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If Golden, Richt, Diaz had Mario's resources...

Applecane said:
...could they have had the same or near level of success?
I'm loving this offseason, but it does make me wonder.
And by resources I include the much improved support of the university in recent years.
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They might have more success than what their tenure at Miami, but I think Cristobal's success is a product of his relentless recruiting and the different coaches/systems he's learned through his years at FIU, Bama, and Oregon. Golden's scheme would handcuff the players on defense, IMO, as well as the coaching being subpar. Diaz could have better success on the field than Golden, but I feel like he was really lacking in the other departments of being a head coach at a major program. It felt a little amateurish.
 
Canedude08 said:
Golden was probably the biggest disappointment hire I've ever experienced as a 'Cane. The dude had a legit staff(When you look at what Fisch has become, it's obvious that had he stayed long term, offense wouldn't have been an issue), found a way to acquire talent in an era where it wasn't easy, but his loyalty to D'Onofrio and inability to delegate was his undoing.

Always remember that Mark Richt, who was moving towards the end of his career, was able to win 19 games his first two years, with a team made up of mostly Golden guys. Al understood how to sell the program, but the issue was that consistency wasn't there. If you spent any amount of time around him, you could see that it was all an act, he thought that you had to be slick in Miami and people saw that wasn't his true personality type. He also didn't have an AD worth a **** and that also hurt him, because a real AD would have forced him to fire D'Onofrio and hire a legit DC to run the defense without interference.

Richt was a great bridge, we needed an adult, and he was exactly that. The issue is that once he walked away(and did us a solid by NOT forcing a buyout situation, because he realized it was over for him), we had an incompetent moron that decided to take the lazy way out and hire Manny Diaz, without interviewing a single qualified candidate. There's a reason why Mario struggled his first two years, the talent was in the toilet, compared to what Richt inherited. Diaz was a terrible recruiter, and an even worse program manager. The only thing he did that was remotely close to good was hire two coordinators(Baker and Lashlee) that were able to stop the bleeding somewhat. Baker got blamed for crap that probably wasn't his fault(Tough to win with mediocre talent and a HC that doesn't demand accountability from players).
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So Golden’s downfall was his inability to do the two most basic parts of his job? He couldn’t/ wouldn’t hire a staff and no one trusted the vision he was selling.

What is it about this guy that people want to defend despite decades of evidence that he sucks?
 
JHallCanes said:
Richt had integrity though

They had to get rid of that to step the illegal bag game up
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It’s been reported many times that Richt refused to get into the bag game and he still fielded some very competitive teams. Whether or not the bag game could have gotten him over the hump is left for speculation.
 
423Hurricane said:
It’s been reported many times that Richt refused to get into the bag game and he still fielded some very competitive teams. Whether or not the bag game could have gotten him over the hump is left for speculation.
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Agreed. Just my completely amateur opinion but I don’t look at Mario and think he’s just a flat out better head coach than Mark Richt. Don’t need to go into details but this past season we really finally started to put together a powerhouse assistant staff and analyst structure. Those layers are huge. Even back to the Miami glory days we had some insanely good assistants on staff always

Still, can’t take anything away from Mario. He’s the one that got the resources and has put it together
 
JHallCanes said:
Agreed. Just my completely amateur opinion but I don’t look at Mario and think he’s just a flat out better head coach than Mark Richt. Don’t need to go into details but this past season we really finally started to put together a powerhouse assistant staff and analyst structure. Those layers are huge. Even back to the Miami glory days we had some insanely good assistants on staff always

Still, can’t take anything away from Mario. He’s the one that got the resources and has put it together
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One man can’t do it all. It’s all about the people he hires.
 
DRC said:
So Golden’s downfall was his inability to do the two most basic parts of his job? He couldn’t/ wouldn’t hire a staff and no one trusted the vision he was selling.

What is it about this guy that people want to defend despite decades of evidence that he sucks?
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I know nuance is a dirty word around here, but here goes nothing. There's a HUGE gulf between incompetence and making the CFB HOF. Al Golden managed to take one of the worst programs in modern football and make it a 9 win program. Temple was a terrible FCS program at the FBS level and he led that turnaround. Him being mid at Miami doesn't change that his hire was justified, most of us had no issue with the hire because his resume was solid.

