Lack of Transfers A Good Thing
One thing I thought might be a downside to RR and the intensity of his workouts and practices would be more transfers from players that did not see a clear path to playing time. I must say I've been pleasantly surprised that since the initial wave of defectors it has been pretty quiet. We've loaded up at certain positions so some may be coming soon, but so far pretty quiet this year.
or Bobby Bowden out as head coaches. Yes I know they are legends and should be able to go out on their own... but everyone here knows that Joe Pa should retire and that he is just hurting their program being there.
You really think Joe Pa is HURTING Penn Shtate? Did you miss the 2009 Rose Bowl? The great recruiting the past couple of years?
Your performance in this thread has done quite a bit of damage to the credibility I had given to you as a poster the past year. Your criticism of Lloyd, a national championship winning corch, is quite revolting. He gave me tons of awesome memories for half my life, and your insults are really armchair critiquing at its worst.
About me saying that most of the blame for years 1&2 should fall on the previous regime and now it is RRs team and program.
It's not his fault what he was left with on the team. It's not his fault he was 10 schollies less than the limit.
While Lloyd gave me a lot of good memories too while I was a student at Michigan (03-06 seasons) I felt that the program had become stale near the end of his term. He was habitually losing to OSU, ND, OOC, and in bowl games. He couldn't stop a mobile quarterback and he lost in one of the biggest upsets in college football history (Stanford/USC being a bigger line was a bigger upset).
I'm not insulting the man, I recognize his valuable contributions and I appreciate the torch that he passed on, I just wish that he had left it lit a little brighter for the next coach to carry on the Michigan tradition.
I guess it all comes down to one guy and that is Bill Martin for pleading Lloyd to stay for another few years because I think that if we had gone another direction in 2003 the program would be in much better shape now (but who knows that is all conjecture).
I just can't stand people who do nothing but blame Rich Rodriguez for the Michigan program when it should be a shared blame with several people and frankly it was a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances.
In sum: It was no one man/woman's fault, but just because I don't think that LC was the greatest coach ever should not damage my credibility. If anything I say ask Irish what his thoughts were on LC and I'm sure that he would say the same as me.
They've seemed pretty good the past couple years to me. There are only so many "great" coaches out there at any given time. If PSU were any better in recent years, maybe OSU people would be calling for Tressel's head.
At some point, you have to decide whether a change is really going to make a huge difference. The people at PSU have obviously decided that a) Paterno is their best choice, b) he's done enough for that school to retire whenever he wants, or c) both.
Over the last five years, PSU is 51-13 and 4-1 in bowl games. Is he really hurting Penn State?
(That's rhetorical - the answer is no.)
I think JoePa is largely a figure head at this point. I also think he's earned that privilege. Not trying to be confrontational, just curious of your opinion.
I don't think either of us really knows whether he's a figurehead or not. He might be, but he's still the head coach of the team.
FWIW, I watched some spring practices last year, and Paterno was right there the entire time, standing in the middle of the defensive backfield, and coaching up the defensive backs.
One of my best friends brothers have been associated with the Penn State program since '02 with one of them playing for him and the other being a GA in the S&C program and they pretty much say he's a figurehead. He told me there was a point when JoePa tried to have a teleconferencing system in his house so he could stay home for team meetings while everyone else is at the facility. Also, I had been told that there were times he was yelling at a walk-on on the sidelines with the same number as a starter in the game with the same number that made a mistake.
Not to make excuses or anything, but if you're 914 years old and you had your leg broken while getting run over on the sideline, I don't think a teleconference is a horrible idea.
I think we can assume that he's less involved in coaching the team than he was a decade or two ago. Still, he's the ultimate decider (thanks, GW!) of who plays, who gets recruited, who coaches for him, etc.
I completely agree with you. I'm just stating what the two people involved with the program have told me.
I agree with you Bando, Lloyd was exactly the type of ambassador that I want for Michigan, and criticism of RR is fair and warranted. But, our teams during the last half his tenure did not have a killer instinct like they needed to have.
