bladerunnr said:
So no one knows how this hire is going to turn out. Bohl was successful at a lower level. The question was always going to be "can he recruit at this level"?
When I mentioned in another thread that maybe it's time to go the JUCO route, I was informed that's not how you build a program from the ground up. Oh well, on the BB side, it sure was nice having Justin Williams and Brad Jones and Dante Richardson stop by for a few years.
I'm amazed that Burman was given a new contract based on these last 2 hires. One was to clean up the huge disaster(schroyer) he created in the first place and the second is unproven at this level. We might have had Jeff Tedford here. I don't believe Burman even interviewed him. All I know is, after about 15 years of mediocre to poor results, my expectations have been reduced to just hoping we can compete and not finish last. I'm totally feeling the sentiments of the poster who started this thread. Even though it was irrational to expect a winning season this year, the nearly constant refrain of "wait till he gets his guys in here" is really hard to listen to anymore.
I thought Tedford would be a good hire, but there are plenty of questions there too. Remember he got fired at Cal and his last team was 3-9 after he had a decade to build the program. On an unfortunate note, it turns out that Tedford's health issues would have prevented him from coaching the team this year anyway although that was certainly not known at the time.
In terms of JC's, there is nothing wrong with going the JC route, the problem is that it isn't that easy to find high quality JC talent in football. Remember, Colby tore up the JC ranks and we have a number of JC players on the current roster that are not getting it done at this level. We need talent, and the JC route is a fine route, but it isn't any easier than recruiting HS players. If a guy can play, he will be recruited by other programs. You have to win recruiting battles one way or the other if you want to be successful. There is no magic elixir of recruiting JC's and everything will be fine.
In terms of basketball, I would ask what we ever won with Williams and Jones? Brad was one of my favorite players ever, and I wish our football team could play with the intensity and aggressiveness that he brought to the basketball court, but in the end we were 17-31 in MWC play during his time at UW (12-18 for Justin Williams). Donta Richardson was a great addition, but he also played alongside Jay Straight, Uche, Josh Davis (for one year), Marcus Bailey (for 1.3 years), etc.
I have nothing against JC's in hoops (quite the opposite), but I don't think you can use JC success in basketball as a correlation for football. In general in basketball you will find that there is decent depth at the guard, wing and undersized PF positions in the JC ranks and that if you recruit those categories you can consistently find D1 caliber players (Pako Cruz, Luke Martinez, Tyson Johnson, Nate Sobey, even Derrious Gilmore are all recent examples), but big men are significantly over-recruited (landing Williams was a coup for McClain, but that was a long time ago) and there aren't too many JC guys capable of coming in and leading a top tier MWC team. It's more of a solution for depth and role players.
In football, there are fewer programs and a bigger gap (IMO) between the level of play at a JC and at a FBS institution.
Tl; dr: The only thing that matters is talent, whether it is JC, HS, or transfer.