Golden ultimately failed here for multiple reasons, some beyond his control, but mostly by his own doing. There are some things you can't measure when you make a hire, ability to make adjustments is one of them. I don't think anyone realized that he was willing to torpedo his own career, instead of grasping the obvious and bringing in a different defensive coordinator, and letting him do his job. Flexibility is a trait that has saved Mario Cristobal, he grasps his own limitations and has built his staff and program accordingly. Al Golden never truly understood his own limitations and that ultimately did him in.

We also have to ask ourselves the following question: If he had a full go run, would he have been better than what he ultimately turned out to be? Considering that even with his issues, he still left the program in significantly better shape than what he inherited, likely yes. I believe that Al had a relatively low ceiling(8-10 wins per year, maybe more if he hit on a QB), due to him not being a great cultural fit, but if he would have been able to reach it, most of us would have been okay with it, to a point. Keep in mind, this was during the "Certain schools are allowed to compete for talent, most of you aren't", era.

Keep in mind, even with Al Golden being mediocre, even with him ultimately failing at Miami, he NEVER went 2-10, he NEVER won less than 6 games in a full season, and that's with the NCAA doing everything possible to cripple the program, if not outright kill it. He ultimately failed, but let's stop acting like Al Golden was Willie Taggart. He was a mediocre to slightly above average coach.
 
Ton of well resourced HCs in the SEC and B1G treading water at their programs in the same way as prior to NIL.
 
Applecane said:
...could they have had the same or near level of success?
I'm loving this offseason, but it does make me wonder.
And by resources I include the much improved support of the university in recent years.
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Canedude08 said:
I know nuance is a dirty word around here, but here goes nothing. There's a HUGE gulf between incompetence and making the CFB HOF. Al Golden managed to take one of the worst programs in modern football and make it a 9 win program. Temple was a terrible FCS program at the FBS level and he led that turnaround. Him being mid at Miami doesn't change that his hire was justified, most of us had no issue with the hire because his resume was solid.

Golden ultimately failed here for multiple reasons, some beyond his control, but mostly by his own doing. There are some things you can't measure when you make a hire, ability to make adjustments is one of them. I don't think anyone realized that he was willing to torpedo his own career, instead of grasping the obvious and bringing in a different defensive coordinator, and letting him do his job. Flexibility is a trait that has saved Mario Cristobal, he grasps his own limitations and has built his staff and program accordingly. Al Golden never truly understood his own limitations and that ultimately did him in.

We also have to ask ourselves the following question: If he had a full go run, would he have been better than what he ultimately turned out to be? Considering that even with his issues, he still left the program in significantly better shape than what he inherited, likely yes. I believe that Al had a relatively low ceiling(8-10 wins per year, maybe more if he hit on a QB), due to him not being a great cultural fit, but if he would have been able to reach it, most of us would have been okay with it, to a point. Keep in mind, this was during the "Certain schools are allowed to compete for talent, most of you aren't", era.

Keep in mind, even with Al Golden being mediocre, even with him ultimately failing at Miami, he NEVER went 2-10, he NEVER won less than 6 games in a full season, and that's with the NCAA doing everything possible to cripple the program, if not outright kill it. He ultimately failed, but let's stop acting like Al Golden was Willie Taggart. He was a mediocre to slightly above average coach.
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Funny enough, Willie Taggarts best season as a head coach (USF) was objectively better than Al Golden’s vaunted best season as a head coach. so if you’re going to “well actually” me, try to be smart and correct.

But Willie Taggarts record is as irrelevant as any credit you want to give Al Golden for using partial qualifiers to dominate the MAC. Al Golden was never a good hire. As proven by us being the only major conference team willing to hire him as a head coach. He wasn’t a good or average head coach, which everyone in the football world was able to figure out except maybe you.

So here’s some nuance for you, Al Golden’s wins at Temple should be discounted because a ton of his players while at Temple were NJ catholic school kids who didn’t have the grades to accept their Michigan, BC and Ohio state offers.Temple at the time was the alternative to going to military school. Applying nuance, it’s pretty easy to see that Golden was doing less with more. as proven by the performance of the next guy in the seat.
 
kyle_schick said:
No, not a chance.