Michigan has distinct advantage over most programs; there are only 13 or 14 other programs that I would consider to be peers to Michigan. The team had an Aesop feel to it for a long time, App State was just the first turtle fast enough to hold off Michigan.
Remember losing the Brown Jug in 2005? Very similar, just not as embarrassing. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances but the fissures in our armor had been starting to show for a long time.
Even 2003, which was an awesome team, lost two regular season games to inferior opponents (Oregon, Iowa) then was simply uncompetitive against USC in the Rose Bowl.
Against our peers (Ohio State, Bowl Games) Michigan was getting embarrassed at the end. You don't have to hate Lloyd Carr to acknowledge that.
except the very beginning because I don't think that all criticism of RR is fair and warranted (I.E. Dorsey, The Freep "expose", etc).
Other than that small little thing I will agree that RR should be criticized as all coaches should.
April 27th, 2010 at 11:50 AM ^
You understand that although the FREEP was overzealous, they revealed violations we WERE committing, right? So...I'd say that is fair and warranted.
For me the telling numbers come from Carr's last 7 years on the job. This time corresponds with the hiring of Jim Tressel at OSU. In that time, with his program well established and plenty of talented players at his disposal, the team went 1-6 against OSU, never won a major (BCS) bowl game, and only won a single outright Big 10 title (while sharing another). In the same time frame, OSU won three major bowl games (they've since added a fourth), a national title, two outright Big Ten titles (they've since added one more), two shared titles (though one of these occurred in their national title season and they've since added one more).
I think we will all be extremely disappointed if Rodriguez (who would almost certainly be fired in this scenario), despite the tough transition he faced initially, goes no better than 1-4 against Tressel the next five years and fails to win a major bowl game.
Were Kurt Wermers and Dann Neill RR recruits?
They are both not athletic linemen
No. They committed to Lloyd before the coaching change.
Is there a scenario where we would consider a lack of transfers a bad thing? I think all we're seeing now is that the program has begun to achieve steady state. Rich's recruits are becoming the majority and know what they've signed up for. The malcontents and doubters have been cleared out. If Rodriguez can keep his job, things will probably stay pretty much the same going forward.
Is the only scenario I can come up with.
Coming from a biochemist and a marathon runner....Gittleson was a complete disaster his final seasons at Michigan. I don't even want to know the nutritional values of the training tables under Gittleson.
Gittleson's training table is an example of what not to do in terms of nutrition.
a) How do you know this?
b) I'd be more inclined to trust a marathoner about nutrition for marathon running, rather than weighlifting and football-playing.
More calories = more size. If the coaches wanted the linemen to put on size then eating pizza was a way to put on more size. Stop hating on Gittleson because he had a program that was different than Barwis. When Barwis had his first interview that EVERYONE went crazy for him about he pretty much started talking straight from a physiology book. Proprioception, coordination, balance, power development, strength, hypertrophy, applied force, etc, etc. A marathoner is completely different in training protocols compared to a football player, especially a football player needing to increase hypertrophy.
So yeah imo the lack of transfers has been a good thing.
Bouje, Magnus, and Bando are having some kind of standoff where everyone loses no matter what. In a thread titled "Lack of Transfers A Good Thing."
I don't get it. I could criticize Lloyd, but what's the point? Criticize RichRod, but again, WHAT'S THE POINT?
RR walked into a bad situation, maybe he made it worse, maybe it would have happened anyway. It's year 3, win 7-8 games and beat 2/3 of MSU/ND/OSU and most of it will go away. 2011 will be returning like 21 of HIS GUYS as starters. Next year is pretty important just to get to a bowl, but 2011 is the make or break year.
So here it was :-p.
I agree with everything you said. +1
I also agree with everything you said to excerpt, “most of it will go away.”
The Freep will never go away.
...what a tiresome argument.
To the OP's point: knock on freaking wood.