First of all, Stansbury does not have a cult like following among some in our fanbase- at least not to the degree that Polk had.
The thing about Polk is he is a hall of fame coach. He is one of the top ten of all time. Stansbury- not so much. I don't think I have to expand on that. Polk had a much more successful career and impactful career at MSU and in his sport than Stansbury has.
Getting rid of Stansbury will be nothing like getting rid of Polk. He does have Bailey Howell in his corner, but Stricklin has the rest of the entire MSU fanbase in his.
Many people have forgotten, but when Polk was in his prime, he was a very good coach in terms of being much more aggressive- relative to the end of his career- and he was also at one time a great recruiter. You don't get a guy from Miami and named Rafael Palmeiro by hoping he shows up at your camp and falls in love with the place. In the 80's, Polk was cutting edge as far as baseball.
Stansbury to me has always been pretty much have a simple offense, and play good defense and rebound. He's no John Wooden. Just see how far you go with recruiting and what I said above.
Polk also turned us into a "what's wrong with the NCAA" case study and his priorities shifted over the years. He was simply not focused on MSU as much as he should have been, refused to change with the times of not only baseball, but society in general, hired a pitching coach that was in over his head and didn't know what he was doing and got most of our pitchers hurt and then the bottom fell out. Truth be told- McNickle ruined Polk as much as anyone. When we started to have our pitchers go down, and Polk refused to fire him when confronted by a couple of parents- it killed our recruiting as far as pitching goes. It almost ruined Butch in terms of the court of public opinion. Heck, next will be the first time since 2006 that we will have a fully functional pitching staff.
At least I feel like Rick has kept MSU in his focus the entire time no matter what. My biggest problem with Rick is the embarassment from the way his players act- namely Sidney/Bailey fighting and now signing a guard that has a prison record among other things. People at work know I am a MSU alum and when they ask me about what I think about the stuff that our basketball team does- it's embarassing to me. And yes, I know that players under Cohen, Polk and Dan have done things that are exactly angelic, but none of them have EVER had a player do something so bad that it makes national news.