach. The NCAA could give two ***** if he was the first black coach in the SEC. Nothing changed except LT got his balls stroked a little bit.
Hiring a bad football coach is never a good idea and the quick turnaround with Mullen proves it can be done if you hire a good coach.
Stop. You don't even have your facts right. Penalties weren't announced until almost a year into the Croom Error.
You're not totally wrong. I'm mainly just looking in hindsight.
There was a lot of pressure back then in the NFL (see the Rooney rule) and the NCAA to hire black coaches. It lead to a ton of black coaches getting "courtesy" interviews for jobs that they weren't really in the running for. A number of black coaches did get hired during that time because of the pressure and some worked out and some didn't . Croom being the first SEC black head coach was a very big deal in 2004 that relieved a lot of pressure on a lot of people.
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Yep. It did buy us some good favor, but it was for us and image/politics alone. And further, I don't think any of the black coaches that came along in the next few years were hired because Croom 'broke down the barrier' or anything.
Kevin Sumlin - won big at Houston, right down road from aTm
Joker Phillips - OC during a successful run at UK, made sense to promote
James Franklin - OC during successful run at Maryland
Derek Mason - DC during successful run at Stanford
All of those guys earned their jobs the hard way, and were hired AFTER Croom was fired. The Croom Error was straight politics for the SEC, and someone had to fall on that sword, and our good ole boy AD was just the ones to accommodate it. I'll say again - if we truly wanted a black coach, we could have hired Charlie Strong - THAT is the guy who got screwed over repeatedly, and should have been the guy to break the barrier.
The fact that we can even debate this speaks volumes.This thread is freaking depressing
I honestly think if Sly had this roster with this schedule coming off 9-4 he would win more games than this clown crew. leach would win ten no problem, this years schedule is much weaker than last year.
He actually was an assistant. Problem was, it was in the 80’s, and it was at Alabama where he had quite a bit of advantages. Everything after that was NFL.
I meant coordinator, sorry. And technically he was the OC for Lions from 97-00, so I guess he was. Oh well.
Either way, I think he would have won a good many more games had he just let Woody run the offense. I don't think Woody was plumb awful, remember, it was his gameplan vs. Florida in 2004. Croom just micromanaged him the rest of the time. And then the QB change? For real? Remember that Croom loved Henig because he chased a dude down the field after an INT. That dude seriously owes Omarr, constantly pushing him into a drop-back Croom Coast Offense role. Unbelievable.
He was just too prideful. The defense was fine. And Croom wasn't a bad recruiter, remember, the talent Mullen won with his first 2 years was largely Croom-recruited. If he had just concentrated on recruiting, maybe he could have landed a QB or two. And never forget him refusing to leave the Packers to come recruit before his first season. Just unbelievably delusional, he really thought he was THAT good of a coach.
Nothing like our current football situation to take us down this incredibly painful memory lane.
We need a peeping Arnett ASAP!
The strength of the SEC overalls something people aren't taking into consideration enough. Arkansas is terrible. SC is bad. Auburn is bad. Kentucky is pretty bad. Bama isn't even a typical Bama team thonthey are much better than us. This was a good year to go 9 and 3 since we only face 3 competent teams
Arnett being promoted for “continuity”, then firing the entire offensive staff is one of the most offensive, MState, things we could have done. And reason enough to fire them all after seeing what they put on the field after having all the time for portal/recruiting and practicing, bowl practices for most, spring, summer and fall camp, and the product on the field looks worse than Leach’s first year with hardly any practice time AND swapping offensive systems.
I love the argument that since we don’t have any projected NFL draft picks means we have no talent. That’s one of those straw man arguments. They aren’t being coached competently, you don’t know how they’d be performing if they were. We have several that would be if they were being coached competently. Sirmon could make this defense better!**
I love the argument that since we don’t have any projected NFL draft picks means we have no talent. That’s one of those straw man arguments. They aren’t being coached competently, you don’t know how they’d be performing if they were. We have several that would be if they were being coached competently. Sirmon could make this defense better!**
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Good favor from who? How did it benefit MSU at all to hire a bad football coach? Who cares if the media loved the hire, him and his golfcart set us back a decade and we will never come back from that.
You have to look at it like this. The portal is going to kick our arse this year, and we aren't lighting the world on fire with recruiting. We are in a complete re-build after this season, regardless. Do you trust Arnett to be the architect of that re-build? If not, the decision is simple.
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