The bottom line is we've just got to pay assistant coaches better. Collins is the lowest paid DC in the conference by like $150k...
That said, NO amount of money was going to hold Diaz here -- and no amount was going to hold Brewster. They are looking to be head coaches and have no preexisting ties to Mississippi or MSU, and that can't be overcome unless you go full retard with the money(we can pay competitively -- but we can't get in a pricing war with Texas). Deshea does have pre-existing ties to the state. That's the difference between him specifically and some of the other hires we've made...
Mullen has hired several of the best and brightest. The fact that they get better opportunities sucks for us -- but the unseen benefit is that it also helps us in the future, both in that it makes it EASIER for us to turn right around and snag another great assistant -- as we did this offseason with all 3 of our hires -- and we're allowing guys to move up to opportunities that would one day potentially let them come back and be our head coach here(Hud and Diaz specifically).
Hudspeth is the one that will eventually put together a "longterm" staff at MSU...because he has all the ties to the area and the understanding of what it would take to make it happen. He also has the support of our booster structure to a crazy extent -- and could/would manage to get our assistant coaches paid whatever it took to keep them here.
agree with a lot of that, but also, i dont think we can keep hoping that our inside guys are ready to step up and prove themselves on the field. some guys have it, some dont, but i think we were all in the same "hope" boat when it came to wilson. him being a co-coordinator didnt leave us much option....either give him the chance or risk him taking another job after we scorn him for a real dc. i think we did the right thing by at least giving him a chance, but it didnt exactly work out, and truthfully, got really ugly. Mirando was another case where we hoped he would be up to the task....he was not and was a huge liability off the field as well. no doubt we need guys that want to be here, but we cant make desperate moves (wilson wasnt really desperate, but mirando was, but if i recall, it was really late in the process which put us in a bind). we play in a tough enough league as it is, so learning on the fly isnt going to cut it more often than not. Im in no way knocking collins....im more optimistic that he will be more successful than wilson, but at the same time, hes going to have his own learning curve. again, this is not in any way about collins, rather, a retrospective look at our prior coaching experiments and turnover. we absolutely have to crack the wallet open for some of our better guys, but the market will dictate their value and we might have to be a little more aggressive to keep the difference makers.
engie, or anybody else that recalls, why was brewster so set on fsu? was it the promotion to recruiting coordinator/increase in pay, program quality, his wife hated starkville, etc? could we not match or exceed that? i recall him saying it was a difficult decision, but dont remember the reasons or process behind it. if i remember correctly, it took him a while to make his decision from when it initially came out to when he announced.....i assume we were in the process of counter offering.
