that he left the program in "nice" shape. I don't think he would admit that the program had gone down. That would be admitting that he was wrong. I do think you are right that he would blame the NCAA at least indirectly. He would reason that Georgia, Tennessee, Vandy, and LSU are all good because of lottery scholarships and that Ole Miss is good because of Lucky Day. I mean, as much as 18 year olds want to play for an eccentric old guy because he IS Ron Polk, it's hard to compete with unlimited funds from these other states, right?
I bet if you asked him about our struggles with the bullpen, he would say it is because Cohen yells at them too much, puts too much pressure on them, and he pulls his starters out too soon.
But to me, worst of all, is there are some people who saw this happening years ago back when we hired Polk, and yet it felt hopeless because no one was willing to demand accountability from Polk. Our fans administration allowed Polk to destroy the program. If I was the AD, I would have fired him after 2004. Seriously. If we didn't have Maholm shutting people down every Fri night, I think this situation would have been more apparent. We had a recruiting class with zero Mississippians- the year Stephen Head was a senior- and all the players were guys like Andy Wilson and Trent Hill. That was a red flag to me, right there. Ironically, early in Polk II's career, people used to rail "wait till he gets his guys in here and McMahon's guys out", and yet Polk was winning primarily because of McMahon's players. I thought Ole Miss getting better would force the issue, but to my dismay, our fans just entered some delusional alternate world of denial which should only be reserved for One Flew over the KooKoo's Nest. It was always, "Well, at least we're classier", whatever the hell that means, or "This is a one year deal for Ole Miss" seven years in a row.