Its almost as if Golden was acting like a coach here, who secretly didn't care about winning. Just going through the motions.

Richt was asleep at the wheel and spent his entire career being too stubborn snd refusing to adapt.

Diaz is just like a gas station person or a make-a-wish kid who got to be coach.

Mario was about 10 hours from being SOL until God himself intervened and served up Cam Ward on a silver platter.

Mario did secure the cash so credit where its due but hes just as stubborn as Richt. Cam resuscitated the program which was seconds from death, and Mario hiring Heatherman revitalized everything.
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The whole “stubborn” thing with Mario is more related to game planning more then anything else to me cause he has shown that he will make whatever changes necessary needed to succeed here as opposed to richt with his QB coach son and Golden with Dnifiro but this season I think Mario learned a valuable lesson in playing loose and burying teams when you have the chance
 
DRC said:
Funny enough, Willie Taggarts best season as a head coach (USF) was objectively better than Al Golden’s vaunted best season as a head coach. so if you’re going to “well actually” me, try to be smart and correct.

But Willie Taggarts record is as irrelevant as any credit you want to give Al Golden for using partial qualifiers to dominate the MAC. Al Golden was never a good hire. As proven by us being the only major conference team willing to hire him as a head coach. He wasn’t a good or average head coach, which everyone in the football world was able to figure out except maybe you.

So here’s some nuance for you, Al Golden’s wins at Temple should be discounted because a ton of his players while at Temple were NJ catholic school kids who didn’t have the grades to accept their Michigan, BC and Ohio state offers.Temple at the time was the alternative to going to military school. Applying nuance, it’s pretty easy to see that Golden was doing less with more. as proven by the performance of the next guy in the seat.
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USF was never TEMPLE bad. They were bad, but Temple was "Get out of the conference" bad. That's my point. Temple was so uncompetitive, it was assumed that them joining the MAC was a waystation on their way to FCS. They were that bad. That's why it was considered a miracle when Golden got them bowl eligible, much less nine wins. They had absolutely nothing to sell as a program, NOTHING. USF, even at their worst had local talent to recruit, they had something to sell someone.

By the way, Golden wasn't the first coach to leverage lower academic standards to rebuild a terrible program. Bill Snyder comes to mind, he utilized the state of Kansas and their Juco infrastructure to turn around a program that was just as bad, if not worse than Temple. What's your point? The only difference is Golden did it with a school that was basically punting on having a program.

Steve Addazio went 9-4 in year one at Temple, using Golden's improvements and talent. He then went 4-7( TU had a ton of turnover)and GTFOed. Rhule came in and then had to rebuild, because Addazio gutted the program on the way out. He did a **** good job of rebuilding, using a lot of the same methods Golden did, because Temple has a niche and the coaches that win there, lean into it.
 
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Alex_Dynamix said:
The whole “stubborn” thing with Mario is more related to game planning more then anything else to me cause he has shown that he will make whatever changes necessary needed to succeed here as opposed to richt with his QB coach son and Golden with Dnifiro but this season I think Mario learned a valuable lesson in playing loose and burying teams when you have the chance
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He makes changes very slowly, or lets his coaches make changes slowly.

Alot of the coordinators and coaches he has hired needed to go way earlier than when they left.

And us trying to jam the ball up the middle against Indianas 4-3 for the entire first half.

He does make changes, but he could take that next step by making them faster and being more decisive.
 
kyle_schick said:
He makes changes very slowly, or lets his coaches make changes slowly.

Alot of the coordinators and coaches he has hired needed to go way earlier than when they left.

And us trying to jam the ball up the middle against Indianas 4-3 for the entire first half.

He does make changes, but he could take that next step by making them faster and being more decisive.
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I agree. As for Indiana if Cam Ward is under center we are celebrating #6 ..appreciate what Beck did for us but he limited the explosiveness of this offense
 
Young Richt - Miami is annually an ACC and CFP contender. Top 8-16. NC contender Top 4-5 season would be rare.

Golden and Diaz - Still fail as they prove their incompetence and the resources dry up.
 
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