It's a great hire in my opinion.
Perhaps. Certainly has a long track record with multiple P4 programs and, apparently, he isn't able to stay out of football. Dude even took an assistant coach gig with Gulfshores High School in the last couple of years. I figure he can't help for $h!+ with recruiting/portal but that's not why he was hired. Hopefully he brings the adult factor and a steady influence on not doing stupid $h!+
Thats exactly the way I view it. He can help gameplan. I doubt he's walking into momma's house to secure the signature.
Did not recognize the name. Kind of a weird career trajectory post head coach. He's been a defensive coordinator that took over as interim head coach twice. Lots of one or two year gigs with the DC position at Gulf SHores high school being the oddest. Was he the DC for Hudspeth? Did they have two prior DI Head coaches on one high school coaching staff?
Gulf Shores has gone all in on football. They made it a point to hire former college football coaches and run the high school program like a college program. And they are paying these former college coaches a lot. The strategy worked, because they had never had any success before but won the 5A state championship in 2023.
I think the Gulf Shores HS deal is more of a "break" from coaching. Live at the beach, and wait for a job offer in college that interests you. Especially for someone like Rhoades who's career obviously peaked years ago, so he's not trying to climb the ladder anymore.
Semi-Thread Jack - This hire almost pisses me off though because this is exactly the type of coach Lebby should have been looking for last year. We guaranteed a special teams coach $4M or whatever it is to come be a first time DC and a year later have an analyst with a better resume than our DC? Not saying Rhoads should have been or should be DC, but you the arrogance of not trying to get some experience somewhere on your staff when you're a first time head coach is just staggering. And the people claiming that we couldn't hire people like that are obviously idiots, because we are much less desirable of a spot in year two and we're getting somebody with experience to come be an analyst. We could have and should have done something like this last year.
Lebby is not that bright. Didn't take long to arrive at that conclusion.
Thank God he didnt stumble upon ED and start jotting things down
Has State had analysts in past seasons? I have read of other programs hirings but don’t recall State doing the same.
